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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Poor Man's House, by Stephen Sydney Reynolds
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: A Poor Man's House
+
+
+Author: Stephen Sydney Reynolds
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 25, 2008  [eBook #26126]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POOR MAN'S HOUSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Malcolm Farmer and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+A POOR MAN'S HOUSE
+
+by
+
+STEPHEN REYNOLDS
+
+"_We understand the artificial better
+than the natural. More soul, but less
+talent, is contained in the simple than
+in the complex._"--NOVALIS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London: John Lane The Bodley Head
+New York: John Lane Compy. MCMIX
+All rights reserved
+
+Turnbull and Spears, Printers, Edinburgh
+
+
+
+TO
+BOB
+AND TO
+EDWARD GARNETT
+
+
+
+
+A few chapters, chosen from the completed work, have appeared in the
+_Albany Review_, the _Daily News_ and _Country Life_. To the editors
+of those periodicals the author's acknowledgments are due.
+
+
+
+
+_PREFACE_
+
+
+The substance of "A Poor Man's House" was first recorded in a journal,
+kept for purposes of fiction, and in letters to one of the friends to
+whom the book is dedicated. Fiction, however, showed itself an
+inappropriate medium. I was unwilling to cut about the material, to
+modify the characters, in order to meet the exigencies of plot, form,
+and so on. I felt that the life and the people were so much better than
+anything I could invent. Besides which, I found myself in possession of
+conclusions, hot for expression, which could not be incorporated at all
+into fiction. "A Poor Man's House" consists then of the journal and
+letters, subjected to such slight re-arrangement as should enable me to
+draw the truest picture I could within the limits of one volume.
+
+Primarily the book aims at presenting a picture of a typical poor man's
+house and life. Incidentally, certain conclusions are expressed
+which--needless to say--are very tentative and are founded not alone on
+_this_ poor man's house. Of the book as a picture, it is not the
+author's place to speak. But its opinions, and the manner of arriving
+at them, do require some explanation; the right to hold such opinions
+some substantiation.
+
+Educated people usually deal with the poor man's life deductively; they
+reason from the general to the particular; and, starting with a theory,
+religious, philanthropic, political, or what not, they seek, and too
+easily find, among the millions of poor, specimens--very frequently
+abnormal--to illustrate their theories. With anything but human
+beings, that is an excellent method. Human beings, unfortunately, have
+individualities. They do what, theoretically, they ought not to do,
+and leave undone those things they ought to do. They are even said to
+possess souls--untrustworthy things beyond the reach of sociologists.
+The inductive method--reasoning from the particular to the
+general--though it lead to a fine crop of errors, should at least help
+to counterbalance the psychological superficiality of the deductive
+method; to counterbalance, for example, the nonsense of those
+well-meaning persons who go routing about among the poor in search of
+evil, and suppose that they can chain it up with little laws. Chained
+dogs bite worst.
+
+For myself, I can only claim--I only want to claim--that I have lived
+among poor people without preconceived notions or _parti pris_; neither
+as parson, philanthropist, politician, inspector, sociologist nor
+statistician; but simply because I found there a home and more beauty
+of life and more happiness than I had met with elsewhere. So far as is
+possible to a man of middle-class breeding, I have lived their life,
+have shared their interests, and have found among them some of my
+closest and wisest friends. Perhaps I may reasonably anticipate one
+type of criticism by adding that I have felt something of the pinch and
+hardship of the life, as well as enjoyed its picturesqueness. Since the
+book was first written, it has fallen to me, on an occasion of illness,
+to take over for some days all the housekeeping and cooking; and I have
+worked on the boats sometimes fifteen hours a day, not as an amateur,
+but for hard and--what is more to the point--badly-needed coin. It took
+the gilt off the gingerbread, but it didn't spoil the gingerbread!
+
+Would it were possible to check by ever so little the class-conceit of
+those people who think that they can manage the poor man's life better
+than he can himself; who would take advantage of their education to
+play ducks and drakes with his personal affairs. For it is my firm
+belief that in the present phase of national evolution, and as regards
+the things that really matter, the educated man has more to learn of
+the poor man than to teach him. Even Nietzsche, the philosopher of
+aristocracy, went so far as to say that _in the so-called cultured
+classes, the believers in 'modern ideas,' nothing is perhaps so
+repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy insolence of eye and hand
+with which they touch, taste, and finger everything; and it is possible
+that even yet there is more_ relative _nobility of taste, and more tact
+for reverence among the people, among the lower classes of the people,
+especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading_ demi-monde
+_of intellect, the cultured class_.
+
+S. R.
+
+SEACOMBE, 1908.
+
+
+
+
+_A POOR MAN'S HOUSE_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+                                                   EGREMONT VILLAS,
+                                                 SEACOMBE, _April_.
+
+
+1
+
+The sea is merely grinding against the shingle. The _Moondaisy_ lies
+above the sea-wall, in the gutter, with her bottom-boards out and a
+puddle of greenish water covering her garboard strake. Her hunchbacked
+Little Commodore is dead. The other two of her old crew, George Widger
+and Looby Smith are nowhere to be seen: they must be nearly grown up
+by now. The fishermen themselves appear less picturesque and salty
+than they used to do. It is slack time after a bad herring season.
+They are dispirited and lazy, and very likely hungry.
+
+These old lodgings of mine, with their smug curtains, aspidestria
+plant, china vases and wobbly tables and chairs....
+
+But I can hear the sea-gulls screaming, even here.
+
+
+2
+
+[Sidenote: _GEORGE GONE TO SEA_]
+
+Yesterday morning I met young George Widger, now grown very lanky but
+still cat-like in his movements. He was parading the town with a couple
+of his mates, attired in a creased blue suit with a wonderful yellow
+scarf around his neck, instead of the faded guernsey and ragged
+sea-soaked trousers in which he used to come to sea. What was up? I
+asked his father, and Tony had a long rigmarole to tell me. George had
+got a sweetheart. Therefore George had begun to look about him for a
+sure livelihood. George was not satisfied with a fisherman's prospects.
+"Yu works and drives and slaves, and don't never get no forarder." So
+George had gone to the chief officer of coastguards without saying a
+word to his father and had been found fit. George had joined the Navy.
+He was going off to Plymouth that very day at dinner-time.
+
+It is like a knight of romance being equipped by his lady for the wars.
+But what must be the difficulty to a young fisherman of earning his
+bread and cheese, when all he can do for his sweetheart is to leave her
+forthwith! There's a fine desperation in it.
+
+Tony seemed rather proud. "They 'ouldn't think as I had a son old
+enough for the Navy, wude they, sir? I married George's mother, her
+that's dead, when I wer hardly olden'n he is. I should ha' joined the
+Navy meself if it hadn' been for the rheumatic fever what bent me like.
+I am. 'Tis a sure thing, you see--once yu'm in it an' behaves
+yourself--wi' a pension at the end o'it. But I'm so strong an'
+capable-like for fishing as them that's bolt upright, on'y I 'ouldn't
+ha' done for the Navy. Aye! the boy's right. Fishing ain't no job for a
+man nowadays; not like what it used to be. They'll make a man of him in
+the Navy."
+
+In the evening, after dark, I saw Tony again. He was standing outside a
+brilliantly lighted grocer's shop, his cap awry as usual, and a reefer
+thrown over his guernsey. Something in the despondency of his attitude
+haled me across the road. "Well, Tony? George is there by now?"
+
+"Iss ... I-I-I w-wonder what the boy's thinking o'it now...."
+
+The man was crying his heart out. "I come'd hereto 'cause it don' seem
+'s if I can stay in house. Went in for some supper a while ago, but I
+cuden' eat nort. 'Tisn' 's if he'd ever been away from home before, yu
+know."
+
+"Come along down to the Shore Road, Tony."
+
+It seemed wrong, hardly decent, to let his grief spend itself in the
+lighted-up street. The Front was deserted and dark, for there was rain
+in the wind, and the sound of the surf had a quick savage chop in it.
+Away, over the sea, was a great misty blackness.
+
+As we walked up and down, Tony talked between tears and anger--tears
+for himself and George, anger at the cussedness of things. He looked
+straight before him, to where the row of lamps divided the lesser from
+the greater darkness, the town noises from the chafing surf; it is the
+only time I have ever seen a fisherman walk along shore without a
+constant eye on the sea.
+
+"He's taken and gone away jest as he was beginning to be o' some use
+wi' the boats, an' I thought he wer settling down. _I_ didn' know what
+wer going on, not till he came an' told me he wer off. But 'tisn'
+that, though I bain't so strong as I was to du all the work be meself;
+'tis what he's a-thinking now he've a-lef' home an' 'tis tu late to
+come back if he wants tu. He's ther, sure 'nuff, an' that's all about
+it."
+
+In the presence of grief, we are all thrown back on the fine old
+platitudes we affect to despise. "You mustn't get down over it, Tony,"
+I said. "That won't make it a bit the better. If he's steady--woman,
+wine and the rest--he'll get on right enough. He's got his wits about
+him; knows how to sail a boat and splice a rope. That's the sort they
+want in the Navy, I suppose. _He_'ll make his way, never fear. Think
+how you'll trot him out when he comes home on leave. Why, they say a
+Devon man's proper place is the Navy."
+
+"Iss, they du. _I_ should ha' been there meself if it hadn' been for
+the rheumatics--jest about coming out on a pension now, or in the
+coastguards. I _be_ in the Royal Naval Reserve, but I ain't smart
+enough, like, for the Navy. The boy...."
+
+"He's as smart and strong as they make 'em."
+
+"Aye! he's smart, or cude be, but he'll hae to mind what he's a-doin'
+there. _They_ won't put up wi' no airs like he've a-give'd me.
+Yu've got to du what yu'm told, sharp, an' yu mustn't luke [look] what
+yu thinks, let 'lone say it, or else yu'll find yourself in chokey
+[cells] 'fore yu knows where yu are. 'Tis like walking on a six-inch
+plank, in the Navy, full o' rules an' regylations; an' he won't get fed
+like he was at home nuther, when us had it."
+
+[Sidenote: _GROG AS A SLEEPING DRAUGHT_]
+
+"Why don't you go to bed and sleep, Tony?"
+
+"How can I sleep wi' me head full o' what the boy's thinking o'it all!"
+
+More walking and he calmed down a little.
+
+"Come and have some hot grog for a sleeping draught, Tony, and then go
+home to bed."
+
+"Had us better tu?"
+
+"Come along, man; then if you go straight to bed you'll sleep."
+
+"I on'y wish I cude. The boy must be turned in by this time. 'Tis like
+as if I got a picture of him in my mind, where he is, an' he ain't
+happy--_I_ knows."
+
+When Tony went down the narrow roadway, homewards, he had had just the
+amount of grog to make him sleep: no more, no less. That father's
+grief--the boy gone to sea, the father left stranded ashore--it was bad
+to listen to. While going up town, I wondered with how much sorrow the
+Navy is recruited. We look on our sailors rather less fondly than on
+the expensive pieces of machinery we send them to sea in. I don't think
+I shall ever again be able to regard the Navy newspaper-fashion. It
+seems as if someone of mine belongs to it....
+
+Lucky George! to be so much missed.
+
+This morning, when I saw Tony on the Front, he was more than a little
+awkward; looked shyly at me, from under his peaked cap, as if to read
+in my face what I thought of him. He had slept after all, and spoke of
+the hot grog as a powerful, strange invention, new to him as a sleeping
+draught. When, in talking, I said that I have only a back bedroom and a
+fripperied sitting room, and that my old lodgings do not please me as
+they used to, he clapped me on the shoulder with a jollity intended, I
+think, to put last night out of my mind. "What a pity yu hadn't let we
+know yu cuden't find lodgings to your liking. Us got a little room in
+house where they sends people sometimes from the Alexandra Hotel when
+they'm full up. My missis 'ould du anything to make 'ee comfor'able. Yu
+an't never see'd her, have 'ee? Nice little wife, I got. Yu let us know
+when yu be coming thees way again; that is, if yu don' mind coming wi'
+the likes o' us. We won't disturb 'ee."
+
+[Sidenote: _A NOISY PLACE_]
+
+Good fellow! It was his thanks. However I shall be going home
+to-morrow. Tony Widger lives, I believe, somewhere down the Gut, in
+Under Town, a place they call the Seacombe slum. You can see a horde of
+children pouring in and out of the Gut all day long, and in the evening
+the wives stand at the seaward end of it, to gossip and await their
+husbands. Noisy place....
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+                                                         SALISBURY,
+                                                            _July_.
+
+A card from Tony Widger:
+
+    Dear Sir in reply to your letter I have let to the hotel which is
+    full for the 28th july until the 6th Aus, but I have one little
+    room to the back but you did not say about the time it would take
+    you to walk down also John to Saltmeadow have let so you can have
+    that room if you can manage or you can see when you come down their
+    are a lot of People in Seacombe or you write and let me know and I
+    will see if I can get rooms for you if you tell me about the time
+    you will be hear from yours Truly Anthony Widger.
+
+Risky; but never mind. There is always the sea. It is something to have
+the certainty of a bed at the end of a long day's tramp. Besides, I
+want to see Tony, and George too, if by chance he is at home. And there
+may be a little fishing. And--
+
+    And stepping westward seems to be
+    A kind of _heavenly_ destiny.
+
+That's the real feeling at the back of my mind. _I want_ to go west,
+towards the sunset; over Dartmoor, towards Land's End, where the
+departing ships go down into the sea.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+                                                          SEACOMBE,
+                                                     _July-August_.
+
+
+1
+
+After a hundred miles of dusty road, it is good to snuff the delicately
+salted air. The bight of the Exe, where we crossed it by steam launch,
+was only a make-believe for the sea. How wonderfully the slight
+rippling murmur of a calm sea flows into, and takes possession of one's
+mind.
+
+I stood by the shore and watched the boats, and was very peaceful. Then
+I went down the Gut to the house that I guessed was Anthony Widger's.
+Many children watched me with their eyes opened wide at my knapsack. A
+pleasant looking old woman--short, stout, charwoman-shaped--came out of
+the passage just as I raised my hand to knock the open door. "Are you
+Mrs Widger?" said I.
+
+"Lor' bless 'ee! I ben't Mrs Widger. Here, Annie! Here's a gen'leman to
+see 'ee."
+
+Mrs Widger, the afternoon Mrs Widger, is a quite slim woman
+who--strangely enough for a working man's wife--looks a good deal
+younger than she is. She has rather beautiful light brown hair and
+dresses tastefully. I am afraid she will not feel complimented if the
+old woman tells her of my mistake.
+
+Her manner of receiving me indicated plainly a suspended judgment,
+inclined perhaps towards the favourable. I was shown my room, a little
+long back room, with ragged wall-paper, and almost filled up by a huge,
+very flat, squashy bed. After a wash-over (I did not ask for a bath for
+fear of exposing the lack of one) I went down to tea.
+
+Bread, jam and cream were put before me, together with fairly good hot
+tea from a blue, smoky, enamelled tin teapot which holds any quantity
+up to a couple of quarts. Mrs Widger turned two guernseys, a hat,
+several odd socks, and a boot out of a great chintz-covered chair which
+lacked one of its arms. To my _made_ conversation she replied shortly:
+
+"Dear me!" "My!" "Did you ever...." She was taking stock of me.
+
+Presently she went to a cupboard, which is also the coal-hole, and
+brought out an immense frying-pan, black both inside and out. She
+heated it till the fat ran; wiped out it with a newspaper; then placed
+in it three split mackerel. "For Tony's tea," she explained. "He's to
+sea now with two gen'lemen, but I 'spect he'll be in house sune."
+
+Voices from the passage: "Mam! Tay! Mam, I wants my tay!"
+
+[Sidenote: _TEA-TIME_]
+
+A deeper voice: "Missis, wer's my tay? Got ort nice to eat?"
+
+It was Tony himself, accompanied by a small boy and a slightly larger
+small girl.
+
+"Hullo, sir! Yu'm come then. Do 'ee think you can put up wi' our little
+shanty? Missis ought to ha' laid for 'ee in the front room. Us got a
+little parlour, you know.--I be so wet as a drownded corpse, Missis!"
+
+The two children stood on the other side of the table, staring at me as
+if I were a wild beast behind bars which they scarcely trusted. "'Tis a
+gen'leman!" exclaimed the girl.
+
+"Coo'h!" the boy ejaculated.
+
+Tony turned on them with make-believe anger: "Why don' 'ee git yer tay?
+Don' 'ee know 'tis rude to stare?"
+
+"Now then, you children," Mrs Widger continued in a strident voice,
+buttering two hunks of bread with astonishing rapidity. "Take off thic
+hat, Mabel. _Sit_ down, Jimmy."
+
+"Coo'h! Jam!" said Jimmy. "Jam zide plaate, like the gen'leman, please,
+Mam Widger."
+
+"When you've eat that."
+
+I never saw children munch so fast.
+
+Tony took off his boots and stockings, and wrung out the ends of his
+trousers upon the hearth-rug. He pattered to the oven; opened the door;
+sniffed.
+
+"Her's got summat for my tay, I can see. What is it, Missis? Fetch it
+out----quick, sharp! Mackerel! Won' 'ee hae one, sir? Ther's plenty
+here."
+
+Whilst Mrs Widger was helping him to the rest of his food, he ate the
+mackerel with his fingers. Finally, he soaked up the vinegar with
+bread, licked his finger-tips and turned towards me. "Yu'm in the
+courting chair, sir. That's where me an' Missis used to sit when we was
+courting, en' it, Annie? Du 'ee see how we've a-broke the arm? When yu
+gets a young lady, us'll lend 'ee thic chair. Didn' know as I'd got a
+little wife like thees yer, did 'ee? Ay, Annie!"
+
+He turned round and chucked her under the chin.
+
+"G'out, you dirty cat!" cried Mrs Widger, flinging herself back in the
+chair--yet not displeased.
+
+It was a pretty playful sight, although Mrs Widger's voice is rather
+like a newspaper boy's when she raises it.
+
+
+2
+
+This morning, when I arrived downstairs, the kitchen was all of a
+caddle. Children were bolting their breakfast, seated and afoot; were
+washing themselves and being washed; were getting ready and being got
+ready for school. Mrs Widger looked up from stitching the seat of a
+small boy's breeches _in situ_. "I've a-laid your breakfast in the
+front room."
+
+Thither I went with a book and no uncertain feeling of disappointment.
+
+[Sidenote: _BREAKFAST IN THE PARLOUR_]
+
+The front room looks out upon Alexandra Square. It is, at once,
+parlour, lumber room, sail and rope store, portrait gallery of
+relatives and ships, and larder. It is a veritable museum of the
+household treasures not in constant use, and represents pretty
+accurately, I imagine, the extent to which Mrs Widger's house-pride is
+able to indulge itself. But I have had enough at Salisbury of eating my
+meals among best furniture and in the (printed) company of great minds.
+The noise in the kitchen sounded jolly. Now or never, I thought. So
+after breakfast, I returned to the kitchen and asked for what bad
+behaviour I was banished to the front room.
+
+"Lor'! If yu don't mind this. On'y 'tis all up an' down here...."
+
+
+3
+
+I went yesterday to see my old landlady at Egremont Villas. She asked
+me where I was lodging.
+
+"At Tony Widger's, in Alexandra Square."
+
+"Why, that's in Under Town."
+
+"Yes, in Under Town."
+
+"Oh, law! I can't think how you can live in such a horrid place!"
+
+On my assuring her that it was not so very horrid, she rearranged her
+silken skirts on the chair (a chair too ornamentally slight for her
+weight) and tilted up her nose. "I must get and lay the table," she
+said, "for a lady and gentleman that's staying with me. _Very_ nice
+people."
+
+[Sidenote: _ALEXANDRA SQUARE_]
+
+Under Town has, in fact, an indifferent reputation among the elect. Not
+that it is badly behaved; far from it. The shallow-pated resent its not
+having drawn into line with their cheap notions of progress. If Under
+Town had put plate-glass windows into antique buildings.... Visitors to
+Seacombe, not being told, hardly so much as suspect the existence of
+its huddled old houses and thatched cottages. The shingle-paved Gut
+runs down unevenly from the Shore Road between a row of tall lodging
+houses and the Alexandra Hotel, then opens out suddenly into a little
+square which contains an incredible number of recesses and sub-corners,
+so to speak, with many more doors in them than one can discover houses
+belonging to the doors. Two cottages, I am told, have no ground floors
+at all. Cats sun themselves on walls or squat about gnawing fish bones.
+A houdan cockerel with bedraggled speckly plumage and a ragged crest
+hanging over one eye struts from doorstep to doorstep. The children,
+when any one strange walks through the Square, run like rabbits in a
+warren to their respective doors; stand there, and stare. Tony Widger's
+house is the largest. Once, when Under Town was Seacombe, a lawyer
+lived here--hence the front passage. It has a cat-trodden front garden,
+in which only wall-flowers and some box edging have survived. Over the
+front door is a broken trellis-work porch. Masts and spars lean against
+the wall. The house is built of red brick, straight up and down like an
+overgrown doll's house, but the whole of the wall is weathered and
+toned by the southerly gales which blow down the Gut from the open sea.
+Those same winds see to it that Alexandra Square does not smell
+squalid, however it may look. At its worst it is not so depressing as a
+row of discreet semi-detached villas. It is, I should imagine, a pretty
+accurate mirror of the lives that are lived in it--poor men's lives
+that scarcely anybody fathoms. If one looks for a moment at a house
+where people have starved, or are starving.... What a gift of hope they
+must possess--and what a sinking in their poor insides!
+
+
+4
+
+This morning they told me how my little hunchbacked Commodore died. He
+had been ailing, they said; had come to look paler and more pinched in
+his small sharp face. Then (it was a fisherman who told me this): "He
+was in to house one morning, an' I thought as 'e were sleepin', an' I
+said, 'Harry, will 'ee hae a cup o' tay; yu been sleeping an't 'ee?'
+An' 'e says, 'No, I an't; but I been sort o' dreaming.' An' 'e said as
+he'd see'd a green valley wi' a stream o' water, like, running down the
+middle o' it, an' 'e thought as 'e see'd Granfer there (that us losted
+jest before 'en) walking by the stream. A'terwards 'e sat on 's
+mother's lap, like 's if 'e wer a child again, though 'e wer nearly
+nineteen all but in size; an' 'e jest took an' died there, suddent an'
+quiet like; went away wi'out a word; an' us buried 'en last January up
+to the cementry on land."
+
+So the _Moondaisy_'s luckiest fisherman packed up and went.
+
+
+5
+
+It is astonishing how hungry and merry these children are, especially
+the boys. They rush into the kitchen at meal times and immediately make
+grabs at whatever they most fancy on the table.
+
+[Sidenote: _MAN AND GEN'LEMAN_]
+
+"Yu little cat!" says their mother, always as if she had never
+witnessed such behaviour before. "Yu daring rascal! Put down! I'll gie
+thee such a one in a minute. Go an' sit down to once." Then they climb
+into chairs, wave their grubby hands over the plates, in a pretence of
+grabbing something more, and spite of the whacks which sometimes fall,
+they gobble their food to the accompaniment of incessant tricks and
+roars of shrill laughter. Never were such disorderly, hilarious meals!
+If Tony is here they simply laugh at his threats of weird punishment,
+and if he comes in late from sea, they return again with him and make a
+second meal as big as the first. Sometimes, unless the food is cleared
+away quickly, they will clamour for a third meal, and clamour
+successfully. What digestions they must have to gobble so much and so
+fast!
+
+To judge by their way of talking, they divide the world into folk and
+gentlefolk. "Who gie'd thee thic ha'penny?" Mrs Widger asked Jimmy.
+
+"A man, to beach."
+
+"G'out!" said Mabel. "Twas a gen'leman."
+
+"Well...."
+
+"Well, that ain't a _man_!"
+
+Usually, at breakfast time, the voices of Tony's small nieces may be
+heard coming down the passage: "Aun-tieAnn-ie! Aunt-ieAnn-ie!" Their
+tousled, tow-coloured little heads peep round the doorway. If we have
+not yet finished eating, they are promptly ordered to 'get 'long home
+to mother.' Otherwise, they come right in and remain standing in the
+middle of the room, apparently to view me. Unable to remember which is
+Dora and which Dolly, I have nicknamed them according to their hair,
+Straighty and Curley. What they think of things, there is no knowing;
+for they blush at direct questions and turn their heads away. So also,
+when I have been going in and out of the Square, they have stopped
+their play to gaze at me, but have merely smiled shyly, if at all, in
+answer to my greetings. Yesterday, however, they had a skipping rope. I
+jumped over it. Instantly there was a chorus of laughter and chatter.
+The ice was broken. This morning, after a moment or two's consideration
+behind her veil of unbrushed hair, Straighty came and clambered upon
+the arm of the courting chair--dabbed a clammy little hand down my
+neck, whilst Curley plumped her fist on my knee and stayed looking into
+my face with very wondering smiling blue eyes. By the simple act of
+jumping a rope, I had gained their confidence; had proved I was really
+a fellow creature, I suppose. Now, when I pass through the Square, some
+small boy is sure to call out, "Where yu going?" And my name is
+brandished about among the children as if I were a pet animal. They
+have appropriated me. They have tamed that mysterious wild beast, 'the
+gen'leman.'
+
+One boy, Jimmy--a very fair-headed, blue-eyed, chubby little chap,
+seven years old--Tony's eldest boy at home--seems to have taken a
+particular fancy to me. Whether it began with bananas, or with my
+giving him a pick-a-back to the top of the cliffs, I hardly know. At
+all events he has decided that I am a desirable friend. He has shown me
+his small properties--his pencil, and his boats that he makes out of a
+piece of wood with wing-feathers for sails and a piece of tin, stuck
+into the bottom, for centre-keel;--has told me what standard he is in
+at school; and one of the first things I hear whenever he comes into
+the house, is: "Mam! Wher's Mister Ronals?"
+
+[Sidenote: _JIMMY OUT TO TEA_]
+
+To-day, on my way to the Tuckers' to tea, I passed Jimmy's school. The
+boys were just let loose. Jimmy left a yelling group of them to come
+along with me. Nearby the Tuckers' gate, I told him where I was going,
+and said _Good-bye_. Jimmy fell behind. But whilst we were at tea, I
+repeatedly saw a white head sneaking round the laurels outside the
+window, and blue eyes peeping. Miss Tucker had him in; whereupon,
+rather shyly, with hands horribly grubby from the school slates, Jimmy
+ate much bread and butter and many cakelets, and ended up by tucking
+three apples into his blouse. He came home very pleased indeed with
+himself.
+
+Tony was almost angry. "However come'd 'ee, Missis, to let 'em go out
+to a gen'leman's to tay in thic mess?"
+
+"Stupid! How cude I help o'it?"
+
+"What did 'ee think o'it, Jimmy?"
+
+"The lady gie'd I dree apples!"
+
+Tony, though shocked, was also pleased; Jimmy delighted. Every now and
+then he draws himself up with a "Coo'h! I been out to tay wi' Mister
+Ronals!"
+
+They have a strange way, these children, of placing their hands on one,
+smiling up into one's face, and saying nothing. It has the effect of
+making one feel their separate, distinct personalities, and,
+additionally, of making one feel rather proud of the approbation of
+those small personages who think so much and divulge so little.
+
+
+6
+
+There has been no fishing. Either the sea has been too rough to ride to
+a slingstone[1] for blinn and conger, or else too calm, so that the
+mackerel hookers[2] could not sail out and therefore no fresh bait was
+to be had. It is quite useless to fish for conger with stale bait. Tony
+tells me that I ought to be here in a month's time, when he will have
+fewer pleasure parties to attend to, and will go out for mackerel,
+rowing if he cannot sail. He says there will _have_ to be a good
+September hooking season, because, though the summer has been fair, the
+fisherfolk have not succeeded in putting by enough money to last out
+the winter, should the herrings fail to come into the bay, as they have
+failed the last few years. I should like to _work_ at the mackerel
+hooking with him. Indeed, although I am looking forward to a glorious
+tramp across Dartmoor, yet I am more than half sorry that I have a room
+bespoken at Prince Town for the day after to-morrow.
+
+      [1] A heavy stone used instead of an anchor over rocks, among
+      which an anchor might get stuck and lost.
+
+      [2] After the end of July, the mackerel are mostly caught not in
+      nets, but by trailing a line behind a sailing boat.
+
+[Sidenote: _AN INOPPORTUNE REMARK_]
+
+Putting aside one or two things that are unpleasant--a few
+disagreeables resolutely faced--it is wonderful how rapidly one feels
+at home here. The welcome, the goodfellowship, is so satisfying. This
+morning, the visitor from the hotel, who has Mrs Widger's front
+room, so far presumed on the fact that we were educated men among
+uneducated--both gen'lemen, Tony would say--as to remark flippantly
+though not ungenially, "The Widgers are not bad sorts, are they? I
+say, what a mouth Mrs Widger's got!"
+
+Mrs Widger has a noticeably wide mouth; I know that perfectly well; but
+I can hardly say how indignant I felt at his light remark; how
+insulted; as if he had spoken slightingly of someone belonging to me.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+                                                       PRINCE TOWN,
+                                                          _August_.
+
+
+1
+
+When I took leave of the Widgers, there was the question of payment for
+my board and lodging. We were just finishing breakfast; the children
+had been driven out, Mrs Widger was resting awhile, and the table, the
+whole kitchen, was in extreme disorder.
+
+I asked Mrs Widger what I owed, and, as I had expected, she replied
+only: "What you'm minded to pay."
+
+"Three and six a day," I suggested.
+
+"Not so much as that," said Mrs Widger. "'Tisn't like as if us could du
+for 'ee like a proper lodging house."
+
+"Don' 'ee think, Missis," said Tony, "as we might ask 'en jest to make
+hisself welcome."
+
+It was out of the question, of course. The mackerel season has been so
+bad. Mrs Widger shot at Tony a look he failed to see. Otherwise, she
+did not let herself appear to have heard him.
+
+The discussion hung.
+
+"Say three shillings, then," I suggested again.
+
+"That 'll du," returned Mrs Widger, allowing nothing of the last few
+minutes' brain-work to show itself in her voice.
+
+[Sidenote: _HOTEL LIFE_]
+
+Mrs Widger knows what it is to have to keep house and feed several
+hungry children on earnings which vary from fairly large sums (sums
+whose very largeness calls for immediate spending) to nothing at all
+for weeks together.
+
+As I was setting out, Jimmy said to his mother: "Don' 'ee let Mister
+Ronals go, Mam 'Idger." He followed me to the end of the Gut; would
+have come farther had I not sent him back. That, and Tony's desire to
+make me welcome, brightened the bright South Devon sunshine. I kept
+within sight of the sea as long as possible. The little sailing boats
+on it looked so nimble. I have a leaning to go back, a sort of
+hunger....
+
+
+2
+
+[Sidenote: _DAWDLING v. WALKING_]
+
+I don't think I can remain here. To-morrow I shall move on, and tramp
+around the county back to Seacombe. The Moor is as splendid as ever,
+but this hotel life, following so soon on the life of Under Town....
+Though the good, well-cooked food, neither so greasy nor so starchy as
+Mrs Widger's, is an agreeable change, I sit at the table d'hôte and
+rage within. I am compelled to hear a conversation that irritates me
+almost beyond amusement at it. These people here are on holiday. Most
+of them, by their talk, were never on anything else. They chirp in
+lively or bored fashion, as the case may be, of the things that don't
+matter, of the ornamentations, the superfluities and the relaxations of
+life. At Tony Widger's they discuss--and much more merrily--the things
+that do matter; the means of life itself. Here, they say: "Is the table
+d'hôte as good as it might be? Is the society what it might be? Is it
+not a pity that there is no char-à-banc or a motor service to Cranmere
+Pool and Yes Tor?" There, the equivalent question is: "Shall us hae
+money to go through the winter? Shall us hae bread and scrape to eat?"
+Here, a man wonders if in the strong moorland air some slight
+non-incapacitating ailment will leave him: illness is inconvenient and
+disappointing, but not ruinous. There, Tony wonders if the exposure and
+continual boat-hauling are not taking too much out of him; if he is not
+ageing before his time; if he will not be past earning before the
+younger children are off his hands. Here, they laugh at trifles,
+keeping what is serious behind a veil of conventional manners, lest,
+appearing in broad daylight, it should damp their spirits. There, they
+laugh too, and at countless trifles; but also courageously, in the face
+of fate itself. By daring Nemesis, they partially disarm her. With a
+laugh and a jest--no matter if it be a raucous laugh and a coarse
+jest--they assert: "What will be, will be; us can't but du our best,
+for 'tis the way o'it." Here, they skate over a Dead Sea upon the ice
+of convention; but there, they swim in the salted waters, swallow great
+gulps, and nevertheless strike out manfully, knowing no more than
+anyone else exactly where the shore lies, yet possessing, I think, an
+instinct of direction. Here, comfort is at stake: there, existence.
+Coming here is like passing from a birth and death chamber into a
+theatre, where, if the actors have lives of their own, apart from
+mummery, it is their business not to show them. It is like watching a
+game from the grand stand, instead of playing it; betting on a race
+instead of running it. The transition hither is hard to make. Retired
+athletes, we know, suffer from fatty degeneration of the heart; retired
+men of affairs decay. I have walked lately at five miles an hour with
+the Widgers, and I do not relish dawdling at the rate of two with these
+people here. Better risk hell for heaven than lounge about paradise for
+ever.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+                                              UNDER TOWN, SEACOMBE,
+                                                       _September_.
+
+
+1
+
+A fine tramp from Totnes--and such a welcome back! Jimmy met me
+three-quarters of a mile up the road, very much farther than he usually
+strays from the beach. "I thought as yu was coming this way 'bout now,
+Mister Ronals. Dad's been out hooking an' catched five dozen mackerel
+before breakfast. Mam's sick. I be coming out wiv yu t'morrow morning.
+Dad couldn't go out after breakfast, 'cause it come'd on to blow. I've
+'schanged my pencil, what yu give'd me, for a knife wi' two blades." So
+anxious was he to take me in house that he scarcely allowed me time to
+go down to the Front and look at the sea and at the boats lying among a
+litter of nets and gear the length of the sunny beach.
+
+Mrs Widger hastened to bring out the familiar big enamelled teapot,
+flung the cloth over the table and began to cut bread and butter.
+"Coo'h! tay!" exclaimed Jimmy. "That's early, 'cause yu be come, Mister
+Ronals."
+
+"Be yu glad Mr Ronals 's come back?" his mother asked.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE CHILDREN_]
+
+"Iss...."
+
+"What for?" I asked jocularly.
+
+"'Cause yu gives us bananas--an' pennies sometimes."
+
+"'Sthat all yu'm glad for?" said Mrs Widger. "Pennies an' bananas?"
+
+"No vear!" said Jimmy; and he meant it.
+
+All the while, Tommy (Jimmy's younger brother, about five years old)
+was sitting up to table, looking at the jam-jar with one eye and at me
+with the other. He squints most comically, and is a more self-contained
+young person than Jimmy. Four of the children are at home; Bessie,
+Mabel, Jimmy and Tommy; George and the eldest girl are away. Bessie and
+Mabel, too, are out the greater part of the day, either at school, or
+else helping their aunts, or minding babies (poor little devils!), or
+running errands for the many relatives who live hereabout. Both of them
+are more featureless, show less of the family likeness, than the boys.
+One cannot so easily forecast their grown-up appearance. At times,
+during the day, they come in house with a rush, but say little, except
+to blurt out some (usually inaccurate) piece of news, or to tell their
+step-mother that: "Thic Jimmy's out to baych--I see'd 'en--playin' wi'
+some boys, an' he's got his boots an' stockings so wet as...."
+
+"Jest let 'en show his face in here! _He_ shan't hae no tea! He shall
+go straight to bed!" shouts Mrs Widger, confident that hunger will
+eventually drive Jimmy into her clutches.
+
+The two girls, in fact, do not seem to enter so fully as the boys into
+the life of the household, though they are always very ready to take up
+the responsibility of keeping the boys in order.
+
+"Jimmy! Tommy--there! Mother, look at thic Jimmy! Mother, Tommy's
+fingering they caakes!"
+
+"I'll gie thee such a one in a minute! Let 'lone.... Ther thee a't,
+Mabel, doin' jest the same, 's if a gert maid like yu didn't ought to
+know better."
+
+"Did 'ee ever hear the like o'it?" asks Tony. "Such a buzz! Shut up,
+will 'ee, or _I'll_ gie thee summut to buzz for! Wher's thic stick?"
+
+The children merely laugh at him.
+
+
+2
+
+[Sidenote: _TONY'S WEDDING_]
+
+At supper to-night, Tony was talking about his second wedding and about
+his children, who, dead and alive, number twelve. "Iss, 'tis a round
+dozen, though I'd never ha' thought it," he said reckoning them up on
+his fingers. "Ther be six living an' four up to the cementry, an' two
+missing, like, what nobody didn' know nort about, did they, Annie?
+Janie--that's my first wife, afore this one,--her losted three boys
+when they was two year an' ten months old, an' one year an' seven
+months, an' nine months old. An' her died herself when Mabel here was
+six months old, didn' 'er, Annie? An' yu've a-losted Rosie, an' the
+ones what never appeared in public. Our last baby, after Tommy, wer two
+boys, twinses. One wer like George an' one like Tommy most; one wer my
+child an' t'other wer yours, Annie. Six on 'em dead! Aye, Tony've a
+see'd some trouble, I can tell 'ee, an' he ain't so old as what some on
+'em be for their age, now, thru it all. But it du make a man's head
+turn like."
+
+Mrs Widger's gaze at him while he talked about the dead children was
+wonderful to see--wide-eyed, soft, unflinching--wifely and motherly at
+once.
+
+"John," Tony continued, speaking of his youngest brother who has only
+two children, "John du say as a man what's got seven or eight childern
+be better off than a man what's got on'y two, like he, 'cause he don't
+spend so much on 'em. 'Tis rot, I say! Certainly, he du spend so much
+on each o' his as us du on two o' ours p'raps; but I reckon a hundred
+pounds has to be wrenched an' hauled out o' these yer ol' rheumaticy
+arms o' mine for each child as us rears up."
+
+"Yes--'t has--gude that," said Mrs Widger.
+
+"'Tisn' that I don' du it willingly. I be willing enough. But it du
+maake a man du more'n he'd hae to du otherwise, an' it wears 'en out
+afore his time. Tony's an ol' man now, almost, after the rate, though
+he bain't but forty or thereabout, an' s'pose us has six or a dozen
+more come along, Annie...."
+
+"Gude Lord! 'Twon't be so bad as that, for sure. An' if 'tis, can't be
+helped. Us must make shift wi' 'em."
+
+Then they went on to talk about their wedding. Best remembered,
+apparently, are the _hot_ wedding breakfast (an innovation then in
+these parts), the Honiton lace that Mrs Widger's mother made her, and
+the late arrival home from the village where they were married--a trick
+which procured them quietness, whilst depriving the people in the
+Square of an excitement they had stayed up half the night to witness.
+"When us come'd home, 'twas all so dark and quiet as a dead plaace, an'
+the chil'ern asleep upstairs, an' all," said Tony.
+
+"Yes, 'twer," Mrs Widger broke in, her eyes brightening at the
+recollection of the successful trick. "But 'twer queer, like, wi' the
+childern asleep upstairs what wer to be mine, an' wasn't. I did wonder
+to meself what I wer starting on. Howsbe-ever I wer fair maazed all
+thic day. _I_ wasn' ready when Tony drove out to where us lived, not
+I."
+
+"No-o-o! Her had her sleeves tucked up like 's if her 'adn't finished
+her housework. Her wern't dressed nor nothin' to ree-ceive me."
+
+"I didn' know what I wer doing all thic day."
+
+[Sidenote: _LOVE-PLAY_]
+
+"An' the parson, _I_ had to pay for he, an' he give'd the money back to
+she 'cause her wer a nice li'I thing--bit skinny though. 'Twer a maazed
+muddle like. _I_ ought to ha' had thic money be rights."
+
+"G'out! But I did the ol' parson up here. Us didn' hae no banns put up
+to Seacombe. I told the clergyman to our home that Tony'd been livin'
+there dree days, or dree weeks, or whatever 'twas, an' _he_ didn' know
+no better. 'Twon't be the first lie I've told, says I to meself n'eet
+[nor yet] the last. I saved thee thic money, Tony."
+
+"Ah, yu'm a saving dear, ben' 'ee. Spends all my money."
+
+"Well for yu! I should like to know what yu'd do wi' it if yu hadn't
+had me to lay it out for 'ee."
+
+Tony did not wish to question that. The recollection of the wedding had
+put him in high spirits. He got up from his second supper (so long as
+food remains on the table he takes successive meals with intervals for
+conversation between them), and pirouetted round the table singing,
+
+    "Sweet Ev-eli-na, sweet Ev-eli-na!
+    My lo-ove for yu-u
+    Shall nev-ver, never die...."
+
+He dragged Mrs Widger out of her chair, whisked her across the room.
+"There!" he said, setting her down flop. "'En't her a perty li'I dear!"
+
+Once again, after another little supper, he got up and held Mrs Widger
+firmly by the chin, she kicking out at his shins the while. "Did 'ee
+ever see the like o'it? Eh? Fancy ol' Tony marryin' thic! Wouldn' 'ee
+like a kiss o'it? I du dearly. Don' I, Missis?"
+
+"G'out!" says Mrs Widger, speaking furiously, but smiling affectionately.
+"G'out, you fule! Yu'm mazed!"
+
+Tony returned to his third supper quite seriously, only remarking: "I
+daresay yu thinks Tony a funny ol' fule, don' 'ee?"
+
+[Sidenote: _BIRTH IN THE SQUARE_]
+
+That, I did not. Indeed, I begin to think them peculiarly wise. There
+is the spontaneity of animals about their play, and a good deal of the
+unembarassed movements of animals--with something very human
+superadded. One reads often enough about the love-light in the eyes of
+lovers, and sometimes one catches sight of it. Either frank ridicule,
+or else great reverence, is the mood for witnessing so delicate and
+strong, so racial a thing. Yet this love-light, seen in the eyes of a
+man and wife who have been married ten years, and have settled down
+long ago to the humdrum of married life, seems to me a far finer
+manifestation of the hither mysteries, a far greater triumph. What
+freshness, what perpetual rejuvenation they must possess! The more one
+regards such a thing, the more magnificent and far-reaching it appears.
+No philosophical bulwark against trouble can compare with it. Such love
+ceases to be a matter for novels and selected moments and certain lusty
+ages; ceases to be exceptional. It is the greatest of those very great
+things, the commonplaces. Tony tells me that when he comes in at night,
+cold from fishing, Mrs Widger always turns over to the other side of
+the bed, leaving him a warm place to creep into. Mrs Widger says that
+no matter what time Tony comes in or gets up, he never fails to make,
+and take her up, a cup o' tay. So does their love direct the prosaic
+details of living in one house together. I do not think I am wrong in
+fancying that it percolates right down through the household, and even
+contributes to the restfulness I feel here, spite of unorderly children
+and the strident voices. "Yu dang'd ol' fule!" can mean so much. Here
+it appears to be an expression of almost limitless confidence.
+
+Mrs Widger has put me this time into the front bedroom, which overlooks
+the Square and has, through the Gut, a narrow view of the sea.
+
+Tony's sister, who lives almost next door, is giving birth to a child
+this evening. I can see the light in her window--a brighter light than
+usual,--and the shadows passing across the yellow blind. Many other
+eyes are turned towards the window. There is a subdued chatter in the
+Square.
+
+
+3
+
+Little did I foresee what sleeping in the front bedroom means. Tony's
+sister gave birth to a boy about ten o'clock. On hearing that
+everything was as it should be, I went to bed, but, alack! not to
+sleep. For the subdued chatter grew into an uproar which continued till
+fully midnight. All the women in the neighbourhood seemed to have come
+this way; and they meg-megged, and they laughed, and when their
+children awoke they shouted up at the windows from outside. I heard
+snatches of childbearing adventures, astonishing yarns, interspersed
+with hard commonsense, not to say cynicism--the cynicism of people who
+cannot afford to embroider much the bare facts of existence or to turn
+their attention far from the necessities of life. "Her'll be weak," one
+woman said, "an' for a long time--never so strong as her was before.
+'Tis always worse after each one you has, 'cepting the first, which is
+worst of all, I say. But there, her must take it as it comes...."
+
+Sundry other bits of good practical philosophy I perforce listened to;
+and at last, when everybody had turned in (I imagined their pleasant
+lightheadedness as they snuggled under the bedclothes in the stuffy
+cottage rooms--the witticisms and echoes of laughter that were running
+through their heads); when, I say, everybody had turned in, an offended
+dog in the hotel yard began to howl.
+
+If it were not that the window of the back bedroom is over the
+scullery, the ash-heap and the main drain, I would ask to move back
+there.
+
+In Under Town a birth makes the stir that is due to such a stupendous
+event.
+
+
+4
+
+[Sidenote: _THE KITCHEN_]
+
+The Widger's kitchen is an extraordinary room--fit shrine for that
+household symbol, the big enamelled tin teapot. At the NW. corner is
+the door to the scullery and to the small walled-in garden which
+contains--in order of importance--flotsam and jetsam for firewood, old
+masts, spars and rudders, and some weedy, grub-eaten vegetables. At the
+top of the garden is a tumble-down cat-haunted linhay, crammed to its
+leaky roof with fishing gear. No doubt it is the presence everywhere of
+boat and fishing gear which gives such a singular unity to the whole
+place.
+
+The kitchen is not a very light room: its low small-paned window is in
+the N. wall. Then, going round the room, the courting chair stands in
+the NE. corner, below some shelves laden with fancy china and
+souvenirs--and tackle. The kitchener, which opens out into quite a
+comforting fireplace, is let into the E. wall, and close beside it is
+the provision cupboard, so situated that the cockroaches, having ample
+food and warmth, shall wax fat and multiply. Next, behind a low dirty
+door in the S. wall, is the coalhole, then the high dresser, and then
+the door to the narrow front passage, beneath the ceiling of which are
+lodged masts, spars and sails. The W. wall of the kitchen is decorated
+with Tony's Oddfellow 'cistificate,' with old almanacs and with a
+number of small pictures, all more or less askew.
+
+There is an abundance of chairs, most of them with an old cushion on
+the seat, all of them more or less broken by the children's racket.
+Over the pictures on the warm W. wall--against which, on the other
+side, the neighbour's kitchener stands--is a line of clean
+underclothing, hung there to air. The dresser is littered with fishing
+lines as well as with dry provisions and its proper complement of odd
+pieces of china. Beneath the table and each of the larger chairs are
+boots and slippers in various stages of polish or decay. Every jug not
+in daily use, every pot and vase, and half the many drawers, contain
+lines, copper nails, sail-thimbles and needles, spare blocks and
+pulleys, rope ends and twine. But most characteristic of the kitchen
+(the household teapot excepted) are the navy-blue garments and jerseys,
+drying along the line and flung over chairs, together with innumerable
+photographs of Tony and all his kin, the greater number of them in
+seafaring rig.
+
+Specially do I like the bluejacket photographs; magnificent men, some
+of them, though one strong fellow looks more than comical, seated amid
+the photographer's rustic properties with a wreath of artificial fern
+leaves around him and a broadly smiling Jolly-Jack-Tar face protruding
+from the foliage. Some battleships, pitching and tossing in fearful
+photographers' gales[3] and one or two framed memorial cards complete
+the kitchen picture gallery.
+
+      [3] Composite pictures apparently; made from a photograph of a
+      ship and of a bad painting of a hurricane.
+
+It is a place of many smells which, however, form a not disagreeable
+blend.
+
+An untidy room--yes. An undignified room--no. Kitchen; scullery (the
+scullery proper is cramped and its damp floor bad for the feet); eating
+room; sitting room; reception room; storeroom; treasure-house; and at
+times a wash-house,--it is an epitome of the household's activities and
+a reflexion of the family's world-wide seafaring. Devonshire is the sea
+county--at every port the Devonian dialect. It is probably the pictures
+and reminders of the broad world which, by contrast, make Mrs Tony's
+kitchen so very homely.
+
+
+5
+
+[Sidenote: _A DUTCH AUCTION_]
+
+Almost every evening, just now, Mrs Widger goes off to a Dutch auction
+of hardware and trinkets at the Market House. She usually brings home
+some small purchase, worth about half the money she has paid; but if
+she were to go to an entertainment at the Seacombe Hall she would be
+not nearly so well amused as by the auctioneer and the other
+housewives, and at the end of the evening she would have nothing
+whatever to show for her money. Besides, the children would never go
+off to bed quietly if they imagined that she was going to a real
+entertainment. As she did not return very early last night, Tony and I
+got our own supper--bread, cheese, a great deal of Worcester sauce, and
+a pint of mother-in-law [stout and bitter] from the Alexandra. Then we
+drew up to the fire and smoked. John, healthy and powerful fellow, had
+been arguing in the daytime on the beach, that if a youth cannot do a
+man's work at seventeen, he never will. Tony disagreed. Twenty-five to
+thirty-five, he says, is a man's prime for strength and endurance
+together. Nevertheless, he is sure that he often did more than a man's
+work long before he was seventeen, which led him to talk about his
+boyhood, when Granfer and Gran Widger had frequently not enough food in
+the house for their many children to eat. "Us had to rough it when I
+wer a boy, I can tell 'ee," says Tony. "'Twer often bread an' a scraape
+o' fat an' _Get 'long out o'it_!"
+
+[Sidenote: _TONY'S DUTIES_]
+
+At nine years old, Tony was put with old Cloade, the grocer, now dead;
+and by the time he was twelve, he was earning four shillings a week,
+not a penny of which he ever saw or had as 'spending money'; for his
+mother used to go to the shop every Saturday night and lay out all poor
+Tony's wages in groceries. The only pocket-money he ever received was a
+copper or two 'thrown back' from what he could earn by going to sea for
+mackerel early enough to return to work by half-past six in the
+morning. Besides running errands, he had to clean boots and knives and
+to scrub out and tidy up the bar, which in those days was attached to
+every Devon grocery. Then he could go home to breakfast. And if old
+Cloade was going up on land, shooting, Tony had to get up and wake him
+at half-past three and to cork bottles or something of that sort before
+the master started out for his day's sport. And again, if Tony had
+fallen foul of any of the shop assistants during the day, had cheeked
+them perhaps, or stayed overlong at meals, then, waiting till closing
+time at eight or nine in the evening, they would send him a couple of
+miles inland, to the top of the hills, with a late parcel of groceries.
+His possible working day was from 3.30 a.m. to 10.0 p.m.
+
+The chief part of his work, when he was not cleaning up or running
+errands, was the sorting of fruit and the cracking of sugar. Every nail
+of his fingers has come off more than once on account of the damage
+done them by the sugar-cracker. Better than any national event, he
+recollects the introduction of cube sugar. "When they tubs o'
+ready-cracked sugar fust come'd down to Seacombe, 'twer thought a gert
+thing--an' so 'twas."
+
+Nearly every year an attack of (sub-acute?) rheumatic fever gave him a
+painful holiday, during which he crawled about the crowded cottage at
+home on his hands and knees. The one advantage of his irregularly long
+hours was that, if work were slack, he could linger over his meals. It
+was the assistants who kept a sharp eye on his movements. Them he
+hated--and cheeked. "The more I done, the worse they treated me. An' as
+I grow'd up an' did often enough more'n a man's work, so I got to know
+it. One day I stayed home more'n an hour to breakfast, an' one on 'em
+asted me wer I'd a-been, an' I said as I'd had me half-hour to
+breakfast, an' he said as I'd had an hour an' a half, an' I told 'en
+'twern't no business o' his an' dared 'en to so much as touch me or I'd
+knock his head in, which I could easily ha' done--an' there wer the
+master standin' by! 'Fore I knowed, he gie'd me one under one yer wi'
+one hand, an' one under t'other yer wi' t'other hand; knocked me half
+silly; an' said if he had any more o' my chake he'd send me going
+thereupon. 'Iss, I said, 'an I _will_ go, an' if I can't pick up a
+livin' on the baych wi' fishin' (I 'adn't no boats then, n'eet for
+years a'ter), an' if I couldn't pick up a livin' wi' fishin', I'd go to
+sea. An' I took an' lef the shop, an' went wi'out me pay due nor nort
+further about it.
+
+"Well, I should think as I stayed away two or dree days, saying as, if
+I couldn' live _by_ the sea, I'd go off _tu_ sea. By'm-by, ol' Mr
+Cloade--I could al'ys get on all right wi' he hisself--'twer they
+assistants.... Mr Cloade come'd down to baych an' said as he'd rise me
+wages be two shillings, from four shillings to six a week. So I went
+back. But 'twern't for long, for I wer turned seventeen then, an'
+strong, an' I knowed that six shillin's a week, every penny o' which
+mother laid out in groceries--p'raps givin' me dreepence for meself
+latterly--that wern't no wage for me doing more'n a man's work, early
+an' laate, at everybody's beck an' call. 'Twern't vitty.
+
+[Sidenote: _BRUISED ORANGES AND BRUISES_]
+
+"It come'd soon a'ter.... I wer sorting oranges, an' one o' the
+assistants called like they al'ays did: 'Widger, Widger! _Widger!_
+Yer, Widger!' 'Twer al'ays, 'Widger! Widger!' in thic show--blarsted
+row! 'I wants 'ee to take thees yer parcel to Mr Brindley-Botton's
+(what used to live to Southview House) in time for lunch. Hurry up!'"
+
+Tony, in short, put a couple of the bruised oranges into his pocket,
+ran off, and delivered his parcel at Southview House. On the way back,
+he ate one of the oranges and, boyishly, threw the peel about outside
+Mr Brindley-Botton's side gate. He heard someone shouting to him
+and--but without turning his head--he shouted "Hell about it!" airily
+back. Then, as it was the dinner hour, he loitered on the Green Patch
+to play marbles with some other lads, and to share the second bruised
+orange. On returning to Cloade's:
+
+"Whu did I see but Mr Brindley-Botton's coachman wi' a little packet in
+white paper. 'Twas thic orange peel, all neatly done up, an' a li'I
+note saying as I'd a-been cheeky to him, which I hadn't, not knowingly.
+Mr Cloade, he called me into his little office, asted me what I'd been
+doing, where I went, an' where I got the oranges.
+
+"'Bought 'em,' says I.
+
+"'Twas a lie, an' I hadn't no need for to tell it, seeing I was al'ays
+free to take a bruised orange or two when I wer sorting of 'em. On'y I
+wer frightened. 'Where did you get them?' he asked.
+
+"'Up to Mrs Ashford's for a penny,' says I.
+
+"'Did you?'
+
+"'Yes, sir,' says I.
+
+"'Are you telling me a lie? I can find out, mind.'
+
+"'No, sir,' I said.
+
+"'Be you sure you ain't telling of a lie?'
+
+"Then I broked down, an' I said they was bruised ones what I'd a-took.
+Father, he wer working to Mr Cloade's then, fishing being bad, an' the
+master called he. _He_ walloped me--walloped me with a rope's end. An'
+I swore as I'd never go back no more, an' I didn't. Every time Father
+tried to make me, I up an' said as I'd go to sea.
+
+[Sidenote: _OUT DRIFTING ALL NIGHT_]
+
+"Ay! for all I'm a man now, I 'ouldn't like to work like I did
+then--more'n a man's work an' less'n a boy's pay, an' hardly a penny
+for meself. I tells John _he_ don't know what 'tis to work like I did
+then. _I_'ouldn't du it no more."
+
+But, with his father's boat, Tony did work far harder--hooking mackerel
+at dawn, in with a catch and out to sea again, or up on land hawking
+them round; out drifting all night; crabbing, lobster-potting,
+shrimping,[4] wrinkling,[5] or taking out frights,[6] wet and dry,
+rough and calm, day and night. "Aye, an' I be suffering from it now.
+Thees yer bellyache what thins me every summer an' wears a fellow out,
+don't come from nothing but tearing about then. I wer al'ays on the
+tear, day an' night, in from sea to meals an' out again 'fore I'd had
+time to bolt down two mouthfuls. Often I wer so tired that Father'd hae
+to call me a dozen times afore I cude wake up, an' then I'd cry, _cry_,
+if I wer ten minutes laate to work--when I had summut to du on land,
+that was. Half the day I wer more asleep than awake, wi' bein' out
+fishing all night. But I didn' let 'em see it. Not I! Rather'n that,
+I'd go up to the closet an' catch off there for five minutes, before
+they shude see I wern't fit to du me work. An' I never had nort o' me
+own for years, for all I done. Whether I earned two pound, or thirty
+shillings, or nothing at all, I never had so much as a penny for
+pocket-money, to call me own. I had to take it all in house--aye! an'
+tips too, when I got 'em. Father, he wern't doing much then, an' ther
+were seven younger'n me. That's where my earnings went. An' me, as did
+the work, was wearing Mother's boots an' Father's jacket."
+
+      [4] Prawning.
+
+      [5] Periwinkle gathering.
+
+      [6] Freights, _i.e._ pleasure parties.
+
+When Tony was indisputably grown up, one half of what he earned went,
+according to custom, to the boat-owner, in this case his father,
+frequently had be thu to pay for repairs and new gear. That went on for
+years after he was married--'hauling an' rowing an' slaving an' pulling
+me guts out wi't!'--until, in fact, the present Mrs Widger insisted on
+his buying boats of his own.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE DEAD NOT WHOLLY SO_]
+
+Our talk shifted to Tony's first wife, who died (and Tony almost died
+too) as the result of the landlord's taking up the drains, and leaving
+them open, in the height of a hot summer. Tony told me about her people
+and her native place, a fishing village along the coast. He showed me
+photographs of her, and a framed, pathetically ugly, imitation cameo
+memorial, which is getting very dirty now. I knew he loved her very
+much. He nearly went out of his mind when she died, leaving him with
+four young children. The untidy little kitchen, with its bright fire,
+its deep shadows and its white clothes hung along the line; Tony's
+drooping figure, bent over the hearth in an old blue guernsey: the
+contrasting redness of his face, and the beam of light from a cracked
+lamp-shade falling across his wet, memory-stuck blue eyes.... The
+kitchen seemed full of the presence of the long-dead woman whom Tony
+was still grieving for in some underpart of his mind. "Iss, her was a
+nice woman," he said, "a gude wife to me; a gude wife: I hadn't no
+complaint to make against she."
+
+The one shabby sentence hit into me all his sorrow, that which remains
+and that which has sunk into time.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The Mrs Widger that is, returned from the Dutch auction with an
+elaborate badly-plated cruet. "Al'ays using up my saxpinces what I has
+to slave for," said Tony.
+
+"G'out! 'Tis jest what us wants."
+
+"You won't never use it."
+
+"We'll hae it out on thy birthday--there! Will that zatisfy thee?"
+
+"Not afore then? I wer born at the end o' the year, an' that's why I
+al'ays gets lef' behind."
+
+"Not a day before thy birthday! What'll yu be saying if I buys sauces
+to put in all they bottles?"
+
+"Cut glass, is it?"
+
+"No! What d'yu think?"
+
+"What a woman 'tis! Gie yer Tony a kiss then."
+
+"G'out yu fule!"
+
+The wise fool took a kiss. We had a second supper and hot grog. We were
+merry. But when I said _Good night_, I saw in Tony's eyes a recognition
+that I had understood (so he felt, I think) some part of what he
+seldom, if ever, brings up now to talk about.
+
+Only a yarn about a man's first wife.... If so, why did I go to bed
+feeling I had been privileged beyond the ordinary? Wives die every day;
+worn out, most of them. There came into my mind's eye with these
+thoughts a picture of the open sea; yet hardly a picture, for I was
+there in the midst of it. On the waves and low-lying clouds, and
+through the murk, was the glimmer of a light which, I felt, would make
+everything plain, did it but increase. For a moment it flickered
+up--and there, over the stormy sea, I saw death as a kindly illusion. I
+do not understand the wherefore of my little vision, nor why it made my
+heart give one curious great thump....
+
+A cats' courtship beneath my window broke it off.
+
+
+6
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "MOONDAISY"_]
+
+Five or six years ago, when I was ill and left Seacombe, as I thought,
+for good, I did not relish selling the _Moondaisy_. I was too fond
+of her. So I gave her to the two men who had asked for the first and
+second refusals of her, and neither of whom possessed a small sailing
+boat. But I reckoned without those superficial beach jealousies which
+overlie the essential solidarity of the fishermen. Neither man used her
+much. Neither man looked after her. She was a bone of contention that
+each feared to gnaw. While the poor little craft lay on the beach, or
+in the gutter above the sea-wall, the mice ate holes into her old sail
+and her gear was distributed half-way over Under Town.
+
+Granfer, however, had in his cottage an old dinghy sail that fits the
+_Moondaisy_. Her yard and boom were in his linhay, the sheet and
+downhaul in Tony's. One oar, the tholepins, and the ballast bags have
+not yet been found. I bent on the sail, spliced the sheet to the boom;
+borrowed tholepins from Uncle Jake,[7] ballast bags and a mackerel line
+with a very rusty hook from Tony, an oar from John--and, at last, put
+to sea.
+
+      [7] Granfer's brother, Tony's uncle.
+
+The wind--westerly, off land--was too puffy for making the sheet fast.
+I held it with one hand and tried to fish with the other. In order not
+to stop the way of the boat and risk losing the lead on the sea-bottom,
+I wore her round to lew'ard, instead of tacking to wind'ard. A squall
+came down, the sail gybed quickly, and the boom slewed over with a
+jerk, just grazing the top of my head. Had that boom been a couple of
+inches lower, or my head an inch or two higher.... I should have been
+prevented from sailing the _Moondaisy_ home, pending recovery from
+a bashed skull. Everything aboard that was loose, myself included,
+scuttled down to lew'ard with a horrid rattle. A malicious little gush
+of clear green water, just flecked with foam, spurted in over the gun'l
+amidships. I wondered whether I could have swum far with a cracked
+skull: the _Moondaisy_'s iron drop-keel would have sunk her, of
+course. Why I was fool enough to wear the boat round so carelessly, I
+don't know.
+
+Anyhow, I wound up the mackerel line; my catch, nil. Such an occurrence
+makes one very respectful towards the fisherman who singlehanded can
+sail his boat and manage five mackerel lines at once--one on the thwart
+to lew'ard and one to wind'ard; a bobber on the mizzen halyard and two
+bobbers on poles projecting from the boat. He must keep his hands on
+five lines, the tiller and the sheet; his eyes on the boat's course,
+the sea, the weather and the luff of the sail. Probably I know rather
+more of the theory of sailing than he does; but, when a squall blackens
+the sea to wind'ard, whilst I am thinking whether to run into the wind
+or ease off the sheet; whilst by doing neither or both, I very nearly
+capsize, or else stop the boat's way and lose my mackerel leads on the
+bottom--he, almost without thinking, does precisely what is needful,
+and another mackerel is hooked long before I should have brought the
+boat up into the wind again.
+
+[Sidenote: _FISHERMEN'S SKILL_]
+
+The greatest charm of sailing lies in this: that it is the art of
+making a boat move by dodging, by taking advantage of, a score of
+possible dangers. Except when running before the wind, it is the
+capsizing-power of the wind which propels the boat. The fisherman is an
+artist none the less because his skill seems partly inborn; because he
+sails his boat airily and carelessly, yet grimly--for life and the
+bread and cheese of it. The 'poor fisherman' for whom appeals to
+charity are made, as if he were a hardworking, chance-fed, picturesque
+but ignorant and helpless creature, is more than a trader, more than a
+skilled labourer in a factory. To a peculiar extent he sells himself as
+well as his skill and his goods. He lives contingently on his own life.
+
+
+7
+
+All that day the wind out in the Channel was blowing fresh from the
+sou'west, as we could see by the blackness of the horizon and the
+saw-edged sea-line beyond the outer headlands. During the afternoon, a
+ground-sea crept into the bay, silently rolling in like an unbidden
+unannounced guest who will not name his business. And when, at the turn
+of the tide, the breeze in-shore also backed to the sou'west, a busy
+lop was superposed on the long heaving swell.[8] About half-past seven,
+the Widgers were gathered together near their boats.
+
+      [8] A _lop_ is a short choppy sea raised by the immediate action
+      of a breeze. A _swell_ consists of the long heaving waves which
+      follow, and sometimes precede, a storm. The diverse action of
+      different sorts of waves on a shingle beach is interesting. Short
+      seas (_i.e._ short from crest to crest), even when they are very
+      high, have not nearly the force or _run_ of a long, though much
+      lower ground-swell; that is they neither run so far up the beach
+      nor so greatly endanger the boats. All kinds of waves possess
+      more run at spring than at neap tides. A lop on a swell at spring
+      tide is therefore the most troublesome of all to the fishermen.
+
+"What time be it high tide?" asked Granfer. "'Bout ten, en' it?"
+
+"Had us better haul the boats up over?" said Tony. "Tides be dead, en't
+they?"
+
+"No-o-o," replied Uncle Jake. "They 'en making."
+
+"'Tis goin' to blow, I tell 'ee," said Granfer. "See how brassy the
+sun's going down. Swell coming in too. Boats up be boats safe."
+
+"Hould yer bloody row," said John. "What be talking 'bout? Plenty o'
+time to haul up if the sea makes."
+
+"All very well for yu," Tony protested, "living right up to Saltmeadow.
+If the sea urns up to the boats in the night yu won't be down to lend a
+hand, no, not wi' yer own boats. 'Tis us as lives to the beach what has
+to strain ourselves to bits hauling your boats up over so well as our
+own."
+
+"Let 'em bide, then!"
+
+"Looks dirty, I say," said Granfer. "Might jest so well haul up as bide
+here talking about it. _I_ shan't sleep till I knows the boats be all
+right."
+
+"Thee't better lie awake then. An't got no patience wi' making such a
+buzz afore you wants tu." With that, John shouldered his coat and
+strode homewards.
+
+[Sidenote: _JOHN WIDGER_]
+
+The rest of us pulled the boats up, John's included, till their stems
+touched the sea-wall, and we placed the two sailing boats, John's and
+Tony's, close beside the steps, handy for hauling up over if need
+should be.
+
+Tony and Granfer went in house. Uncle Jake watched them go with an
+ironical smile on his wrinkled old face. "Don't like the looks o' this
+yer lop on a ground-swell," he said. "There! Did 'ee see how thic sea
+licked the baych? Let one o' they lift yer boat.... My zenses! 'Tis all
+up wi' it, an' I should pick it up in bits, up 'long, for
+firewood.--Well, John's gone home along...."
+
+John is the youngest, handsomest and most powerfully built of the
+Widgers; the most independent, most brutal-tongued and most logical,
+though not, I fancy, the most perceptive. The inborn toughness, the
+family tendency to health and strength, which made fine men of the
+elder Widgers in spite of their youthful exposure and privations, has,
+in the case of John who underwent fewer hardships, resulted in the
+development, unimpeded, of a wonderful physique. "Never heard o' John
+being tired," says Uncle Jake.
+
+Premature toil did not bend him; what he is the others had it in them
+to be, and by their labour helped to make him. Because his spirit has
+never been so buffeted, let alone broken, by hard times, he is also the
+most self-reliant. And like the majority of lucky men, he takes fate's
+forbearance as his due and adds it to his own credit. Fair-haired,
+blue-eyed, his clean-shaven face deeply and clearly coloured; a
+combination of the Saxon bulldog type with the seafaring man's
+alertness; his heavy yet lissome frame admirably half-revealed by the
+simplicity of navy-blue guernsey and trousers,--it is one of the sights
+of Seacombe to see him walk the length of the Front with his two small
+boys. He lacks, however, the gift of expressing himself, except when he
+is angry--and then in a torrent of thrashing words. He communicates his
+good-will by smiling all over his face with a tinge of mockery in his
+eyes and the bend of his long neck; whether mockery at oneself or at
+things in general is not evident. (It is mainly, I think, by smiling at
+one another that we remain the very good friends we are.) In any
+discussion, his "Do as yu'm minded then!" is his signal for making
+others do as _he_ is minded. The advantages possessed by him--health,
+strength, clear-headedness, and good looks--he knows how to use, and
+that without scruple. He is never hustled by man or circumstance;
+seldom gives himself away; and seldom acknowledges an obligation. What
+one might reasonably expect him to do in return for help or even
+payment, he carelessly, deliberately, leaves undone, and performs
+instead some particularly nice action when it is least of all
+anticipated. His opinion is respected less because it is known, than
+because it isn't known, and by playing in the outer world with a crack
+football team he adds to his prestige here. "What du John say?" is
+often asked when it doesn't matter even what John thinks. Without
+gratitude for it, unconsciously perhaps, he exacts from others a sort
+of homage, which is certainly not rendered without protest. "There's
+more'n one real lady as John could ha' married if he'd a-been liked," I
+heard Granfer say over his beer one day. "The way they used to get he
+to take 'em out bathing in a boat.... Put 'en under the starn-sheets, I
+s'pose--he-he-he-he-he! But they real ladies du tire o' gen'lemen
+sometimes. Some on 'em had rather have a strong fellow like John. He
+married out o' the likes o' us, as 'twas. Her what he married used to
+eat wi' the gen'leman's family what her come'd yer with; sort o'
+companion-nurse her was."
+
+[Sidenote: _A NICE DISTINCTION_]
+
+Once, when the _Moondaisy_ was mine, John charged me sixpence for
+putting me ashore from the steamer, after he had been earning money
+with my boat that very same day. There is no meanness in his face, and
+I wondered who had taught him so to distinguish between the borrowing
+of a private boat and the use of a craft that was on the beach for
+hire--a perfectly sound distinction. Probably it was some
+commercial-minded lodger or beach-chatterer, from whom he picked up the
+opinion that nowadays, to get on, you must run with the hare and hunt
+with the hounds--a precept which he quotes with cynical gusto but
+carries out only so far as suits his feelings. He aims at being
+businesslike, but the businesslike side of his character is the more
+superficial. Pride will not allow him to boggle over bargains. "Take
+it, or leave it," is his way. Most up-to-date in what he does do, he is
+no pioneer, and follows a lead grudgingly when innovations are in
+question. Most progressive outwardly, he is the most conservative at
+heart. A reader of his daily paper, he speaks the broadest Devon of
+them all; scrupulously groomed after the modern way, and a smoker of
+cigarettes (he was laughed out of a pipe I've heard say), he still
+wears the old-fashioned seaman's high-heeled shoes. Tobacco is his
+obvious, his humane, weakness. What his other weaknesses are, I don't
+know. He strikes one as master of his fate, never yet wrecked, nor
+contemplating it. Did such a misfortune occur ... who knows what would
+happen? He is now, in his youth, so full of strength.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+About ten o'clock, Tony, who was snoozing in the courting chair (Mrs
+Widger had gone on to bed) woke up with a "How about they boats?" I
+went out to look.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE HIGH TIDE WAVES_]
+
+The sea was covered with that pallid darkness which comes over it when
+the moon is hidden behind low rain-clouds. Out of the darkness, the
+waves seemed to spring suddenly, without warning at one's very feet.
+Every now and then, when a swell and a lop came in together, their
+combined steady force and quick energy swept right up the beach,
+rattling the pebbles round the sterns of the boats. For the better part
+of an hour I waited. Then, after a sea had thrown some shingle right
+into a boat, I called Tony.
+
+"'Tis past high water, en' it?" he said sleepily.
+
+"Thee't better come out an' see for thyself!"
+
+He dragged himself up and out. "'Tis al'ys like thees yer wi' the likes
+o' us. 'Tis a life o'it!"
+
+"Aye," he said, "the say's goin' down now sure 'nuff. Better git in
+house again. Raining is it?"
+
+"God! Look out!"
+
+A sea lifted Tony's and John's sailing boats; was sweeping them down
+the beach. We rushed, one to each boat, and hung on. Another sea swept
+the pebbles from under our feet--it felt as if the solid earth were
+giving way.
+
+"Those was the high tide waves," said Tony. "If us hadn' a-come out
+both they boats 'ould ha' been losted. Yu've a-saved John his--all by
+chance. Aye! that's like 'tis wi' us, I tell thee. Yu never knows.--Be
+'ee going to bed now?"
+
+I stayed out a little while longer: the loss of boats means so much to
+men whose only capital they are. Just after Tony had gone in, the
+clouds parted and the moonlight burst with a sudden glory over the sea.
+In the moonglade, which reached from my feet to the far horizon, the
+waters heaved and curled, most silvery, as if they were alive. That was
+the wistful gentle sea from which, but a moment or two before, we had
+wrested back our property--that sea of little strivings within a large
+peace. I thought at the time that there was surely a God, and that as
+surely He was there. For which reason, I was glad, when I came in
+house, that Tony had gone on to bed.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+This morning John asked me: "Whu's been moving my boat?"
+
+"The sea, last night."
+
+"Oh...."
+
+"I'm going to make a salvage claim on your insurance company."
+
+"H'm?"
+
+"Happened to be out here and hung on, or else she'd have been swept
+down the beach."
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"That's it--while yu were snug."
+
+"Have 'ee got a cigarette on yu?--Match?--Thank yu."
+
+
+8
+
+[Sidenote: _MRS PINN_]
+
+When I came into the kitchen early last evening, there was an old woman
+sitting bolt upright in the courting chair. At least, I came to the
+conclusion that she really was old after a moment or two's
+watchfulness. Her flowered hat, her shape--though a little angular and
+stiff,--her gestures and her bright lively damson-coloured eyes were
+all youthful enough. But one could see that her inquiet hands, which
+were folded on her lap, had been worn by many a washing-day. Her skin,
+though wrinkled, was taut over the outstanding facial bones, as if the
+wrinkles might have opened out and have equalized the strain, had age
+not hardened them to brown cracks--and the tan of her complexion had
+old age's lack of clearness. As so often happens when the teeth remain
+good in spite of receding gums, her mouth was tightly stretched
+semicircular-wise around them, and the lips had become a long, very
+long, expressionless line, shaded into prominence, as in a drawing, by
+a multitude of lines up and down, from chin and nose;--a Simian jaw,
+remindful of the Descent of Man. All the accumulated hand-to-mouth
+wisdom of generations of peasantry seemed to lurk behind the old
+woman's quick eyes; to be defying one.
+
+I was introduced to her--Mrs Pinn, Mrs Widger's mother. She was bound
+to shake my proffered hand; she did it, half rising, with a comic
+mixture of respect and defiance; then sat back in the courting chair as
+if to intimate, 'I knows how to keep meself to meself, I du!'
+
+I went outdoors, leaving them to talk; helped Tony haul up the beach
+his lumpy fourteen-foot sailing boat, the _Cock Robin_, and returned
+with him to supper.
+
+"Hullo, Gran Pinn!" he roared. "Yu here! Didn' know I'd got a new mate
+for hauling up, did 'ee? Have her got 'ee yer drop o' stout eet? Us
+two'll take 'ee home if yu drinks tu much."
+
+"Oh yu...." screeched Mrs Pinn with facetious rage followed by a swift
+collapse into company manners again.
+
+"Thees yer be my mother-in-law, sir."
+
+"Mr Whats-his-name knaws that, an' I knaws yu got he staying with
+'ee--there!"
+
+"Well then, gie us some supper then."
+
+Mrs Pinn--'twas to be felt in the air--had been hearing all about me.
+Beside her glass of stout and ale, she looked a little less prim and
+defiant. But she was still on company manners. She sat delicately, on
+the extreme edge of a chair, by the side of, not facing, her plate of
+bread, cheese and pickles; approached them; mopped up, so to speak, a
+mouthful and a gulp; then receded into mere nodding propinquity. Her
+supper was a series of moppings-up. Me she kept much in her eye, and to
+my remarks ejaculated "Aw, my dear soul!" or "Did yu ever?" I said with
+feeble wit, in order to grease the conversation, that stout and bitter,
+being called _mother-in-law_, was just the thing for Mrs Pinn.
+
+"Aw, my dear life!" she exclaimed, taking a mouthy sip. "What chake to
+be sure!"
+
+It was Mrs Widger who, with a glint of amusement in her eyes, came
+tactfully to my rescue.
+
+[Sidenote: _MY NIGHTCAP_]
+
+About ten o'clock, Mrs Widger took down two glasses and the sugar
+basin, and set the conical broad-bottomed kettle further over the fire.
+Mrs Pinn glanced at the top shelf of the dresser where my whiskey
+bottle stands. Her bright eyes kept on returning to that spot. I should
+have liked to ask Mrs Pinn to take a glass, but knew I could not afford
+to let it be noised abroad that 'there's a young gen'leman to Tony
+Widger's very free with his whiskey.' I dared not make a precedent I
+should have to break; the breaking of which would give more
+disappointment than its non-creation. Equally well, I knew that it was
+no use going to bed without something to make me sleep.... I told Tony
+I would go out and look at the weather.
+
+"Yu must 'scuse me 'companying of 'ee 'cause I got me butes off. My
+veet _du_ ache!"
+
+On my return, the bright eyes were still travelling to and fro, from
+bottle to glasses. I yawned, Tony yawned noisily, Mrs Widger
+capaciously. Mrs Pinn was herself infected. "'Tis time I was home....
+Oh, Lor'!" she yawned.
+
+She went; and when I asked Tony to share my customary nightcap, it was
+with ill-hidden glee that he replied as usual: "Had us better tu?"
+
+His native politeness prevented him from saying anything, however, and
+Mrs Widger showed not a sign of having observed the little victory, so
+meanly necessary, so galling in every stage to the victor.
+
+Tony declares that he will really and truly start mackerel hooking
+to-morrow morning--"if 'tis vitty," and "if the drifters an't catched
+nort," and "if 'tis wuth it," and "if he du."
+
+
+9
+
+A creaking and shaking in the timbers of the old house, very early this
+morning, must have half awakened me; then there was a muffled rap on my
+door. "Be 'ee goin' to git up?"
+
+"Yes.... 'Course.... What time is it?"
+
+The only answer was a _pad-pad-pad_ down the stairs. I looked out over
+the bedclothes. The window, a grey patch barred with darker grey, was
+like a dim chilly ghost gazing at me from the opposite wall. By the
+saltiness of the damp air which blew across the room and by the grind
+of the shingle outside, I could tell that the wind was off sea. The sea
+itself was almost invisible--a swaying mistiness through which the
+white-horses rose and peeped at one, as if to say, "Come and share our
+frolic. Come and ride us."
+
+[Sidenote: _MACKEREL LINES_]
+
+Tony, sleepy and sheepish in the eyes, was pattering about the kitchen
+in his stockings (odd ones), his pants and his light check shirt. The
+fire was contrary. We scraped out ashes; poked in more wood and paper.
+Soon a gush of comfortable steam made the lid of the kettle dance. The
+big blue tin teapot was washed out, filled and set on the hob. The
+cupboards and front room were searched for cake. Tony went upstairs
+with a cup o' tay for the ol' doman and came down with a roll of
+biscuits. (Mrs Widger takes the biscuits to bed with her as maiden
+ladies take the plate basket, and for much the same reason.)
+
+Faint light was showing through the north window of the kitchen. "Coom
+on!" said Tony. "Time we was to sea." He refilled the kettle, hunted
+out an old pair of trousers, rammed himself into a faded guernsey and
+picked up three mackerel lines[9] from the dresser. He took some salted
+lasks from the brine-pot, blew out the lamp--and forth we went. After
+collecting together mast, sails and oars from where they were lying,
+strewn haphazard on the beach, we pushed and pulled the _Cock Robin_
+down to the water's edge, and filled up the ballast-bags with our
+hands, like irritable, hasty children playing at shingle-pies. "A li'l
+bit farther down. Look out! Jump in. Get hold the oars," commanded
+Tony. With a cussword or two (the oars had a horrid disposition to jump
+the thole-pins) we shoved and rowed off, shipping not more than a
+couple of buckets of water over the stern.
+
+      [9] The fishermen's line is very different from the tackle
+      makers' arrangements. It varies a little locally. At Seacombe,
+      the upper part consists of 2-3 fathoms of stoutish conger line,
+      to take the friction over the gunwale, and 5-6 fathoms of finer
+      line, to the end of which a conical 'sugarloaf' lead is attached
+      by a clove hitch, the short end being laid up around the standing
+      part for an inch or so and then finished off with the strong,
+      neat difficue (corruption of _difficult_?) knot. A swivel, or
+      better still simply an eyelet cut from an old boot, runs free,
+      just above the lead, between the clove hitch and difficue knot.
+      To the eyelet is attached the 'sid'--_i.e._, two or three fathoms
+      of fine snooding;--to the sid a length of gut on which half an
+      inch ofclay pipe-stem is threaded, and to the gut a rather large
+      hook. The bait is a 'lask,' or long three-cornered strip of skin,
+      cut from the tail of a mackerel. The older fishermen prefer a
+      round lead, cast in the egg-shell of a gull, because it runs
+      sweeter through the water, but with this form the fish's bite is
+      difficult to feel on account of the jerk having to be transmitted
+      through the heavy bulky piece of lead.
+
+      The lines are trailed astern of the boat as it sails up and down,
+      where the mackerel are believed to be. When well on the feed they
+      will bite, even at the pipe clay and bare hook, faster than they
+      can be hauled inboard. River anglers and even some sea fishers
+      are disposed to deny the amount of skill, alertness and knowledge
+      which go to catching the greatest possible number of fish while
+      they are up. It is often said that the mackerel allows itself to
+      be caught as easily by a beginner as by an old hand. One or two
+      mackerel may: mackerel don't. In hooking, as opposed to fishing
+      fine with a rod, the sporting element is supplied by fish, not
+      _a_ fish; by numbers in a given time, not bend and break. The
+      tackle brought to the sea by the superior angler, who thinks he
+      knows more than those who have hooked mackerel for generations,
+      is a wonder, delight, and irritation to professional fishermen:
+      it is constructed in such robust ignorance of the habits, and
+      manner of biting, of mackerel, and it ignores so obstinately the
+      conditions of the sport. Likewise the fish ignore _it_.
+
+[Sidenote: _DAWN AT SEA_]
+
+Tony scrambled aboard over the starboard bow, his trousers and boots
+dripping. "'Tis al'ays like that, putting off from thees yer damn'd ol'
+baych. No won'er us gits the rhuematics." He hung the rudder, loosed
+the mizzen. I stepped the mast, hoisted the jib and lug, and made fast
+halyards and sheets. Our undignified bobbing, our impatient wallowing
+on the water stopped short. The wind's life entered into the craft. She
+bowed graciously to the waves. With a motion compounded of air and
+water, wings and a heaving, as if she were airily suspended over the
+sea, the _Cock Robin_ settled to her course. Spray skatted gleefully
+over her bows and the wavelets made a gurgling music along the
+clinker-built strakes of her.
+
+Tony put out the lines: tangled two of them, got in a tear, as he calls
+it, snapped the sid, bit the rusty hook off, spat out a shred of old
+bait, brought the boat's head too far into the wind, cursed the
+flapping sail and cursed the tiller, grubbed in his pockets for a new
+hook, and made tiny knots with clumsy great fingers and his teeth.
+"An't never got no gear like I used tu," he complained, and then,
+standing upright, with the tiller between his legs and a line in each
+outstretched hand, he unbuttoned his face and broke into the merriest
+of smiles. "What du 'ee think o' Tony then, getting in a tear fust
+start out? Do 'ee think he's maazed--or obsolete? But we'll catch 'em
+if they'm yer. Yu ought to go 'long wi' Uncle Jake. He'd tell 'ee
+summut--and the fish tu if they wasn't biting proper!"
+
+By the time the lines were out, the dun sou'westerly clouds all around
+had raised themselves like a vast down-hanging fringe, a tremendous
+curtain, ragged with inconceivable delicacy at the foot, between which,
+and the water-line, the peep o' day stared blankly. The whitish light,
+which made the sea look deathly cold, was changed to a silvery sheen
+where the hidden cliffs stood. From immaterial shadows, looming over
+the surf-line, the cliffs themselves brightened to an insubstantial
+fabric, an airy vision, ruddily flushed; till, finally, ever becoming
+more earthy, they upreared themselves, high-ribbed and red, bush-crowned
+and splashed with green--our familiar, friendly cliffs, for each and
+every part of whom we have a name. The sun slid out from a parting of
+clouds in the east, warming the dour waves into playfulness.
+
+    'Twas all a wonder and a wild delight.
+
+As I looked at Tony, while he glanced around with eyes that were at
+once curiously alert and dreamy, I saw that, in spite of use and habit,
+in spite of his taking no particular notice of what the sea and sky
+were like, except so far as they affected the sailing of the boat,--the
+dawn was creeping into him. Many such dawns have crept into him. They
+are a part of himself.
+
+[Sidenote: _A TENDERHEART BY NATURE_]
+
+"Look to your lew'ard line!" he cried, "they'm up for it!"
+
+He hauled a mackerel aboard, and, catching hold of the shank of the
+hook, flicked the fish into the bottom of the boat with one and the
+same motion that flung the sid overboard again; and after it the lead.
+Wedging the mackerel's head between his knees, he bent its body to a
+curve, scraped off the scales near its tail, and cut a fresh lask from
+the living fish. He is a tenderheart by nature, but now: "That'll hae
+'em!" he crowed.
+
+The mackerel bit hotly at our new baits.[10] Before the lines were
+properly out, in they had to come again. Flop-flop went the fish on the
+bottom-boards as we jerked them carelessly off the hooks. Every moment
+or two one of them would dance up and flip its tail wildly; beat on the
+bottom-boards a tattoo which spattered us with scales; then sink back
+among the glistening mass that was fast losing its beauty of colour,
+its opalescent pinks and steely blues, even as it died and stiffened.
+
+      [10] Undoubtedly, if the mackerel are only half on the feed, a
+      fresh lask is better than any other bait, better than an equally
+      brilliant salted lask. It is the shine of the bait at which the
+      fish bite, as at a spinner, but probably the fresh lask leaves
+      behind it in the water an odour or flavour of mackerel oil which
+      keeps the shoal together and makes them follow the boat.
+
+Suddenly the fish stopped biting, perhaps because the risen sun was
+shining down into the water. The wind dropped without warning, as
+southerly winds will do in the early morning, if they don't come on to
+blow a good deal harder. The _Cock Robin_ wallowed again on the water.
+"We'm done!" said Tony. "Let's get in out o'it in time for the early
+market. There ain't no other boats out. Thees yer ought to fetch
+'leven-pence the dizzen. We've made thees day gude in case nort else
+don't turn up."
+
+While I rowed ashore, he struck sail, and threw the ballast overboard.
+Most pleasantly does that shingle ballast plop-rattle into the water
+when there is a catch of fish aboard. We ran in high upon a sea.
+Willing hands hauled the _Cock Robin_ up the beach: we had fish to
+give away for help. The mackerel made elevenpence a dozen to Jemima
+Caley, the old squat fishwoman who wears a decayed sailor hat with a
+sprig of heather in it. "Yu don' mean to say yu've a-catched all they
+lovely fish!" she said with a rheumy twinkle, in the hope of getting
+them for tenpence.
+
+"'Levenpence a dozen, Jemima!"
+
+"Aw well then, yu must let I pay 'ee when I sold 'em. An't got it now.
+Could ha' gived 'ee tenpence down."
+
+With a mackerel stuck by the gills on the tip of each finger, I came in
+house. The children were being got ready for school. When I returned
+downstairs with some of the fishiness washed off, Mrs Widger was
+distributing the school bank-cards and Monday morning pennies. (By the
+time the children leave school, they will have saved thus, penny by
+penny, enough to provide them with a new rig-out for service--or Sunday
+wear.) There was a frizzling in the topsy-turvy little kitchen.
+
+[Sidenote: _A DARING RASCAL_]
+
+"Mam! Vish!"
+
+"Mam! I wants some vish. Mam 'Idger...."
+
+"Yu shall hae some fish another time."
+
+"No-o-o!"
+
+"Go on!"
+
+"Well, jam zide plaate then."
+
+Jimmy's finger was in the jampot.
+
+"Yu daring rascal!" shrieks Mam Widger. "Get 'long to school with 'ee!
+Yu'll be late an' I shall hae the 'spector round. Get 'long--and see
+what I'll hae for 'ee when yu comes back."
+
+"Coo'h! Bulls' eyes! Ay, mam? Good bye, Dad. Good bye, Mam. Bye, Mister
+Ronals. Gimme a penny will 'ee?"
+
+"God damn the child--that ever I should say it--get 'long! _I'll_ hae a
+bull's eye for 'ee. Now go on."
+
+A tramp of feet went out through the passage.
+
+Mrs Widger shovelled the crisp mackerel from the frying-pan into our
+plates. Tony soused his with vinegar from an old whiskey bottle. We
+lingered over our tea till he said: "Must go out an' clean they ther
+boats--the popples what they damn visitors' children chucks in for to
+amuse theirselves, not troubling to think us got to pick every one on
+'em out be hand, an' looking daggers at 'ee when you trys to tell 'em
+o'it so polite as yu can. Ay, me--our work be never done."
+
+"No more ain't mine!" snapped Mrs Widger, moving off to her washtub.
+
+
+10
+
+For the last two or three days there has been a large flat brown-paper
+parcel standing against the wall on the far side of my bed. I have
+wondered what it was.
+
+This evening, after we had all finished tea, while Tony was puffing
+gingerly at a cigarette (he is nothing of a smoker) with his chair
+tilted back and a stockinged foot in Mrs Widger's lap, Jimmy said, as
+Jimmy usually says: "Gie us another caake, Mam 'Idger." He laid a very
+grubby hand on the cakelets.
+
+"Yu li'l devil!" shouted his mother. "Take yer hands off or I'll gie
+'ee such a one.... Yu'd eat an eat till yu busted, I believe; an yu'm
+that cawdy [finical] over what yu has gie'd 'ee...."
+
+Tony took up the poker and made a feint at Jimmy, who jumped into the
+corner laughing loudly. With an amazing contrast in tone, Mrs Widger
+said quietly: "Wait a minute an' see what I got to show 'ee, if yu'm
+gude."
+
+[Sidenote: _ROSIE'S PHOTOGRAPH_]
+
+She went upstairs with that peculiar tread of hers--as if the feet were
+very tired but the rest of the body invincibly energetic,--and returned
+with the flat parcel. She undid the string, the children watching with
+greedy curiosity. She placed on the best-lighted chair an enlargement
+of a baby's photograph, in a cheap frame, all complete. "There!" she
+said.
+
+"What is ut?" asked Tony. "Why, 'tis li'l Rosie!"
+
+"Wer did 'ee get 'en?" he continued more softly. "Yu an't had 'en
+give'd 'ee?"
+
+"Give'd me? No! Thic cheap-jack.... But 'tisn' bad, is it?"
+
+"What cheap-jack?"
+
+"Why, thic man to the market-house--wer I got the cruet."
+
+"O-oh! I didn' never see he.... What did 'ee pay 'en for thic then?"
+
+"Never yu mind. 'Twasn't none o' yours what I paid. What do 'ee think
+o'it?"
+
+"'Tisn' bad--very nice," remarked Tony, bending before the picture,
+examining it in all lights. "Iss; 'tisn' bad by no means. Come yer,
+Jimmy an' Tommy. Do 'ee know who that ther is?"
+
+"Rosie!" whispered Jimmy.
+
+"What was took up to cementry," added Tommy in a brighter voice.
+
+"Iss, 'tis our li'l Rosie to the life (mustn' touch), jest like her
+was."
+
+A moment's tension; then, "A surprise for 'ee, en' it?" Mrs Widger
+enquired.
+
+"My ol' geyser!"
+
+The children's riot began again. "Our Rosie...." they were saying. Mam
+'Idger, slipping out of Tony's grasp, carried the picture off to the
+front room. She was sometime gone.
+
+Wordsworth's _We are Seven_ came into my mind:
+
+    "But they are dead; those two are dead!
+    Their spirits are in heaven!"
+      'Twas throwing words away; for still
+      The little maid would have her will,
+    And said, "Nay, we are seven!"
+
+I knew, of course, intellectually, that the poem records more than a
+child's mere fancy; but never before have I felt its truth, have I been
+caught up, so to speak, into the atmosphere of the wise, simple souls
+who are able to rob death of the worst of its sting by refusing to let
+the dead die altogether, even on earth. Rosie is dead and buried. I
+perceive also--I perceived, while Tony and the children stood round
+that picture--that Rosie is still here, in this house, hallowing it a
+little. The one statement is as much a fact as the other; but how much
+more delicately intangible, and perhaps how much truer, the second.
+
+
+11
+
+[Sidenote: _ROSIE'S DEATH_]
+
+While we waited for Tony to come in to supper, Mrs Widger told me about
+Rosie's death. "It must be awful," she said, "to lose a child fo them
+as an't got nor more. I know how I felt it when Rosie was took. Nothing
+would please me for months after but to go up to the cementry, to her
+little grave. 'Most every evening I walked up after tea--didn' feel as
+if I could go to bed an' sleep wi'out. Tony had to fend for hisself if
+he wanted his supper early. Ther wasn't no reason, but it did ease me,
+like, to go up there, an' it heartened me a little for next day's work.
+'Twas a sort o' habit, p'raps. What broke me of it was my bad illness.
+[When the twins, 'what nobody didn' know nort about,' were born.] At
+first, I used to think o' Rosie, when I were lyin' alone upstairs, most
+'specially at night time if Tony wer out to sea an' it come'd on to
+blow a bit. I used to think, if ort happened to Tony.... Our room to
+the top o' the house, sways when it do blow. I don't trouble me head
+about Tony when he's to sea ordinary times--expects 'en when I sees
+'en--but then I wer weak, like, an' full o' fancies. An' after I got
+about again I wer much too weak to go to cementry: I used to faint
+every time I come'd downstairs. Howsbe-ever, I did come down again, an'
+Tony used to go out and get me quinine wine and three-and-sixpenny port
+an' all sorts o' messes, to put me on me legs wi'out fainting. 'Twas
+thic illness as broke me o' going up to Rosie's grave."
+
+"You walk up now on Sunday evenings...." I hazarded, recollecting that
+then the children run wild for a couple of hours and come in tired and
+dirty to cry for their mam.
+
+"Yes...." said Mrs Widger.
+
+I saw that I had trespassed into one of the little solitary tracts of
+her life.
+
+"One day," she continued, backing the conversation with an imperfectly
+hidden effort, "when Dr Bayliss come to see me, Tony was asleep in the
+next bed, snoring under the clothes after a night to sea. Dr Bayliss
+didn' say nort, 'cept he said: 'Your husband's a fisherman, isn't he,
+Mrs Widger?' But I saw his shoulders a-shaking as he went out the door,
+an' that evening he sent me a bottle o' port wine out o' his own
+cellar, an' it did me a power o' gude. Tony--he was that ashamed o'
+hisself, though I told 'en 'twasn't nothing for a doctor to see
+'en...."
+
+[Sidenote: _FRANKNESS AND SMUT_]
+
+At that moment Tony returned. He really was ashamed of the doctor
+finding him in bed, whether as a breach of manners or of propriety was
+not plain. Possibly the latter. He has an acute sense of decency,
+though its rules and regulations are not the same as those of the
+people he calls gentry. Our conversation here would hardly suit a
+drawing-room. Tony, if he comes in wet, thinks nothing of stripping
+down to his shirt. But, curiously enough, one of his chief complaints
+about the people who hire boats, is their occasionally unclean
+conversation. "The likes o' us 'ould never think of saying what they
+du. Me, I didn' know nort about half the things they say till I wer
+grow'd up an' learnt it from listening to the likes o' they. Yu'd
+hear bad language wi' us an' plain speaking, but never what some o'
+they talks about when they got no one to hear 'em 'cept us they hires,
+an' they thinks us don't matter." Tony is right, I believe. Most of
+the impropriety I used to hear at school, university, and in the
+smoking room, though often little but a reaction against silly
+conventions, a tilt against whited sepulchres,--was well-named _smut_.
+It was furtive, a distortion of life's facts and inimical therefore to
+life. Impropriety here, on the other hand, is a recognition of life's
+facts, an expression of life, a playful ebullition.
+
+Tony, when he came in, enquired of Mam 'Idger what she had done with
+the picture. "Did Rosie die in the summer?" I asked, remembering how
+the children will run out to the milkman with a dirty can unless a
+sharp eye is kept upon them, and how also the larder is fixed up over
+the main drain.
+
+"Her died late in the autumn with convulsions from teething," Mrs
+Widger replied. "An' her didn't ought to ha' died then but for Dr
+Brown. When her was took ill, proper bad, I sent one of the maidens for
+Dr Bayliss, but he was out to the country for they didn' know how long.
+So off I sends the maid to Dr Brown, an' he sends back a message as he
+cuden' attend Dr Bayliss's patients wi'out Dr Bayliss asked him.
+Certainly 'twas late; but my blood jest boiled, an' I took Rosie into
+Grannie's an' goes up myself. Rosie didn' belong to no doctor. Her'd
+never had one. Howsbe-ever, Dr Brown says to me the same as he'd told
+the maid, that he cuden' come. An' then he says, 'My good woman, I
+_won't_ come!' Jest like that! My flare was up; I wer jest about to let
+fly my mind at 'en--an' I remembered Rosie lying in convulsions to
+Grannie's, an' flew out o' his house like a mad thing. Rosie wer all
+but dead. Her was gone when Dr Bayliss come'd next morning."
+
+"Aye!" added Tony. "That wer it. Some doctors be kind, an' some don't
+trouble nort about the likes o' us when they got visitors to run a'ter.
+I don' say they treats the likes o' us worse'n other people; I don'
+know: oftentimes they'm so kind as can be; but when they don't behave
+like they ought to, other people has the means to make 'em sorry for
+it, an' us an't. They knows that. Us can't do nort an' that's the way
+o'it. Rosie didn' never ought to ha' died."
+
+"No-o-o!" said Mrs Widger.
+
+One can see the tigress in most women, in every mother, if one waits
+long enough. I saw it in Mrs Widger then. If she ever has the whip-hand
+of Dr Brown....
+
+
+12
+
+This mackerel hooking, which is a two-man job though Tony could and
+would do it by himself were I not here, has most fortunately raised me
+out of the position of a mere lodger, a household excrescence,
+tolerated only for the sake of certain shillings a week. It has
+provided me with a niche of my own, which I occupy--at sea the mate on
+a mackerel hooker, on shore a loafer 'ready to lend a hand,' and in the
+house a sort of male Cinderella. It is far pleasanter, I find, to be a
+small wheel in the machine than to remain seated on a mound of pounds,
+shillings and pence--beflunkeyed, as if in a soulless hotel!
+
+[Sidenote: _THE EARLY CUP O' TAY_]
+
+Tony cannot fill his spare time by reading: it makes his long-sighted
+eyes smart. On account of that, and of nights at sea, with rest taken
+when and where possible, he has developed an amazing talent for
+'putting it away'; that is, for sleeping. He can turn out perfectly
+well at any hour, if need be, but at ordinary times he is most content
+to follow somebody else's first. I on my part, sleeping indifferently
+well, wake usually before dawn, and greatly dislike waiting for an
+early cup o' tay.
+
+About half-past four I jump out of bed, creep downstairs and chop wood.
+That warms me. Then with a barbaric glee, I scrape out the ashes,
+sending clouds of dust over the guernseys and boots that have been set
+near the fire to dry. No matter; being light and fire-dry, it will
+brush off the one and shake out of the other. People who never light
+fires at dawn can have no idea of the exhilaration to be obtained from
+a well-laid, crackling, flaming fire.
+
+Tony appears at the door, half-dressed, yawning and stretching his arms
+on high. "Yu an't been an' made tay, have 'ee?" he says with delighted
+certainty. The cups are filled. He takes up Mam 'Idger's cup and
+returns with the paper roll of 'Family Biscuits.' We forage for
+tit-bits, feed standing, yawn again, and go out to 'see what to make
+o'it.'
+
+Unless the sea is broken by the wind, there is about it just before
+dawn a peculiar creeping clamminess. It seems but half awake, like
+ourselves. It has no welcome for us. "Can't you wait," it seems to say,
+"till I begin to sparkle?"
+
+Tony looks out over. "Had us better tu?" he asks with a shiver.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Shove her down then. There's macker out there!"
+
+By the time the sun is rising (it never rises twice the same) south of
+the easternmost headland, Tony has worked himself into a tear over
+self-tangling lines, and has been laughed out of it again. We are
+perhaps a mile or two out, and if the mackerel are biting well, we are
+hauling them in, swiftly, silently, grimly; banging them off the hook;
+going _Tsch!_ if they fall back into the sea; cutting baits from fish
+not dead. If, however, they are not on the feed, we sing blatant or
+romantic or sentimental songs (it is all one out there), and laugh with
+a hearty sea-loudness. And if the mackerel will not bite at all we
+invent a score of reasons and blame a dozen people and things. But
+there we are--ourselves, the sea, and the heavenly dawn--the sea
+heaving up to us, and ourselves ever heaving higher, up and over the
+lop. It exalts us with it. We hardly need to talk. A straight look in
+the face, a smile.... We are in the more immediate presence of one
+another. Did we lie to each other with our tongues, the greater part of
+our communications would yet be truth.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE PRICE OF FISH_]
+
+We sail or row home, turn the mackerel out on the beach, count them
+back into the box, wash the blood off them, and stoop low, turning them
+over and over, whilst we haggle for our price. The other day, with the
+exuberance of the sea still upon me, I slapped old Jemima Caley's rusty
+shoulder and lo! she rose her price one penny.
+
+"Damme!" she said, "I'll gie 'ee ninepence a dozen if I has to go wi'
+out me dinner for't! They _be_ fine fish."
+
+"_Sweet_ fish, Jemima!"
+
+"Lor' bless 'ee, yes!"
+
+But she hawked them at twopence-halfpenny or threepence a pair
+according to the customer. And now, her wry sly smile, peeping from
+underneath her battered hat-brim, meets me at every back-street corner.
+
+Soap and water, the buzz of the children, their mother's loud voice,
+and mackerel for breakfast.... It is all quite prosaic and perfectly
+commonplace, it is far from idyllic; yet it would need the touch of a
+poet to bring out the wonder, the mystery, of it all: to light up the
+door of the soul-house through which we pass to and fro, scarce
+knowing.
+
+Tony comes in early to dinner after a morning's frighting. His object
+is to get an hour or so for sleep before the visitors come out from
+their later lunch. Mam 'Idger says we are lazy; that she 'don't gie way
+to it, she don't!' (She did a couple of days ago.) When the
+after-dinner tea is finished, Tony makes a start for 'up over!' Mrs
+Widger enquires if I have some writing to do--and asks also if I would
+like to be awakened before tea-time!
+
+Never does sleep at night come so graciously as that afternoon snooze,
+while the sound of the sea and the busy noises of the square float
+gently in at the windows; float higher and higher; float right away.
+About half-past two, Tony goes down to take somebody out for a sail or
+to paint his boats. I frequently do not hear him.
+
+
+13
+
+Is there not more than one signification to the words "And I, if I be
+lifted up, will draw all men unto Me?" There are times when the mind is
+lifted up by a master-emotion, arising one hardly knows how, nor
+whither leading; a feeling that takes charge of one, as a big wave is
+said to take charge of a boat when it destroys steerageway; an emotion
+so powerful that it does but batten on all which might be expected to
+clash with it. These are the periods when day and night are enveloped
+in one large state of mind, and life ceases to be a collection of
+discrete, semi-related moods. These are the dawns of the soul, the
+spring seasons of the spirit. The world is created afresh.
+
+Everything, and nothing, is prosaic. 'Tis _all according_. But it is
+startling indeed how suddenly sometimes the earth takes on a new
+wonderfulness, and Saint Prosaic a new halo. What, to put it in the
+plainest manner possible, am I doing here? Merely fishing and sailing
+on the cheap (not so very cheaply); roughing it--pigging it, as one
+would say--with people who are not my people and do not live as I have
+been accustomed to do. Yet, as I know well _all_ the time, this change
+from one prosaic life to another has brought about a revelation which,
+like great music, sanctifies things, makes one thankful, and in a sense
+very humble; incapable of fitting speech, incapable of silence.
+
+
+14
+
+[Sidenote: _UNDER TOWN_]
+
+Astonishment at, and zest in, these Under Town lives; the discovery of
+so much beauty hitherto unsuspected and, indeed, not to be caught sight
+of without exceptional opportunity, sets one watching and waiting in
+order to find out the real difference of their minds from the minds of
+us who have been through the educational mill; also to find out where
+and how they have the advantage of us. For I can feel rather than see,
+here, the presence of a wisdom that I know nothing about, not even by
+hearsay, and that I suspect to be largely the traditional wisdom of the
+folk, gained from contact with hard fact, slowly accumulated and handed
+on through centuries--the wisdom from which education cuts us off,
+which education teaches us to pooh-pooh.
+
+Such wisdom is difficult to grasp; very shy. My chance of observing it
+lies precisely in this: that I am neither a sky-pilot, nor a district
+visitor, nor a reformer, nor a philanthropist, nor any sort of
+'worker,' useful or impertinent; but simply a sponge to absorb and, so
+far as can be, an understander to sympathize. It is hard entirely to
+share another people's life, to give oneself up to it, to be received
+into it. They know intuitively (their intuitions are extraordinarily
+acute) that one is thinking more than one gives voice to; putting two
+and two together; which keeps alive a lingering involuntary distrust
+and a certain amount, however little, of ill-grounded respectfulness.
+(Respectfulness is less a tribute to real or fancied superiority, than
+an armour to defend the poor man's private life.) Besides which, these
+people are necessary to, or at least their intimacy is greatly desired
+by, myself, whereas their own life is complete and rounded without me.
+I am tangential merely. They owe me nothing; I owe them much. It is I
+who am the client, they the patrons.
+
+[Sidenote: _CLASS DISTINCTIONS_]
+
+We are told often enough nowadays that capital fattens on labour,
+naturally, instinctively, without much sense of wrong-doing, and has
+so fattened since the days when Laban tried to overreach Jacob. What
+we are not so often told is that the poor man not less instinctively
+looks upon the gen'leman as legitimate sport. 'An 'orrible lie'
+between two poor people is fair play from a poor man to a wealthier,
+just as, for instance, the wealthy man considers himself at liberty to
+make speeches full of hypocritical untruth when he is seeking the
+suffrage of the free and independent electors or is trying to teach
+the poor man how to make himself more profitable to his employer. It
+is stupid, at present, to ignore the existence of class distinctions;
+though they do not perhaps operate over so large a segment of life as
+formerly, they still exist in ancient strength, notwithstanding the
+fashionable cant--lip-service only to democratic ideals--about the
+whole world kin. There is not one high wall, but two high walls
+between the classes and the masses, so-called, and that erected in
+self-defence by the exploited is the higher and more difficult to
+climb. On the one side is a disciplined, fortified Gibraltar, held by
+the gentry; then comes a singularly barren and unstable neutral zone;
+and on the other side is the vast chaotic mass. In Under Town, I
+notice, a gentleman is always _gen'leman_, a workman or tramp is
+_man_, but the fringers, the inhabitants of the neutral zone, are
+called _persons_. For example: "That _man_ what used to work for the
+council is driving about the _gen'leman_ as stays with Mrs Smith--the
+_person_ what used to keep the greengrocery shop to the top of High
+Street afore her took the lodging house on East Cliff." It is, in
+fact, strange how undemocratic the poor man is. (Not so strange when
+one realises that far from having everything to gain and nothing to
+lose by a levelling process, he has a deal to lose and his gains are
+problematical.) I am not sure that he doesn't prefer to regard the
+gen'leman as another species of animal. Jimmy and Tommy have a name of
+their own for the little rock-cakes their mother cooks. They call them
+_gentry-cakes_ because such morsels are fitted for the--as Jimmy and
+Tommy imagine--smaller mouths of ladies and gentlemen. The other
+afternoon Mabel told me that a boat she had found belonged not to a
+boy but to a _gentry-boy_. Some time ago I begged Tony not to _sir_
+me; threatened to punch his head if he did. It discomforted me to be
+belaboured with a title of respect which I could not reasonably claim
+from him. Rather I should _sir_ him, for he is older and at least my
+equal in character; he has begotten healthy children for his country
+and he works hard 'to raise 'em vitty.' Against my book-knowledge he
+can set a whole stock of information and experience more directly
+derived from and bearing upon life. I don't consider myself unfit to
+survive, but he is fitter, and up to the present has done more to
+justify his survival--which after all is the ultimate test of a man's
+position in the race. At all events, he did cease _sir-ing_ me except
+on ceremonial occasions. At ordinary times the detested word is
+unheard, but it is still: "Gude morning, sir!" "Gude night, sir!" And
+sometimes: "Your health, sir!" At that the matter must rest, I
+suppose, though the _sir_ is a symbol of class difference, and to do
+away with the symbol is to weaken the difference.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE WORD "LIKE"_]
+
+But at the same time, I am lucky enough to possess certain advantages.
+I have, for instance, managed to preserve the ability to speak dialect
+in spite of all the efforts of my pastors and masters to make me talk
+the stereotyped, comparatively inexpressive compromise which goes by
+the name of King's English. Tony is hard of hearing, catches the
+meaning of dialect far quicker than that of standard English, and I
+notice that the damn'd spot _sir_ seldom blots our conversation when
+it is carried on in dialect. Finally there is the great problem of
+self-expression. There, at any rate, I am well to windward.
+
+The cause of the uneducated man's use of the word _like_ is
+interesting. He makes a statement, uses an adjective, and--especially
+if the statement relates to his own feelings or to something
+unfamiliar--he tacks on the word _like_, spoken in a peculiarly
+explanatory tone of voice. What does the word mean there? Is it merely
+a habit, a 'gyte,' as Tony would say? And why the word _like_?
+
+When a poet wishes to utter thoughts that are too unformulated, that
+lie too deep, for words--
+
+    Break, break, break,
+      On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
+    And I would that my tongue could utter
+      The thoughts that arise in me--
+
+he has recourse to simile and metaphor. Take, for example, the
+transience of human life, a subject on which at times we most of us
+have keen vague thoughts that, we imagine, would be so profound could
+our tongues but utter them.
+
+Blake's Thel is a symbol of the transience of life.
+
+    O life of this our Spring! why fades the lotus of the water?
+    Why fade these children of the Spring, born but to smile and fall?
+
+"Thel, the transient maiden, is.... What is Thel?" says Blake, in
+effect. Thel cannot be described straightforwardly. "What then is Thel
+_like_?"
+
+    Ah! Thel is like a watery bow, and like a parting cloud,
+    Like a reflection in a glass, like shadows on the water,
+    Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infant's face,
+    Like the dove's voice, like transient day, like music in the air.
+
+[Sidenote: _DIALECT_]
+
+Shakespeare, in a corresponding difficulty, uses one convincing simile:
+
+    Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore
+    So do our minutes hasten to their end;
+    Each changing place with that which goes before,
+    In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
+
+Drummond of Hawthornden exclaims:
+
+    This Life, which seems so fair,
+    Is like a bubble blown up in the air
+    By sporting children's breath....
+
+Bacon speaks more boldly and concisely. He forsakes simile for
+metaphor, leaving the word _like_ to be understood.
+
+    The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man
+    Less than a span....
+
+Were Tony to try and express himself by the same means, he would say:
+"The world's a bubble, like, and the life of man less than a span,
+like."
+
+_Like_, in fact, with the poor man as with the poet, connotes simile
+and metaphor. The poor man's vocabulary, like the poet's, is quite
+inadequate to express his thoughts. Both, in their several ways, are
+driven to the use of unhackneyed words and simile and metaphor; both
+use a language of great flexibility;[11] for which reason we find that
+after the poet himself, the poor man speaks most poetically. Witness
+the beautiful description: "All to once the nor'easter springed out
+from the land, an' afore us could down-haul the mainsail, the sea wer
+feather-white an' skatting in over the bows." New words are eagerly
+seized; hence the malapropisms and solecisms so frequently made fun of,
+without appreciation of their cause. _Obsolete_ has come hereto from
+the Navy, through sons who are bluejackets. Now, when Tony wishes to
+sum up in one word the two facts that he is older and also less
+vigorous than formerly, he says: "Tony's getting obsolete, like." A
+soulless word, borrowed from official papers, has acquired for us a
+poetic wealth of meaning in which the pathos of the old ship, of
+declining years, and of Tony's own ageing, are all present with one
+knows not what other suggestions besides. And when _obsolete_ is fully
+domesticated here, the _like_ will be struck off.
+
+      [11] The flexibility and expressiveness of dialect lies largely
+      in its ability to change its verbal form and pronunciation from a
+      speech very broad indeed to something approaching standard
+      English. For example, "You'm a fool," is playful; "You'm a fule,"
+      less so. "You're a fool," asserts the fact without blame; while
+      "Thee't a fule," or "Thee a't a fule!" would be spoken in temper,
+      and the second is the more emphatic. The real differences between
+      "I an't got nothing," "I an't got ort," and "I an't got
+      nort,"--"Oo't?" "Casn'?" "Will 'ee?" and "Will you?"--"You'm
+      not," "You ain't," "You bain't," and "Thee a'tn't,"--are hardly
+      to be appreciated by those who speak only standard English.
+      _Thee_ and _thou_ are used between intimates, as in French.
+      _Thee_ is usual from a mother to her children, but is
+      disrespectful from children to their mother.
+
+[Sidenote: _THOUGHTS AND MIND PICTURES_]
+
+In short, every time Tony uses _like_, he is admitting, and explaining,
+that he has expressed himself as best he could, but inadequately
+notwithstanding. He has felt something more delicately, thought upon
+something more accurately, than he can possibly say. He is always
+pathetically eager to make himself plain, to be understood. One knows
+well that touching look in the eyes of a dog when, as we say, it all
+but speaks. Often have I seen that same look, still more intense, in
+Tony's eyes, when he has become mazed with efforts to express himself,
+and I have wished that as with the dog, a pat, a small caress, could
+change the look into a joyfulness. But it is just because I am fond of
+him that I am able to feel with him and to a certain extent to divine
+his half-uttered thoughts; to take them up and return them to him
+clothed in more or less current English which, he knows, would convey
+them to a stranger, and which shows him more clearly than before what
+he really was thinking. That seems to be one of my chief functions
+here--thought-publisher. Evidently grateful, he talks and talks,
+usually while the remains of a meal lie scattered on the table. "Aye!"
+he says, at the end of a debauch of _likes_. "I don' know what I du
+know. Tony's a silly ol' fule!"
+
+He does not believe it; nor do I; for I am often struck with wonder at
+the thoughts and mind-pictures which we so curiously arrive at
+together.
+
+
+15
+
+The old feudal class-distinctions are fast breaking down. But are we
+arriving any nearer the democratic ideal of _Liberté_, _Égalité_,
+_Fraternité_? In place of the old distinctions, are we not setting up
+new distinctions, still more powerful to divide? There is to-day a
+greater social gulf fixed between the man who takes his morning tub and
+him who does not, than between the man of wealth or family and him who
+has neither. New-made and pink, the 'gentleman' arises daily from his
+circle of splashes, a masculine Venus from a foam of soap-suds. (About
+womenfolk we are neither so enquiring nor so particular.) For the cults
+of religion and pedigree we have substituted the cult of soap and
+water, and 'the prominent physician of Harley Street' is its high
+priest. Are you a reputed atheist? Poor man! doubtless God will
+enlighten you in His good time. Are you wicked? Well, well.... Have you
+made a fortune by forsaking the official Christian morality in favour
+of the commercial code? You can redeem all by endowing a hospital or
+university. But can they say of you that somehow or other you don't
+look quite clean? Then you are damn'd!
+
+The cottage where the heroine of the 'nice' book lives is always
+spotlessly clean. A foreigner who adopts the bath-habit, is said to be
+just like an Englishman. It is the highest praise he can earn, and will
+go further in English society than the best introductions.
+
+[Sidenote: _CLEANLINESS_]
+
+Cleanliness is our greatest class-symbol. In living with people who
+have been brought up to different ways of life, a consideration
+of cleanliness is forced upon one; for nothing else rouses so
+instantaneously and violently the latent snobbery that one would fain
+be rid of. Religiously, politically, we are men and brothers all. Yet
+still--there _are_ men we simply cannot treat as brothers. By what term
+of contempt (in order to justify our unbrotherliness) can we call them?
+Not _poor men_; for we have _Poor but honest_ too firmly fixed in our
+minds, and we would all like a colonial rich rough diamond of an uncle
+to appear suddenly in our family circle. Hardly _men of no family_; for
+men of no family are received at court. Not _workmen_; for behold the
+Carlylese and Smilesian dignity of labour! Not _the masses_; for the
+masses are supposed to be our rulers. What then can we call these
+people with whom we really cannot associate on equal terms? Why,
+call them THE GREAT UNWASHED. O felicitous phrase! O salve of the
+conscience! That is the unpardonable social sin. At the bottom of our
+social ladder is a dirty shirt; at the top is fixed not laurels, but a
+tub! The bathroom is the inmost, the strongest fortress of our English
+snobbery.
+
+Cleanliness as a subject of discussion is, curiously enough, considered
+rather more improper than disease. Yet it has to be faced, and that
+resolutely, if we would approach, and approaching, understand, the
+majority of our fellow-creatures.
+
+Chemically all dirt is clean. Just as the foods and drinks of a good
+dinner, if mixed up together on a dish, would produce a filthy mess, so
+conversely, if we could separate any form of dirt into the pure solid,
+liquid and volatile chemical compounds of which it is composed, into
+pretty crystals, liquids and gases, exhibited in the scientific manner
+on spotless watch-glasses and in thrice-washed test-tubes,--we might
+indeed say that some of these chemicals had an evil odour, but we could
+not pronounce them unclean. Prepared in a laboratory, the sulphuretted
+hydrogen gas which makes the addled egg our national political weapon,
+is a quite cleanly preparation. Dirt is merely an unhappy mixture of
+clean substances. The housewife is nearest a scientific view of the
+matter when she distinguishes between 'clean dirt' and 'dirty dirt,'
+and does not mind handling coal, for instance, because, being clean
+dirt, it will not harm her. Cleanliness is a process by which we keep
+noxious microbes and certain poisons outside our systems or in their
+proper places within. (It has been shown that we cannot live without
+microbes, and that there exist normally in some parts of the body
+substances which are powerfully poisonous to other parts.) Rational
+cleanliness makes for health, for survival. It is, ultimately, an
+expression of the Will to Live.
+
+[Sidenote: _DIRT_]
+
+Far, however, from being rational, our notions on cleanliness are in
+the highest degree superficial. We make a great fuss over a flea;
+hardly mention it in polite company; but we tolerate the dirty housefly
+on all our food. We eat high game which our cook's more natural taste
+calls muck. We are only just beginning to realise the indescribable
+filthiness of carious teeth, than which anything more unclean, a few
+diseases excepted, can scarcely be found in slums. Even in this great
+age of pseudo-scientific enlightenment, we do not have a carious tooth
+extracted until it aches, though we have a front tooth cleaned and
+stopped on the first appearance of decay. What the eye doth not see....
+Yet we presume to judge men by their deviation from our conventional
+standards of cleanliness.
+
+My lady goes to the doctor for her headaches and _crises de nerfs_.
+"Dyspepsia and autotoxæmia," says the doctor. "Try such-and-such a diet
+for a month, then go to Aix-les-Bains." But how would my lady be
+ashamed did he tell her plainly: "Madam, though I observe that you
+bathe frequently, your cleanliness, like your beauty, is only
+skin-deep. You are fair without and foul within. Your alimentary canal
+is overloaded and your blood is so unclean that it has poisoned your
+nervous system. Eat less, take more exercise and drink plenty--of
+water. Try to be as clean as your gardener." It has been remarked that
+the labourer who sweats at his work is, in reality, far cleaner than
+the bathing sedentary man, for the labourer has a daily sweat-bath,
+whereas the other only washes the outside of him: the cleanliness of
+the latter is skin-deep, and of the former blood-deep. Once stated, the
+fact is obvious. Moreover, the labourer has the additional advantage of
+being self-cleansing, whereas the sedentary man, for his inferior kind
+of cleanliness, requires a bath and all sorts of apparatus. No doubt,
+in time we shall learn to value both kinds of cleanliness, each at its
+worth. The Martians of fiction, when in a fair way to conquer the
+earth, succumbed before earthly microbes to which they were
+unaccustomed, against which they had not acquired immunity. If by
+antiseptics they could have kept these microbes at bay, they would have
+done well, but if, like mankind, they had possessed self-resistance
+against them (that is, if they had been self-cleansing) it would have
+been still better. There is no paradox in saying that, practically, it
+is very difficult for a healthy person to be genuinely unclean; and
+that ideally, in the surgeon's eyes, we are, all, rich man and tramp,
+so unclean that there is little to choose between us, and every one of
+us requires a comprehensive scrubbing in an antiseptic tub.
+
+[Sidenote: _DISADVANTAGES_]
+
+But just as the habit of aiding nature by eating predigested food is
+bad, so too rigid a habit, too great a need of cleanliness is a
+positive disadvantage in the struggle for existence. Harry Stidston
+says fleas are loveable little creatures. I have had to learn to put up
+with one or two sometimes. Tommy makes his mother undress him in the
+middle of dinner to find one. In other words, Harry Stidston can do his
+work and live under conditions which would put me to flight, and I have
+a like advantage over Tommy. Again, Tony can do with an occasional bath
+and can eat his food with fishy hands, while I am a worm and no man
+without my daily bath, or at least a wash-over, and, except at sea,
+turn against the best of food if I can smell fish on my fingers. The
+advantage is Tony's. It is good to be clean, but it is better to be
+able to be dirty.
+
+The upshot is half-a-dozen--maybe unpleasant--truths, without
+recognition of which the latter-day citadel of snobbery cannot be
+stormed, nor the poor man and his house appreciated at their worth;
+namely:--
+
+    1. _Ideally_: We are all so unclean that there is little to
+       choose between us.
+
+    2. _Scientifically_: Cleanliness, as practised, is
+       conventional and irrational.
+
+    3. Blood-cleanliness is better than skin-cleanliness.
+
+    4. To be self-cleansing is better than to be cleansed by outside
+       agents.
+
+    5. It is hard for a healthy, active person to be really unclean.
+
+    6. _Practically_: The need of cleanliness is a weakness.
+
+According to the orthodox standards, this house of Tony's is by no
+means so clean as the rose-embowered cottage of romance. It was not
+hygienically built. The children gain health by grubbing about outside,
+then come in house and demonstrate their healthy appetite by grabbing.
+I could wish at times that they were a little more conscious of their
+noses. We cannot, try how we will, get wholly rid of fleas, because
+fleas flourish in beaches, boats and nets. There are several things
+here to turn one's gorge, until prejudices are put aside and the matter
+regarded scientifically. For, as one may see, the effective cleanliness
+of this household strikes a subtle balance between more contending
+needs than can be fully traced out. If, for instance, Mrs Widger came
+down earlier and scrupulously swept the house, her temper would suffer
+later on in the day. If she did not sometimes 'let things rip,' and
+take leisure, her health, and with it the whole delicate organisation
+of the household, would go wrong. Of a morning, I observe she has
+neck-shadows. Horrid! Perhaps, but being a wise woman, pressed always
+for time, she postpones her proper wash until the dirty work is done.
+Were we to kill off the wauling cats which make such a mess of the
+garden, the neighbourhood would lose its best garbingers. Baked dinner
+is never so tasty as when the tin, hot from the oven, is placed upon a
+folded newspaper on the table. Tony and the children tear fish apart
+with their fingers. It does not look nice, but that is the reason why
+they never get bones in their throats, for, as a fish-eating
+instrument, sensitive fingers are much superior to cutlery and plate,
+and so on....
+
+I used to think that I was pigging it here. Now I do not.[12]
+
+      [12] On the moral aspect of cleanliness I have not touched. Miss
+      M. Loane, a Queen's Nurse, in her remarkable book _The Next
+      Street but One_, observes "Cleanliness has often seemed to me
+      strangely far from godliness. Where the virtue is highly
+      developed there is often not merely an actual but an absolute
+      shrinkage in all sweet neighbourly charities. If an invalid's
+      bedroom needs scrubbing and there is no money to pay for the
+      service, or if a chronic sufferer's kitchen is in want of a
+      'thorough good do-out,' if two or three troublesome children have
+      to be housed and fed during the critical days after an operation
+      on father or mother, do I look for assistance from 'the cleanest
+      woman in the street?' Alas, no; whether she be wife, widow, or
+      spinster, I pass her by, careful not to tread on her pavement,
+      much less her doorstep, and seek the happy-go-lucky person whose
+      own premises would be better for more water and less grease, but
+      from whose presence neither husband nor child ever hastens away."
+
+
+16
+
+[Sidenote: _JIMMY COMES HOOKING_]
+
+The dawns are later now. We do not need to get up quite so early, and
+usually, just as we are drinking our cup o' tay, we hear a pattering of
+naked feet on the staircase. Jimmy, the Dustman still in his eyes,
+appears at the door. He has an air of being about to do something
+important. He picks out his stockings and old grey suit from the
+corners where they were left to dry. He does not ask to have his boots
+laced up nor complain of their stiffness. Then with his coat
+exceedingly askew on his shoulders, he demands: "Tay! please."
+
+"What do _yu_ want? Git up over to bed again."
+
+"I be comin' hooking wiv yu."
+
+"Be 'ee? Yu'll hae to hurry up then."
+
+When the sea is not too loppy nor the wind too cold, Jimmy goes with
+us. The soft-mouthed mackerel need hauling up clear of the gunwale with
+a long-armed swing, beyond Jimmy's power to give, and therefore as a
+rule he is not at first allowed to have a line; for fish represent
+money and mackerel caught now will be eaten as bread and dripping in
+the winter. Jimmy sits huddled up on the lee side for'ard. He becomes
+paler, looks plaintively, and sighs a big sigh or two.
+
+"What's the matter, Jim-Jim? Do 'er feel leery?"
+
+If Jimmy volunteers a remark, nothing is the matter. But if he
+merely answers "No-o-o!" he means _yes_, and in order to stave off
+sea-sickness he must be given a line.
+
+[Sidenote: _EDUCATION EVILS_]
+
+Then is Jimmy 'proper all right.' Then does he brighten up. "How many
+have us catched?" he asks. The sight of him fishing in the stern-sheets
+re-assures me as to his future, about which I am sometimes fearful,
+just as some men are depressed by a helpless baby because they foresee,
+imaginatively, the poor little creature's life and all possible
+troubles before it. When I watch Jimmy in house, rather naughty
+perhaps, or when I hear Bessie, fresh from the twaddle that they put
+into her head at school, saying, "If Dad'd earn more money, mother, us
+could hae a shop an' he could buy me a pi-anno;" or when, as I am out
+and about with the boats, a grubby small hand is suddenly slipped into
+mine and a joyful chirping voice says, "What be yu 'bout?"--then, and
+at a score of other times, I am fearful of what they may be led to do
+with Jimmy; fearful lest they may put the little chap to an inland
+trade where he is almost bound to become a lesser man than his father,
+be removed from the enlarging influence of the sea, and have it given
+him as the height of ambition to grow up a dram-drinking or
+psalm-smiting, Sunday-top-hatted tradesmen. Then I desire savagely to
+have the power of a God, not that I might direct his life--he can sail
+his own boat better than I,--but that I might keep the ring clear for
+him to fight in, and prevent foul play. What indeed would I not do to
+remove some of the guilt of us educated men and women who force our
+ideas on people without asking whether they need them, without caring
+how maimed, stultified and potent for evil the ideas become in process
+of transmission, without seeing that for the age-old wisdom of those
+whom we call the uneducated we are substituting a jerry-built
+knowledge--got from books--which we only half believe in ourselves? New
+lamps for old! The pity of it! The farce!
+
+But when I watch Jimmy fishing, I grow confident that the sea has its
+grip on him; that it will drag him to itself as it dragged his father
+from the grocery store; that whatever happens, it will always be part
+of his life to keep trivialities, meannesses and education from quite
+closing in around him.
+
+
+17
+
+[Sidenote: "_THE FISHER FATHER AND CHILD_"]
+
+    _The Fisher Father and Child_
+
+    As I pulled the boat across a loppy sea--
+    The bumping and splashing boat,
+    With the sail flapping round my head,
+    And the pile of mackerel amidships ever growing larger and lovelier
+        in the light--
+    And the sun rose behind the cliffs to eastward, and the sky became
+        lemon-yellow
+    (A graciously coloured veil twixt the earth and all mystery beyond),
+    And the wavelets sparkled and darted like ten thousand fishes at play
+        in the ambient dawn,--
+    It seemed that the sky and the sea and the earth gathered themselves
+        together,
+    And became one vast kind eye, looking into the stern of the boat,
+    At the father and boy.
+
+    Navy-blue guernsey, and trousers stained by the sea, scarce hiding
+        the ribbed muscles;
+    Tan-red face, the fresh blood showing through;
+    Blue eyes, all of a flash with fishing and the joy of hauling 'em in;
+        now on the luff of the sail (out of habit, there being hardly a
+        sail-full of air), now to wind'ard, and again smiling on the
+        child;
+    Big pendulous russet hands, white in the palms from salt water, and
+        splashed with scales--
+    Hands that seem implements rather, appearing strangely no part of the
+        man, but something, like the child, that has grown away from
+        him and has taken a life of its own--
+    Strong for a sixteen-foot sweep, delicate to handle the silken snood of
+        a line--
+    A man that the winds and the spray have blown on, gnarled and bent to
+        the sea's own liking,
+    The Father!
+
+    And the boy--
+    Like delicate dawn to the sunset was the child to his father--
+    A sturdy slight little figure, as straight as the mast,
+    A grey and more gently coloured figure, glancing round with the
+        father's self-same gestures softened, and with childish
+        trustful sea-blue eyes;
+    Pattering with naked feet on the stern-sheets, and hauling the fish
+        with a wary cat-like motion....
+    O splendid and beautiful pair!
+    O man of the sea! O child growing up to the sea!
+    You have given yourselves to the waters, and the waters have given
+        of their spirit to you,
+    And I know when you speak that the sea is speaking through you,
+    And I know when I look at the sea, 'tis the likeness of your souls,
+    And I know that as I love you, I am loving also the sea--
+    O splendid and beautiful portions of the sea!
+
+
+18
+
+[Sidenote: _MRS FINN'S PROFESSIONS_]
+
+Mrs Pinn has put aside her respectful defiance, has ceased addressing
+me as _sir_, and turns out to be a most jolly old woman, possessed of
+any amount of laughing _camaraderie_. She frankly explains the change
+thus: "I used to think yu was reeligious. Yu du look a bit like a
+passon [parson] sometimes. Do 'ee know 't?--No, not now; be blow'd if
+yu du! Yu'm so wicked as the rest of 'em, _I_ believe, but yu ben't
+like they ol' passons. I'll 'llow yu'm better'n they." My own
+recollection, however, runs back to the evening when she brought her
+damped-down washing round, and I turned the mangle for her. It is
+hardish work. 'Tis a wonder how she, an old woman, can do it when, if
+births are scarce, she is reduced to taking in washing for a week or
+two. Tony calls her the Tough Old Stick. Excellent name! I can picture
+her in her cottage up on land, bringing up her long family with much
+shouting, much hard common sense, some swearing and a deal of useful
+prejudice. Now, in her second youth--not second childhood--she is
+mainly a lace-worker and midwife. One night, Tony and myself broke into
+her cottage, locked the door behind us and helped ourselves to what
+supper we could find--which was pickled beetroot and raw eggs. Grannie
+Pinn climbed in upon us through the little window, and afterwards, to
+gain breath, she sat down to her lace pillow. Her dexterity was
+marvellous. She _threw_ the bobbins about. I could not follow them with
+my eyes. She makes stock patterns only; refuses to be taught fresh
+patterns at her time of life, and cannot read them up for herself
+because she has never learned to read. The butterfly is her
+masterpiece. Working from early morning till evening's gossip-time, she
+can earn no less than nine pennies a day. What the lace-selling shop
+makes out of her, the lace-selling shop does not state.
+
+As a midwife, no doubt, she earns more. She must be full of tonic
+sayings. I am told that when her patients are dying, she takes away the
+pillow 'so that they can die more proper like,' and also in order that
+they may get the dying over quicker. What scenes the Tough Old Stick
+have must been present at! Yet she is spryer by far than those who keep
+clear of tragedy. When I ask her to tell me truly how many patients she
+has killed off in her professional career, her eyes glitter and she
+bursts out: "Aw, yu! What chake yu got, to be sure!"
+
+She has her share of professional pride, but nevertheless I should like
+to know how many corpses she really has laid out for burial--and what
+she thought the while.
+
+Usually she comes in just before supper-time:
+
+"Ain't yu gone yet? I know; yu got some mark or other to Seacombe. Come
+on! which o' the young ladies is't? Out wi' it! Which on 'em is't?"
+When I tell her that she is the best girl in Seacombe and that I won't
+give her the chuck until she finds me a mark as youthful as herself and
+a hundred times as rich, she says:
+
+"Then yu'm done! her won't hae nort still, 'cause I an't got nort, an'
+a hundred times nort be nothing--he-he-he! I knaws thiccy."
+
+The jokes, 'tis true, are poor. But the Tough Old Stick's enjoyment
+franks them all. You may fling a stinging fact in her face; tell her,
+if you like, that she could find plenty of marks for herself because,
+being old, she will have to die soon and then the poor fellow would be
+free again. "I know't!" she says, and flings you back another stinging
+fact. Admirable Old Stick! She never flinches at a fact, howsoever
+grisly it be.
+
+Above all, she revels in a little mild blasphemy; hardly
+blasphemy--imaginary details, say, about hell, in the manner of Mark
+Twain. "Aw, my dear soul!" she exclaims. "How yu du go on! Aw, my dear
+soul! Yu'm going to hell, sure 'nuff yu be!"
+
+[Sidenote: _AGNOSTICISM_]
+
+But her horror is only a pretence. She does not take such matters
+seriously. Indeed, few things have surprised me so much as the
+thoroughgoing agnosticism that prevails here. Uncle Jake is the
+religious member of the Widger family. For the rest, religion is the
+business of the clergy who are paid for it and of those who take it up
+as a hobby, including the impertinent persons who thrust hell-fire
+tracts upon the fisherfolk. "Us can't 'spect to know nort about it,"
+says Tony. "'Tain't no business o' ours. May be as they says; may be
+not. It don't matter, that I sees. 'Twill be all the same in a hunderd
+years' time when we'm a-grinning up at the daisy roots."
+
+Nevertheless, he is not atheistical, nor even wholly fatalistic. When
+his first wife was lying dead, he saw her in a dream with one of her
+dead babies in her arms, and he is convinced that that meant something
+very spiritual, although what it meant he does not care to enquire. The
+agnosticism refers not so much to immortality or the existence of a
+God, as to the religions, the nature of the God, the divinity of
+Christ, and so on.
+
+"Us don' know nort about that, n'eet does anybody else, I believe, an'
+all their education on'y muddles 'em when they comes to weigh up thic
+sort o' thing."
+
+[Sidenote: _SPARROWISM_]
+
+If the sparrows themselves had been acquainted with 'Are not two
+sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall to the
+ground without your Father,' their attitude towards religion might have
+resembled Tony's--a mixture of trust and _insouciance_, neither of
+them driven to any logical conclusion and both tempered by fatalism.
+"When yu got to die, yu got tu," says Tony, and it makes little
+difference to him whether the event has been decreed since the
+beginning of time, or whether it is to be decreed at some future date
+by a being so remote as God. The thing is, to accept the decree
+courageously.
+
+The children go to Sunday School, of course; it is convenient to have
+them out of the way while Sunday's dinner is being cooked and the
+afternoon snooze being taken. Besides, though the Sunday School
+teaching is a fearful hotch-potch of heaven, hell and self-interest,
+the tea-fights concerts and picnics connected with it are well worth
+going to. But the household religion remains a pure _sparrowism_,
+and an excellent creed it is for those of sufficient faith and courage.
+
+Of how the Sunday School teaching is translated by the children into
+terms of every day life, we had a fine example two or three weeks ago.
+Jimmy came home full of an idea that 'if you don' ast God to stop it,
+Satant 'll have 'ee,' and Mrs Widger asked him: "What's the difference
+then between God an' Satant?"
+
+"Ther ain't nort."
+
+"Yes, there is. What does God du?"
+
+"God don't do nort unless yu asks Him."
+
+"An' what does Satant du?"
+
+"Oh--I know!--Satant gets into yer 'art, an' gives 'ee belly-ache an'
+toothache."
+
+Not many days afterwards, Tommy was being sent to bed for getting his
+feet wet. "Yu daring rascal! I'll knock yer head off if yu du it again.
+Yu'll die, yu will! An' what'll yu du then?"
+
+"Go to heaven, o' course."
+
+"An' what do you think they'll say to 'ee there? Eh?"
+
+Tommy was puzzled.
+
+"You can ask 'em to send us better weather." I suggested.
+
+"Tell 'ee what I'll do," said Tommy with a prodigiously wise squint.
+"I'll take up a buckle-strap to thiccy ol' God, if 'er don't send
+better weather, an' then yu won't none on 'ee get sent to bed for wet
+feet!"
+
+
+19
+
+At a corner near here, there is a very blank cottage wall, and in
+the centre of it a little window. Behind the closed window, all
+day and every day, sits an old woman at her lace pillow. Some
+portraits--Rembrandt's especially--give one the impression that a
+shutter has suddenly been drawn aside; that behind the shutter we are
+allowed to watch for a moment or two a face so full of meaning as to
+be almost more than human. The same impression is given me by the old
+lace-maker in the window when I pass to and fro, and catch sight of
+her face so still, her hands so active, her bobbins so swift and,
+because of the intervening glass, so silent. How nervously the hands
+speed with the bobbins, how very deliberately with the pins that make
+the pattern! How hardly human it is!
+
+One evening, however, the window was open, children stood round in a
+group, and I heard the small click of the bobbins through the still
+air. The children were laughing, delighted with the old woman's
+swiftness. She that had been a picture, was become a living being.
+
+No doubt, she is working at her lace pillow now. She has several mouths
+to feed. I wonder does she earn as much as Grannie Pinn?
+
+
+20
+
+[Sidenote: _CONGERING_]
+
+This long time I have wished to go congering all night, but have been
+unable to do so for want of a mate. It is more than one man's work to
+haul a boat up the beach in daytime, let alone the middle of the night
+or at early dawn. If the _Moondaisy_'s old crew was here....
+
+Ah! those were days--when George and the Little Commodore and the Looby
+and myself used to row out with a swinging stroke at sundown to
+Elm-beech-tree[13] and Conger Pool. The choosing of the mark; the
+careful heaving of the sling-stone; the blinn, skate, pollack,
+spider-crabs, and conger eels, we used to catch; the fights with the
+conger in the dark or by the light of matches or of an old lantern that
+blew out when it was most wanted; the absurd way the crew turned up
+their noses at my nice tomato sandwiches and gobbled down stringy
+corned beef; their quiet slumber round the stern seats and my solitary
+watch amidships over all the lines, and at the sea-fire trailing in the
+flood-tide; their crustiness when I awoke them to shift our mark and
+their jubilation when a whopper was to be gaffed; the utter
+peacefulness of the night after they had gone to sleep again; our merry
+row home and hearty beaching of the boat; the cup of hot tea.... It is
+all clean gone. George is in the Navy and the Little Commodore is under
+a glass box of waxen flowers up on land. Did I bring back a catch
+alone, perhaps the old boat would be stove in.
+
+      [13] A spot found by getting an elm-tree on the cliffs in a line
+      with a beech-tree up on land.
+
+Tony, however, has been saying that, on the rough ground a mile or so
+out, good-sized conger can be caught by day. On Saturday, therefore, I
+collected gear from the Widger linhays, borrowed a painter and anchor,
+and, the wind being easterly, I luffed the _Moondaisy_ out a mile
+and a half south-east. There I dropped anchor.
+
+Tony had given me two mackerel for bait, one fresh and the other
+somewhat otherwise; that is to say it was merely fishmonger
+fresh--quite good enough for eating but hardly good enough for conger
+who, though they have a reputation for feeding on dead men, will only
+touch the freshest of bait. With the fresh mackerel I caught one large
+conger (it ripped in the sail a hole that took Mam Widger an hour to
+mend) and two dog-fish. Nothing at all would bite at the stale
+mackerel. The easterly sea was making a little and skatting in over the
+bows. Besides which, the _Moondaisy_ began to drag her anchor. My
+hand to jaw-and-tail fight with the conger had made me a little
+unsteady; had made my muscles feel as if they might string up with
+cramp; which is not good for stepping a heavyish mast and sailing a
+boat. So I stepped the mast and set sail, to make sure, and ran
+homewards with the wind almost abeam.
+
+We decided to save the conger for Sunday's dinner.
+
+Mrs Widger made a most savoury stew of it, and when Tony came in as
+usual, asking, "Be dinner ready, Missis?" she placed the stew on the
+table.
+
+Tony's face fell.
+
+"Be this my dinner, Annie?"
+
+"Iss, for sure."
+
+"_Thees?_"
+
+[Sidenote: _HOT BAKE_]
+
+"What d'yu think then?"
+
+"_Thees!_ Wer's yer baked spuds?"
+
+"Do' ee gude to hae a change. Ther's some cold taties to the larder if
+you likes to get 'em."
+
+"_Thees!_ Why, I wish thees yer conger hadn't never been catched!"
+
+"G'out!--Now then, you childern...."
+
+Tony picked over the fish, going _Tsch!_ for every bone his fingers
+came across.
+
+"Thee't look so sulky as an ol' cow," said Mam Widger.
+
+"Well, what do 'ee think? Thees yer.... Did 'ee ever see the like
+o'it?"
+
+Presently it occurred to him to peep inside the oven. His face
+brightened. "I know'd her 'ouldn't du me out o' me Sunday dinner. Bring
+it out, Missis. Sharp! Gie thiccy stuff to the cat. Baked spuds! What's
+Sunday wi'out baake? 'Tain't no day at all! I couldn' ha' put away an
+hour after thic."
+
+For the remainder of the meal, when Tony was not eating, he was
+singing; and several times he chucked Mam Widger under the chin, and
+she retorted: "G'out, yu cupboard-loving cat!"
+
+
+21
+
+This is the recipe for baked dinner:
+
+Turn out the children and turn on the oven. Into the middle of a large
+baking tin place a saucer piled up with a mixture of herbs (mainly
+parsley), one sliced onion and breadcrumbs, the whole made sticky with
+a morsel of dripping. Round about the saucer put a layer of large
+peeled potatoes, and on top of all, the joint. Set the baking tin on
+the hob and into it pour just enough warm water to run over the rim of
+the saucer. Soon after the water boils, transfer the whole to a fairly
+quick oven. When the meat is brown outside, slow the oven down. Serve
+piping hot from the oven, placing the tin on a folded newspaper and the
+joint, if large, on a hot plate.
+
+To dish up hot bake in the ordinary way would be to let the nature out
+of it. The smell is a wonderful blend, most hunger-provoking. True, the
+joint, unless pork or veal, is apt to be a little tough, but the taties
+are a delicious shiny brown, their soft insides soaked through and
+through with gravy. Bake is a meal in itself. Pudding thereafter is a
+work of supererogation--almost an impertinence.
+
+Mrs Widger's cookery, though sometimes a little greasy for one who does
+no great amount of manual labour and undergoes no excessive exposure,
+is far from bad.
+
+[Sidenote: _FOOD_]
+
+Food reformers; patrons of cookery schools where they try, happily in
+vain, to teach the pupils to prepare dishes no working man would
+adventure on; physical degenerates who fear that unless the working man
+imitates them, he will become as degenerate as they are, and quite
+unfit to do the world's rough work--forget that whereas they have only
+one staple food, if that, namely bread, the poor man has several staple
+dishes which he likes so well that he is loth to touch any other.
+
+One day we did have at my suggestion a rather fanciful supper. Tony
+tasted, ate, and cleared the dish. Then he asked: "An't 'ee got nort to
+make a meal on, Missis? no cold meat nor spuds?" He believes in the
+theory that good digestion waits on appetite rather than on digestible
+or pre-digested foods; that the meal which makes a man's mouth water is
+the best to eat; and that solid foods give solid strength. And if the
+same dish can make his mouth water nearly every day in the week, how
+much more fortunate is he than fickle gourmets!
+
+When I first came here, I used periodically to run after the
+flesh-pots. I used to sneak off to tea at a confectioner's. Now I
+seldom feed out of house--simply because I don't want to. We start the
+day about sunrise with biscuits and a cup of tea which I make and take
+up myself. (Mam Widger and Tony look so jolly in bed, her indoor
+complexion and white nightgown beside his blue-check shirt and
+magnificently tanned face, that I've dubbed them 'The Babes in the
+Wood.') For breakfast, we have fried mackerel or herrings, when they
+are in season; otherwise various mixtures of tough bacon and perhaps
+eggs (children half an egg each) and bubble and squeak.[14] Sometimes
+the children prefer kettle-broth,[15] but they never fail to clamour for
+'jam zide plaate.' Bake, hot or cold, and occasionally (mainly for me,
+I think) a plain pudding, or on highdays a pie, make up the dinner that
+is partaken of by all. But before the pudding is eaten, Tony and myself
+are already looking round to see that the kettle is on a hot part of
+the fire, and when the children are gone off to school, Mam Widger
+throws us out a cup o' tay each, with now and then a newly baked
+gentry-cake. Tony, who would like meat or a fry of fish for tea, has
+usually to content himself with bread and butter. The children go off
+to bed with a biscuit or a small chunk of cheese, and we may eat the
+same with pickles, or else fried or boiled fish if there is any in the
+house.... Supper, in fact, is the meal of many inventions, including
+all sorts of crabs, little lobsters, and such unsaleable fish as
+dun-cow [dog-fish], conger, skate or weever, together with
+dree-hap'orth, or a pint, of stout and bitter from the Alexandra. Just
+before turning in, Tony and myself have a glass of hot grog.
+
+      [14] Fried mixed vegetables.
+
+      [15] Bread broth with butter, or dripping, and water instead of
+      milk. A dash of skim milk is sometimes added.
+
+[Sidenote: _DRINK_]
+
+From such a list of our fare, it would seem as if we over-ate ourselves
+as consistently as the _en pension_ visitors at the hotels. (Mrs
+Widger, who has done a good deal of waiting, frequently tells us how
+manfully the visitors endeavour to eat their money's worth at the
+_tables d'hôte_). Tony's appetite--his habit of pecking at the food
+after a meal is over and the way he, and the children too if they have
+the chance, mop up pickles and Worcester sauce--is a continual joy to
+me. We do not drink much alcohol. On the other hand, the children are
+curiously discouraged from drinking cold water. Skim milk, tea, stout,
+ale, or even very dilute spirit is considered better for them--a
+prejudice which dates probably from the days before a pure water
+supply. Since, however, I who am known to possess a contemptible
+digestion, have been seen to drink down several glasses of cold water
+daily, and to take no hurt, the ban on it has been more or less
+removed.
+
+The above-mentioned goodies are distributed, it is true, over a good
+many days in the year, and I fancy that my being here drives up the
+scale of living somewhat. At all events, we do not go short. Waste on
+the one side, mainly arising from small eyes being bigger than small
+stomachs, is more than counterbalanced by a wonderful ability to
+swallow down gristle, rinds and hard bits without apparent harm.
+Granfer, indeed, says that he 'wouldn't gie a penny a pound for tender
+meat that don't give 'ee summut to bite at.' The children clamour
+always for 'jam zide plaate.' Without that or the promise of it, they
+often refuse to eat anything. They do not believe me when I tell them
+that they have more food than ever I did at their age; that I had to
+eat a piece of bread and a potato for each slice of meat; that jam and
+butter together was not thought good for me except on birthdays and
+Sundays. "G'out!" they say. "Ye lie!" Sometimes their mother is
+irritated into calling them 'cawdy li'l devils.' It does seem almost a
+pity that they have not had any of the discipline of starvation. The
+Yarty children who go half the day, and only too often whole days, on
+empty stomachs, are certainly as happy as ours: they never cry because
+dinner is not so good as they expect, and if we give them half a pie
+their earth is straightway heavenly. Tony thinks now and then how hard
+it will go with his children if the money runs short, as it has done
+and may easily do again. "I mind the time," he says, "when I used to
+come in hungry and kneel down beside me mother wi' me head across her
+lap, crying! Her crying too; mother 'cause her hadn't got nort to eat
+in house, and me 'cause her didn't get nort, and 'cause her cuden't get
+nort, not even half an ounce o' tay, not havin' no money in house to
+get it with. An' then I used to go out an' try an' earn something,
+twopence maybe, just to stay us on."
+
+And that it is which has helped to make Tony the man he is.
+
+
+22
+
+[Sidenote: _A SUDDEN STORM_]
+
+Seldom does one catch the exact moment of an abrupt change in nature.
+Yesterday, however, I watched a wonderful thing--the oncoming of a
+sudden storm.
+
+Uncle Jake had been holding forth on the beach. "Us ain't had no
+equinoctial gales thees year, not proper like us used to. This season's
+going to break up sudden and wi' thunder, an' when it du, look out! I'd
+rather be here now than out in the offing, for all the sea's so calm.
+Ah!" pointing to a dinghy that was shoving off the beach, "they bwoys
+'ould laugh in me faace if I was to go an' say, 'Don' go. 'Tisn't fit.'
+But _I_ knows."
+
+I left him gazing seaward over the stern of his drifter, and walked up
+to the Western Cliffs. The air, scarcely a breath from the north-east,
+was oppressive in the extreme; very warm, too, for autumn. The sea was
+almost unruffled; the sky to westward magnificently heaped up with what
+Uncle Jake calls wool-packs. A fog crept over all the southern horizon,
+dimming with its misty approach the eastern headlands and making the
+sea like a dulled mirror. I felt, rather than heard, distant thunder.
+
+The fog lifted. It hung low in the sky, a sulky blue cloud. Beneath it,
+the sea, still unruffled, was of a dense blue that, so it seemed, would
+have been black altogether but for its transparency and the refracted
+light within it.
+
+Going on, I walked for some distance beneath a semi-arch of the
+wind-bowed lichenous thorns that grow upon the cliff-edge.
+
+Without any warning--maybe there was a little hum in the air--a
+leafless bough, like a withered arm with its sinews ragged out, bent
+over across my path. The sea gulls screamed and screeched; they flocked
+out from the cliff-ledges, and with still wings they towered up into
+the sky. Every twig and leaf began to play a diabolic symphony. Where
+the hedge ended I was blown back upon my heels.--It was more than half
+a gale of wind from the south-east.
+
+The horizon was become clear; jagged like a saw. Divergent strings,
+marvellously interlaced on the water, streamed in with the wind,
+broadened into ribands fluttering over green-grey patches. The whole
+sea trembled, as if life were being breathed into it. White spots,
+curling wavelets, dotted it; then broke abroad as white-horses in full
+mad landward career. The whistle in the grass rose louder and shriller;
+the boughs bent further and let fly their autumn foliage horizontally
+into the wind; the gulls screeched wildly and more wildly; the chafing
+of the surf below took possession of the air....
+
+[Sidenote: _UNCLE JAKE ON FOOLS_]
+
+I saw the dinghy put about and run for shore.
+
+When I got back, Uncle Jake was still watching.
+
+"Ah!" he said. "Ah! Ah! I don't like they centre-keel boats wi' bumes
+[booms]. They'm all right for fine weather, but.... Ah! They'm goin' to
+gybe if they ain't careful. There! Did 'ee see? Why don't they ease
+their sheet off more? If the wind catches thic sail the wrong side....
+Did 'ee see that? Thic bume was all but coming over. Gybe, gybe, yu
+fules! Yu'm capsized if yu du, wi' thic heavy bume. Look'se! Have 'em
+got their drop-keel up, I wonder? Not they! They thinks that's the same
+as extra ballast. 'Twon't make no difference if a sea takes charge of
+'em. Ah! did 'ee see the leach o' the sail flutter? Nearly over! Let
+'em gybe, if they'm set on it. 'Twill upset they.--O-ho! They'm goin'
+to haul down an' row for it. Best thing the likes o' they can du. They
+calls me an ol' fule for joggin' along in my ol' craft while they has
+drop-keels and bumes, all the latest. I've a-know'd thees yer sea for
+fifty year an' more, an' I say, I tell thee, that two oars be better
+than two reefs any day. Le'but the seas take charge o' one o' they
+boats running afore the wind.... All up! They spins like a top, an'
+gybes.... 'Tis all up! Howsbe-ever, they'm saafe now, if they don't
+sheer broadside coming ashore. But _they_ won't learn their lesson; not
+they. They maakes fun o' us as knows.
+
+"There! the wind be softening now. I've a-know'd they thunder-puffs
+come down on 'ee like a hurricane. If they lasted long.... 'Tis blowin'
+out in the Channel still. The horizon's black--see? 'Twill back, an'
+blow from the nor'east to-night, in here, but 'twill be east to
+south-east in the Channel, an' wi' thees flood tide runnin' up against
+it, yu'll see the say make!"
+
+
+23
+
+It did blow during the night; it must have been rough out in the
+Channel; then the wind dropped to a light breeze. But before ever Tony
+and myself were out of doors we heard the heave and thump of the long
+easterly swell.
+
+We hauled the _Cock Robin_ down to the water's edge, put in five bags
+of ballast ("Doesn't look 's if it's blow'd itself out," said Tony) and
+a spare oar--and stood and looked.
+
+"Be it wuth it?" he questioned.
+
+"Not much wind now, is there?"
+
+"Can the two o'us shove off in thees yer swell? Can ee see any o' the
+other boats shoving down?"
+
+"No...."
+
+"There won't be much frighting to-day, for sure. Must make the day gude
+if us can. Yer's a calm. Jump in quick. Shove! Shove, casn'! Row. Lemme
+take an oar. Keep her head on. _Pull_--thic west'ard oar!"
+
+[Sidenote: _PLUCK--_]
+
+We were fairly afloat outside the surf-line, both of us very red in the
+face. We upsailed--and away. After a few minutes' worry, deciding
+whether the mainsail and mizzen without the foresail would be enough,
+on a sea so much bigger than the wind, and looking for the _Cock
+Robin's_ chronic leak, the bouncing, tumbling and splashing, the
+heave up and the mighty rushes down, put us both in high spirits. We
+decided to hoist the foresail after all. "Let her bury her head if her
+wants to!"
+
+Accordingly, I went for'ard to hook the foresail's tack to the bumkin
+[short iron bowsprit]. The thimble was too small. As I sat on the bow
+and leaned out over, my hand all but dipped into the waves. A stream of
+water did once run up my sleeve. Looking round and seeing Tony smile, I
+yelled back aft: "What be smiling 'bout, Tony?" He replied: "I was
+a-gloryin' in yer pluck."
+
+Which was very pleasant to hear--for a moment.
+
+My position on the bow of the boat was absolutely safe, and I knew it.
+There was no risk at all, except of a bruise or a wetting. My toe was
+firmly hooked under the for'ard thwart, and short of my leg breaking, I
+could not have lost my hold. Besides, even had I fallen overboard, I
+could easily have swum round while Tony 'bouted the boat. Tony was
+deceived. There was no pluck.
+
+His words set me thinking, and I had to recognise, rather bitterly,
+that what I call pluck did not form a great part of my birthright. I
+find myself too apprehensive by nature; imagine horrid possibilities
+too keenly; and indeed would far rather hurt myself than think about
+doing so. I suppose I have a certain amount of courage, for I am
+usually successful in making myself do what I funk; but I like doing it
+none the better for that. And up to the present, I have not failed
+badly in tight corners. On the contrary, I find (like most nervy
+people) that actual danger, once arrived, is curiously exhilarating;
+that it makes one cooler and sharper, even happy. One has faced the
+worst in imagination, and the reality is play beside it.
+
+[Sidenote: _AND COURAGE_]
+
+In the dictionary, _courage_ is defined as 'The quality which enables
+men to meet danger without fear.' _Pluck_ is merely defined as courage.
+There is, or ought to be, an essential difference between the meaning
+of the two words. Courage is a premeditated matter, into which the
+will enters, whilst pluck is an unpremeditated expression of the
+personality, an innate quality which, so to speak, does not need to be
+set in operation by the will. Courage rises to the occasion; pluck is
+found ready for it. Would it not, therefore, be more correct to say
+that _pluck_ is the quality which enables men to meet danger without
+fear: and that _courage_ is the quality which enables men to meet
+danger with fear overcome? The greatest courage might go farther than
+the greatest pluck, but for occasions on which either can be used,
+pluck, the more spontaneous, is also the superior. Most of us are
+irregularly, erratically plucky; one man with horses, who funks the
+sea; another man at sea who is afraid of horses. One man who fears live
+fists may think nothing of watching by the dead. Another who stands up
+pluckily in a fight, refuses to go near a corpse. One of the pluckiest
+men I know 'don't like dogs.' Pluck runs in streaks, but courage, to
+whatever degree a man possesses it, runs through him from top to
+bottom.
+
+All the churches in the world may talk about sin and virtue, and make
+most admirable and subtle distinctions. We know very well in our hearts
+that pluck and courage are the great twin virtues, and that cowardice
+is the fundamental sin. The perfectly plucky and courageous man would
+never sin meanly; he would have no need to do so. He, and not the beefy
+brute or the intellectual paragon, would be Superman. The Christ, it
+often seems to me, keeps his hold on the world, and will keep it, not
+because he was God-man or man-God, not because he was born normally or
+abnormally, not because he redeemed mankind or didn't, not because he
+provided a refuge for souls on their beam-ends, but because, of all the
+great historic and legendary figures, he is the one who convinces us
+that he was never afraid. In him, as we picture him, courage and pluck
+were the same thing, and perfect.
+
+But the present point is, or points are: How many men whose pluck and
+courage I have admired so much, have deceived me as I deceived Tony?
+And what combination of pluck and courage is it which enables these
+fishermen to follow their constantly dangerous occupation with equable
+mind; which, indeed, enables so many working men to follow their
+dangerous trades? For it is one thing to approach danger by way of
+sport, and another to work for a livelihood _in_ danger.
+
+One's analytics fail. It is, however, stupid merely to say, "Ah, they
+are inured to it. Familiarity has bred contempt." Seafaring men realise
+the dangers of the sea a good deal better than anyone else. Familiarity
+with the sea does not breed contempt; the older the seaman the more
+careful he is. I have met old seamen, heroes in their day, whom one
+would almost call nervous on the water. And in any case, what a state
+of mind it is--to be _inured_ to danger! to be on familiar terms with
+the possibility of death! to be able to flout, to play with, to live
+on, that which all men fear!
+
+
+24
+
+[Sidenote: _LUSCOMBE_]
+
+I have been up the coast to have dinner and a chat with my old
+coastguard friend, Ned Luscombe, the man who taught me knots and
+splices during the night watches when I was a visitor here years ago.
+To go to his house now is very pleasant. For a long time after their
+first baby died on the day they entered a new house, before even the
+beds were up, it seemed as if Mrs Luscombe, a gentle, delicate woman,
+'with the deuce of a will of her own,' Luscombe says, was going to
+decline and die too. The new baby, which was to have killed her, has
+put new life into her instead. They are touchingly proud of it, and
+very happy altogether. I do like to see married couples happy.
+
+Luscombe himself is rather an extraordinary man; short, vivacious and
+solid; full of generous impulses, yet very well able to look after his
+own interests. It was he who dared the neighbourhood, and caused his
+wife to invite often to their house a crippled girl that had been raped
+by a scoundrel and then given the cold-shoulder by everyone else.
+Something of a sea-lawyer, he is one of the sharpest-brained--I don't
+say deepest-thinking--men I have ever come across. Hardly educated at
+all as a boy, he races through books (he read my Cary's _Dante_ in a
+week), extracts the main gist of them, and is always learning some new
+thing, from shorthand to cooking, though he has no need to do much but
+behave himself for a pension. Almost harshly honest, he yet brings out
+with pride a large edition of Pope that he 'nicked' from the
+second-hand bookstall of a heathen Chinee at Singapore. That little
+episode will not make a very big blot, I imagine, on the Book of
+Judgment. If I remember aright, the British Navy was then occupied in
+protecting land or concessions that the nation itself had 'nicked' from
+the heathen.
+
+Luscombe's opinion on books, men and things, unless it has been
+borrowed from a newspaper, is always well worth hearing. His light of
+nature, by which he judges, is exceptionally powerful.
+
+While we were smoking in his front room--furnished with a curious
+mixture of cheap English things and beautiful Eastern curios--a steward
+from one of the great liners came in. He began talking about the
+behaviour in a gale of a rich snobbish Jew and the behaviour of Jews
+generally on shipboard, and was inclined to take up the high, superior,
+patriotic attitude that Jews, not being Englishmen, were necessarily a
+nuisance in a storm. "Well," said Luscombe, "all I know is, when a man
+tells me he's never been afraid of anything anywhere, I tells him to
+his face, 'You'm a damn'd liar!' One day, in a pub at Plymouth, there
+was a man--a bluejacket too--boasting he'd never known what fear was,
+and I up and asked him, 'Eh, chum? Did you say _Never_?'
+
+"'Never!' he says. 'Never in me life!'
+
+"'You'm a liar then,' says I.
+
+"'We'll see,' says he--goodish-sized chap.
+
+"'You'm a bloody liar,' says I, 'and what's more, you ain't truthful.'
+
+"So we squared up there and then, and the bung and his men hyked us out
+into the street and we was having our scrap out when the police came
+up. He ran! 'Eh, Mr Liar!' I yelled after him. 'Did you say you was
+never afraid?'
+
+"If I hadn't wasted time doing that, I shouldn't have got caught
+either. Very nearly landed me in chokey, that did. We was shipmates
+afterwards, me and that man, and very good friends. He's a warrant
+officer now."
+
+[Sidenote: _LOWER DECK TO QUARTER-DECK_]
+
+Thence the conversation passed naturally to promotion from the ranks.
+"I don't believe in it, not as a general rule," said Luscombe.
+"Officers ought to be officers, and men ought to be men, and a ship's
+always more comfortable when both keep their places. Rankers as
+officers are apt to be bullies: that we all know jolly well. And
+besides that, the likes of us can't keep our kecker up the same as
+gen'lemen, and therefore I says we ain't fit for the quarter-deck, not
+yet awhile. Tisn't that the lower deck ain't so brave as the
+quarter-deck, because it is; only it can't keep it up so long; it gets
+discouraged like, when 'tis a long job, specially when 'tis one of
+those waiting-an-doing-nothing jobs. We ain't bred up to it, and our
+fathers wasn't, and there's no good to be got out of trying to pretend
+'tisn't so."
+
+We argued on. Luscombe would not yield an inch of his position. I can't
+say offhand how far history bears him out, but I fancy that he is right
+to this extent: the lower deck has less flexibility of mind. It cannot
+view a depressing situation from so many sides at once. It is not, for
+instance, so quick to see the underlying humour of an emergency; not so
+ready to appreciate the so-called irony of fate. It cannot so easily
+turn round and laugh at itself and its predicament. So, though the
+lower deck's courage may be fully as great as, or greater than, that
+of the upper deck, it is applied more constantly, with less mental
+diversion, and therefore it tires sooner. Hence, it _may_ not be
+so effective.
+
+The argument undoubtedly has a true bearing on that sort of promotion
+which, in the prevailing educational cant, is called giving every poor
+boy (by free education, scholarships and other lures) his chance of
+climbing to the top of the ladder--as if success in life were one great
+tall ladder instead of many ladders of varying builds and heights. In
+attempting to justify modern educational policy, its victims are egged
+on too fast into a field of commercial, intellectual, or emotional
+stress for which they lack the fundamental grit, or rather for which
+the fundamental grit they do possess is not adapted, nor can be adapted
+in a generation. Their spirit, fine and valuable for the old purpose
+perhaps, is not suited to the new. Therefore, of good workmen _in
+posse_ we make bad clerks and shopmen _in esse_; of good clerks
+detestable little bureaucrats or mean-minded commercial men, and so on.
+Possible wives and mothers we turn into female creatures. And Merrie
+England swarms with makeshift folk and breakdowns.
+
+Happily nature, heredity, sometimes intervenes, and at adolescence the
+sharp boy, the pride of the examination room, develops into quite a
+nice commonplace young man, like the missionaries' nigger boy, and is
+saved, if he be not already committed to an unsuitable career.
+Otherwise, what mental deformity and slaughter! It was well said that
+education--what is called education--was the cruellest thing ever
+forced upon the poor. Mam Widger agrees. She knows her two boys are
+above the average in brains, but she says: "I'd far rather for them to
+fend for themselves an' make gude fishermen like their father or gude
+sailors like their uncles, than for 'em to be forced on by somebody
+else to what they ain't fitted for. 'Tis God helps them as helps
+themselves, they du reckon, but I can't see as he helps them as is
+pushed."
+
+
+25
+
+Uncle Jake allows us fine weather for the Regatta. "But when it du
+break up, after this yer logie [dull, hazy, calm] spell, look out!" he
+says. "Iss; look out!"
+
+[Sidenote: _WINKLING_]
+
+The day before yesterday, we were having a yarn together on the Front.
+"Must go t'morrow an' pick Jemima Cayley some wrinkles [periwinkles],"
+he said. "I got a lot o' work to do wi' my taties up to my plat
+[allotment], but I promised Jemima her should hae 'em for Regatta, an'
+her shall, if I lives to get 'em. Her says my wrinkles be twice so
+heavy as anybody else's what her has--an' so they be, proper gert
+gobbets! They t'other fellows don' know where to go for 'em, but I
+du--master wrinkles, waiting there for Jake to pick 'em. On'y I ain't
+goin' to tell they beer-barrels where 'em be. Not I!--Wude yu like to
+come? Nobody goes where I goes."
+
+"Where's that?"
+
+"Ah! Down to Longo. Yu'll see, if yu comes."
+
+"Haven't yu got a mate for it then?"
+
+[Sidenote: _UNCLE JAKE_]
+
+"_Mate!_ I'd rather go be myself than wi' some o' they bladder-headed
+friends o' brewers. _They_ don' like wrinklin' wi' Jake; makes 'em blow
+too much when they has to carry a bushel o' wrinkles, like I've a-done
+often, over the rocks an' up the cliff, two or dree miles home. They
+Double-X Barrels can't du that. Lord! can't expect 'em to.--_We'll_ go
+in the _Moondaisy_ t'morrow, an' then if we can't sail home, we can
+row, an' if it comes on a fresh wind, we'll haul her up to Refuge Cove
+an' go'n look how my orchards be getting on."
+
+It is good to hear Uncle Jake talk about the work that nobody else will
+do. (The exposure alone would be too much for many of them.) His face
+wrinkles up within its grey picture-frame beard, his keen yet wistful
+eyes open wide, and he draws up that youthful body of his--clad in
+faded blue jumper and torn trousers--on which the head of a venerable
+old man seems so incongruously set. He is the owner of a big drifter
+which hardly pays her expenses; he feels that taking out pleasure
+parties is no work for a fisherman--'never wasn't used to be at the
+beck an' call o' they sort o' people when I wer young';--and therefore
+he picks up a living, laborious but very independent, between high and
+low tide mark for many miles east and west of Seacombe. Nobody learns
+exactly when or where he goes, nor what little valuables are in the old
+sack that he carries. He seldom sleeps for more than two hours on end;
+has breakfast at midnight, dinner in the early morning, and tea-supper
+only if it happens to be handy; and he feeds mainly on bread, cheese,
+sugar and much butter, with an occasional feast of half a dozen
+mackerel at once, or a skate or a small conger. Singularly
+straightforward in all his dealings, a little of the old West-country
+wrecking spirit yet survives in him, and he enjoys nothing better than
+smuggling jetsam past the coastguards. Social position saves no one
+from hearing what Uncle Jake thinks. His tongue is loaded with scorn
+and sarcasm, but his heart holds nothing but kindness. He will jeer and
+taunt a man off the Front, and give him money round the corner or food
+in house. His nicknames are terrible--they stick. Few would care to
+turn and fight such an old man, and if they did he would almost
+certainly knock them into the dust or throw them into the sea. He is
+childless; and, since her illness several years ago, his wife, an
+untidy woman with beautiful eyes, has been scatterbrained and more
+trouble than use, a spender of his savings. He nursed her himself for
+many months. He does most of the housework now. He may remark on his
+wife, if he knows you very well, but about the childlessness he never
+talks.
+
+At eight in the morning we made sail with the wind just north of east.
+The little _Moondaisy_ was full of sacks, old boots and gear. Past
+Refuge Cove we sailed, past Dog Tooth Ledge, and across the out-ground
+of Landlock Bay, which holds the last long stretch of pebble beach for
+some miles down. Uncle Jake pointed to the western end of it. "If ever
+yu'm catched down here by a sou'wester, yu can al'ays run ashore, just
+there--calm as a mill-pond no matter how 'tis blowing. Yu can beach
+there when yu can't beach to Seacombe for the roughness o' the sea.
+Aye, I've a-done it! But yu can't get out o' Landlock Bay, though I
+mind when you could climb up the cliff jest to the east'ard o' thic
+roozing [landslip]. Howsbe-ever, 'tis a heavy gale from the south-east
+on a long spring tide as'll drive 'ee out o' thic cave there where the
+beach urns up. Now yu knows that: 'tisn't all o'em does."
+
+Similar bits of lore or reminiscence did he give me about every few
+yards of the coastline. Most merrily had the easterly wind and a
+following sea brought us down. Now we drew near the rocks, where at
+high tide the land drops sheer to the water. In the dry sunshine, such
+a sparkle was on the waves, such a shimmer on the high red cliffs, that
+it was hard to follow Uncle Jake when he said, as if he revered the
+place, "_'Tis_ an ironbound show! _'Tis_ a shop! Poor devils, what gets
+throwed up here! But I know where ther's some fine copper bolts waiting
+for me. I'll hae 'em! I've had some on 'em, an' I'll hae the rest when
+they rots out o' the timbers. Year '63 that wreck was--lovely vessel,
+loaded wi' corn. I mind it well. _'Twas_ a night!"
+
+[Sidenote: _AN IRONBOUND SHOW_]
+
+We ran the _Moondaisy_ ashore at Brandey-Keg Cove--a little beach
+running up into a deep gloomy cave where the smugglers used to store
+their cargoes and haul them up over the cliff. "Us can walk down to
+Lobster Ledge an' west from there to Tatie Rock. I knows where they
+master gobbets be, if nobody an't had 'em--an' nobody an't. They don'
+like this iron-bound shop. They leaves it to Jake. But they wuden't, if
+they know'd what was here."
+
+I ate some of my breakfast while Uncle Jake was changing his boots and
+shifting his outer clothing. He would accept only one of my small
+cheese sandwiches. "I got some bread and butter here," he said, but I
+'took partic'lar notice,' as Tony puts it, that he ate none of the
+bread and butter. And he refused to take a second sip of my tea because
+his sensitive nose detected that there had been whiskey in the bottle.
+
+As we walked along the rocks, he placed above high-tide mark what bits
+of wreckage he could find, and kept a sharp look-out for any rabbits
+which might have fallen over the cliff. The only two we found, however,
+had been partially eaten by sea-gulls and rats. "Let 'em hae 'em an'
+welcome," said Uncle Jake. "The winter's coming. I can't think how they
+poor gulls lives when all the sea round about is a hustle o' froth. I
+al'ays feeds 'em when I can. Don't yu think that _they_ gets hungry
+tu?"
+
+At Lobster Ledge--a jumble of peaked rocks with pools between--he left
+his sack conspicuously on the top of a high stone, and hopped--seemed
+to hop--down to a pool. "They'm here!" he cried. I heard them
+clatter-clatter into his old cake tin, and then a tin-full rattle into
+his sack. On those rocks, where few can step at all without great care,
+he raced about, bent down double, and jumped and glided as actively as
+an acrobat--a veritable rock-man. "Come here!" he called. "Jest yu turn
+over thic stone. Ther's some there. My senses, what gobbets they be! If
+they ther fuddle-heads what goes nosing about Broken Rocks, on'y
+know'd...."
+
+Underneath the stone, clinging to it and lying on the bed of the pool,
+were so many large winkles that instead of picking them out, I found it
+quicker to sweep up handfuls of loose stuff and then to pick out the
+refuse from the winkles. When Uncle Jake came across an unusually good
+pocket he would call me to it and hop on somewhere else. There was an
+element of sport in catching the dull-looking gobbets so many together.
+I soon got to know the likely stones--heavy ones that wanted coaxing
+over,--and discovered also that the winkles hide themselves in a green,
+rather gelatinous weed, fuzzy like kale tops, from which they can be
+combed with the fingers. They love, too, a shadowed pool which is
+tainted a little, but not too much, by decaying vegetable matter. Uncle
+Jake likes the stones turned back and then replaced 'as you finds 'em.'
+
+[Sidenote: _WHAT GOBBETS THEY BE!_]
+
+I emptied my baler, holding perhaps a quart, into the ballast-bag. How
+one's back ached! How old and rheumaticy had one's knees suddenly
+become! Uncle Jake feels nothing of that, for all his sixty-five years.
+He still skipped from pool to pool. He flung me a lobster. "There! put
+that in your bag for tay. Tide's dead low. The wind's dying away: sun's
+burnt it up. Shuden' wonder if it don't come in sou'west, an' if it du
+we'll hae a fair wind home along.--Well, how du 'ee like it? Eh?"
+
+"All right."
+
+"Ah! yu ought to be down here in the winter, like I been, when you got
+to put your hands wet into your pockets to get 'em warm enough to feel
+the gobbets--aye, to hold 'em! Then carry 'em five mile home on your
+back to make 'ee warm again."
+
+So we went on: grab, grab, grab! clatter-clatter! rattle! We talked
+less and worked harder, because we were tired. The tide crept up. The
+wind veered to south-east and strengthened. "'Tis time to be off out of
+thees yer," said Uncle Jake. "The lop'll rise when the flid tide makes.
+Yu may know everything there is to know about fishing, but," he added
+grimly, "if yu don' know when to be off, 'twill all o'it be no gude to
+'ee some day. Blast thees wind! We'll hae to row home now, or ratch out
+a couple o' miles to fetch in."
+
+We shouldered our sacks for the half-mile walk to the _Moondaisy_.
+Walk.... Scramble! Uncle Jake seemed to glide from rock to rock, but
+with two or three stone weight awkwardly perched on my shoulder, the
+wet running down my neck and an arm going numb, I slithered down the
+weed-covered slopes in a very breakneck fashion. I rather felt for the
+bladderheads who refuse to go wrinkling far from home.
+
+[Sidenote: _CAUGHT BY THE TIDE_]
+
+Afloat again, we used the winkles for ballast in place of shingle. The
+lop _had_ made, and was against us. We rowed up Landlock Bay to the
+western side of Dog Tooth Ledge. Uncle Jake made an exclamation and
+stood up. "What's that? Whoever's that? There! down there to Lobster
+Ledge! A gen'leman an' lady, looks so. How did us come to miss they?
+Look! They'm sittin' down, the fules!--Hi, yu! Hi! Hi!--They'm catched.
+When yu see the water washing over the Dog's Tooth, yu can't get round
+the ledge wi'out swimming.--Hi, yu! Hi!--They'm in for a night o'it
+sure, till the tide falls, if we don' take 'em round to Refuge Cove.
+Ther's nowhere there where they be, to get upon land.--Hi! Hi!
+Yu!--They'm mazed. An' her an't got no stockings on nuther.--Hi! hi!
+Hurry up!--Can't bide here all day. The flid and the sea's making
+fast."
+
+They came on at a leisurely pace. The Dog's Tooth was continuously
+awash. Spray broke on it. "D'yu know," said Uncle Jake when they were
+near enough, "that yu'm catched by the tide? Yu'm in for a night o'it
+on this yer beach, wi'out yu swims round the ledge or lets we row yu to
+the lane in Refuge Cove. Yu can't get up on land herefrom."
+
+"Oh...." said the man. "We'd better come on board your boat then."
+
+It took Uncle Jake nearly half-an-hour to row the three-quarters of a
+mile across the tide-rip on the ledge and into Refuge Cove. I carefully
+refrained from doing anything to lead them to suppose that they were
+aboard other than a fishing boat. It was Uncle Jake's expedition: his
+the prospective reward. When I helped the man ashore, he put some
+coppers into my hand. "There's threepence for the old man's tobacco,"
+he said with an air of great benevolence. I was too surprised to speak:
+I pushed off and then burst into a laugh.
+
+"What did 'er give 'ee?"
+
+"Threepence. _Threepence!_ For your tobacco!"
+
+"Thank yu. I don't use tobacco. Yu'd better keep thic donation. They'd
+ha' catched their death o' cold there all night, an' there ain't no
+other boats down here along, nor won't be. That's what they reckons
+their bloody lives be worth, an' that's what the lives of the likes o'
+they _be_ worth, tu! Dreepence! My senses...."
+
+We roared with laughter. It put heart into us for our stiff row home
+against wind, wave and tide. When I went for'ard to place the cut-rope
+ready, Uncle Jake had to call me aft again: spite of his strength the
+boat was being beaten to leeward.
+
+It was nearly four o'clock when we had hauled up and were carrying the
+winkles on our backs down one of the untidy little roadways into Under
+Town. No dinner or high-tea was waiting for Uncle Jake. The house was
+unswept. How draggled the little bits of fern in the old china pots
+looked! The fire was out; the hearth piled up with ashes; and on the
+table stood a basin of potatoes in water, most of them unpeeled.
+
+Uncle Jake came to a standstill, acutely alive in the midst of a
+domestic deadness. He raised himself upright beneath his load of
+winkles. "That's what I got to put up wi'," he said. "An't had a bite
+since breakfast at four by the clock this morning, 'cept thic sandwich
+o' yours. Tis a wonder how I du put up wi' it. I don' know for sure."
+
+[Sidenote: _MEASURING UP_]
+
+"Thees is what I got to put up wi'!" he repeated when Mrs Jake came in
+from a neighbour's.
+
+"I forgot," she said with a gay high-pitched little laugh which had in
+it a tang of acquiescent despair--the echo of a mind that has ceased
+fighting anything, even itself.
+
+"Forgot! Yu forgets!" Then in a softer tone: "Gie us the quart cup."
+
+He emptied my winkles out upon the stone floor, knelt down, and
+measured them back into the ballast-bag: "one--two--three--four, that's
+one--five--six--seven--eight, that's two pecks--nine--ten--half a peck
+over; good for you, skipper!" He had four pecks himself, together with
+several small lobsters which he threw out to me.
+
+"But you'll eat those...."
+
+"No, I shan't. Don't want 'em. Take 'em in home for yer tay."
+
+Then he hunted out of an inside breast-pocket a screw of newspaper, and
+from it took a half-crown piece:
+
+"That's your share."
+
+"But...."
+
+"Go on! If you hadn' a-come I should ha' been the poorer by more'n
+that, an' that's what one o' they beery bladderheads would ha' had if
+they'd a-come--on'y I won't hae 'em 'long wi' me. Better yu to hae it
+than one o' they, to gie to the brewer. I wishes 'ee to take it. Yu've
+earned it, an' thank yu for your help. _I_ done all right out
+o'it."
+
+
+26
+
+The Regatta has gone off well. The day was fine, the wind nor'west and
+not too squally. There was a brave show of bunting; very many people
+and several bands came down to the short Front; and there were races on
+the water, in the water, and, in the evening, on land. The sea
+sparkled. The place was all of a flutter. Uncle Jake, irritated by the
+invasion of his beach, became most scornful over the abundance of high
+starched collars, and the kid gloves of the shop-assistants. Some of
+the young Seacombe braves collected round to tease him and, if
+possible, to work him into one of his famous passions. But they dared
+not so much as nudge him; he is too earnest, too vigorous. He lashed
+them off with his tongue. And when a dinghy capsized through trying to
+sail off the wind in a squall, it was the old man who was quickest at
+the water's edge with a punt, and first on the spot, although a
+four-oared boat raced out to the rescue.
+
+[Sidenote: _REGATTA_]
+
+Some of the Widgers won races, I believe. One takes no great note of
+prizes: they are too small. The Regatta is not primarily an affair of
+the fisherfolk; to take any great part in it would be to neglect their
+own work; and when they do race, they have a neat method of defeating
+the patronage of the townsfolk who provide prize-money in order that
+they and the visitors may enjoy the spectacle of fishermen (in fisher
+phrase) pulling their insides out for nort. The prize-money is pooled
+and divided among all the competitors. In consequence, the races are
+rowed and sailed with great dignity, and many of the visitors excite
+themselves halfway to delirium over the extreme--the make-believe
+closeness of the finishes. It is not very sporting perhaps, but
+indulgence in the sporting spirit is for those who can afford it. The
+Seacombe fisherfolk can't.
+
+A confounding number of the Widger family and its connexions arrived by
+boat, road and rail. Two or three grand teas were provided one after
+the other. Mrs Widger--looking really very young, alert, and
+pretty--packed the children off to the beach with gentry-cakes in their
+hands. Well she did so, for every chair in the kitchen was occupied by
+some relative, and the display of best clothes was most alarming. Worst
+of all, one party had brought the family idiot--a simpering, lollopy
+creature, stiff in the wrong places, who could not feed himself
+properly. With a vigorous tapping of the forehead, he was pointed out
+to me. "He's a little deeficient, you know, sir--something lacking."
+The idiot, finding himself the centre of attraction, fairly crowed with
+delight. "Ou-ah!" he went. "Ou-ah! ou-ah!"
+
+On the pretext that a boat wanted hauling up, I escaped, with a piece
+of bread and jam in my hand, like the children.
+
+A man of slightly unsober dignity accosted me in the Gut, and asked if
+Jim somebody-or-other was within. "Him and me don't speak, nor eet
+meet," he explained. "I won't hae nort to do wi' he, nor enter the
+house where he is, for all we be related.--Come an' have a drink 'long
+wi' me, sir; now du; I asks 'ee.--'Tis safer, yu know, for us not to
+meet."
+
+For the second time I lied, and escaped.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE VETERANS' RACE_]
+
+Uncle Jake ran up from the beach. "Yer!" he said, "there's a race to
+Saltmeadow, a veteran's race, for men over fifty. Yu come wi' me, an'
+I'll go in for it--an' beat the lot, I will. I knows I can." Off we
+went, Uncle Jake in a high excitement. At the centre of the big oblong
+ring, two clean-built jumpers, men in the heyday of their strength,
+were making a local record for the high jump. Uncle Jake shouted out
+praise and sympathy to them. We found our way to where the veterans
+were grouped together, encouraging each other to enter with much foul
+language--which made them feel young again, no doubt. What a lot they
+were! some aged to thinness, others become fat and piggish. Only Uncle
+Jake appeared quite sound in wind and limb. He took off his boots and
+stockings, walked into the ring with a fine imitation of the athlete's
+swagger combined with a curious touch of shyness. "Go it Uncle Jake!"
+they shouted. At the end of the first lap, he found himself so far
+ahead that he threw his old round sailor's cap high into the air and
+caught it, and he skipped along to the winning-post like a young lamb.
+A great cheer was echoed from cliff to cliff. Uncle Jake has not spoken
+his mind all his life for nothing. Seacombe does not unanimously like
+him, but it has the sense to be rather proud of him. A veterans' race
+is usually a sad spectacle, a grotesque _memento mori_: for Uncle
+Jake 'twas a triumph.
+
+The next great sight of the evening was to watch the fishermen from
+other villages put off to their boats. Most of them were 'half seas
+over,' some nearly helpless. They were thrown aboard from the punts and
+had their sails hoisted for them; or, if they did it themselves, it was
+with most comic jerks. The gods, who undoubtedly have a tenderness for
+drunkards--why not?--must have looked after them, for no news has come
+of any accident.
+
+On returning in house, I met Tony with several of his men relatives. He
+drew me aside. "Maybe I'll come home drunk to-night, but I promise 'ee
+I won't disturb 'ee, an' if yu hears ort--well, yu'll know, won' 'ee?"
+
+For some reason not easily to be fathomed his kindly warning made me
+feel ashamed of my own sobriety, ashamed that I dared not 'go on the
+bust' with him. I firmly believe that it does a man good to 'go on the
+bust' occasionally. It develops fellow-feeling. And besides, who has
+the right to cast a stone at a man for snatching a little jollity when
+he may, be it alcoholic or not? The truth is, that Tony, who has no
+craving for drink, was prepared to plunge into the fastest current of
+the life around him, and to take his chance, whilst I, for niggardly,
+self-preservative, prudential reasons, was not.
+
+However, he came home quite sober.
+
+
+27
+
+[Sidenote: _THE SQUARE'S AWAKENING_]
+
+Up-country, next week, I shall greatly miss my window overlooking
+Alexandra Square. I have lived (rebelliously) in suburban streets where
+only clattering feet, tradesmen's carts and pitiful street singers
+broke the monotony; in a Paris _chambre à garçon, au sixième_, where
+the view was roofs and the noise of the city was attenuated to a
+murmur; in country houses which looked out on sweeps of hill, down,
+vale and sea, so changeable and lovely that they were dreamlike and as
+a dream abide in the memory.... Here I have quick human life just below
+my window, and--up the Gut--a view of the sea unbroken hence to the
+horizon; a patch of water framed on three sides by straight walls and
+on the fourth by the sky-line; a miniature ocean across which the
+drifters sail to the western offing, and the little boats curvet to and
+fro, and
+
+    The stately ships go on
+    To their haven under the hill.
+
+There is always, here, a sound of the sea. When, at night, the Square
+is still, it seems to advance, to come nearer, to be claiming one for
+its own.
+
+But the Square, though still at night compared with daytime, is never
+dead, never absolutely asleep. Fishermen returning from sea crunch on
+the gravel. Lights in the windows (most of the people seem to burn
+night lamps) give it a cosy appearance; the cats make one think that
+fiends are pouring out of hell, through a hole in the roadway. Peep o'
+day is the stillest time of all. The cats seat themselves on walls.
+Sparrows chirp sleepily. Some rooks and a hoary-headed jackdaw come
+down from the trees nearby, quarter the roadway for garbage, and fly
+away croaking. Busy starlings follow. If the weather is hard and fish
+offal scarce on the beach, the gulls will pay us a supercilious visit.
+About six o'clock the children begin singing in bed, and soon
+afterwards one hears the familiar conversation of families getting up.
+"Edie! what for the Lord's sake be yu doing? Yu'll catch your death o'
+cold. Johnnie, if yu don't make haste, I'll knock your head off, I
+will!" A child or two may cry, but on the whole their merriment does
+not seem greatly damped by their mothers' blood-curdling threats. I
+hear also, but not very often, the shrill wailing monotone, the weep
+dissolved in a shout, of a woman upbraiding her man for the previous
+night.
+
+The children being dressed, but not washed (it is useless to wash the
+average child very long before sending it off to school), they run out
+to the beach to see what there is to be seen and to inspect the
+ash-buckets for treasure. An ash-bucket is Eldorado to them. If nothing
+is happening, are they at a loss for something to do? By no means. They
+come in house, fetch out tin cans, and beat them in a procession round
+the Square.
+
+The milkmen arrive, then several greengrocers. One would think that
+Under Town lived on vegetables. The explanation is that the
+greengrocers can come here, and, in tidying up their carts, can throw
+their refuse upon the roadway, as they would not be allowed to do in
+'higher class' streets. They swear genially at the housewives, and are
+forgiven.
+
+So the work and gossip of the day goes on, with a slight quieting down
+in the afternoon and an incredible amount of conversation after work,
+in the evening.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE ALEXANDRA BACK-DOOR_]
+
+On Sundays, the great fact of best clothes lends a different and, to my
+mind, a less pleasant--a harder--tone to the children's voices. But
+their merriment cannot wholly be suppressed. Did those who dislike the
+Salvation Army wish to illustrate its shortcomings, they could find a
+biting satire ready-made by the children of Under Town. A fat small boy
+comes round here, who has attentively studied the meetings; who can
+copy the canting, up-and-down, gentle-explosive, the _Behold I am
+saved, ye sinners_! tone to a nicety. He marches at the head of a
+band of serious infants who bear rags, tied to sticks and parasols, as
+banners. Every now and then he circles them to a standstill for an
+harangue about blood, fire and Jesus. (It is the gory part which
+delights him.) Then the procession re-forms, imitating brass
+instruments as unbroken voices can, and singing a Salvation hymn. They
+are earnest, the children; except Tommy Widger, whose irrepressible
+spirit causes him to march in the rear with a mocking dance and an
+infinitely grotesque squint. He is a pagan. He can turn the children's
+serious imitation into roaring Aristophanic farce. He represents the
+healthful laughing element of an age wherein rest from sorrow is too
+much sought in fever. He infects us all with jollity.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The back-door of the Alexandra, which opens on the Gut, is my home
+comedy. It is strangely fascinating; sad in a way, but very human; for
+nothing on earth, except one or two of the very great things of life,
+is so democratic as the back-door of a public house. Soon after
+breakfast, or even before, the tradesmen sneak round for their
+pick-me-ups. Then the housewives go for their jugs of ale and stout.
+Some people never enter the Alexandra except by the back way. They
+march down the Gut as if on important business; then, in the twinkling
+of an eye, they are gone within. One worn little woman, who wears a
+loose cape and a squalid sailor hat, walks up and down the Gut till it
+is completely clear, then jumps into the door, and closes it very
+quietly. When she comes out again it is as a rabbit comes from a
+bolt-hole when a ferret is just behind. She runs five yards, stands
+still, looks up and down, and tries very hard to walk home
+unconcernedly. Sunday evenings, she hangs about outside until the bar
+is opened. With the turn of the key, in she goes. Once a servant,
+gossiping with her sailorman, kept the little woman outside for fully
+ten minutes after the lock was shot back. Poor little woman, how great
+her craving must be!
+
+Last week, I saw a policeman standing at the top of the Gut. Up he
+looked; down he looked; Seacombe was orderly. Stepping as if to arrest
+a malefactor, he marched down the Gut.... Where was the policeman? A
+battered billycock and a rakish pipe looked round the corner, then
+withdrew. The battered billycock knew where the policeman was. The
+price of a glass, and billycock would have been there too.
+
+I was glad; for a few days before that the same policeman had arrested
+a man by flinging him halfway across the street into the mud. It was
+only a tramp. His witnesses, being poor people, dared not volunteer to
+give evidence on his behalf, and would not have been believed had they
+done so. He was sentenced to fourteen days: drunk and incapable,
+abusive moreover. A drunkard cannot legally be arrested unless he is
+also incapable or disorderly. It used to be a trick of the police to
+shadow a harmless _Weary Willie_ until he happened to stumble, or even
+to butt him down themselves. He then becomes drunk and incapable within
+the meaning of the act, for, if the magistrate should doubt, is there
+not dirt on his clothes? Obviously, circumstantially, he was incapable.
+_He_, of course, must be a poor man. The trick is not safe with
+tradesmen. These things are commonplaces amongst the poor.
+
+But billycock hat will not forget!
+
+
+28
+
+[Sidenote: _MACKEREL DRIFTING_]
+
+Yesterday morning early there was a great excitement along the beach.
+Drift-boats could be seen in the offing. "I tell thee what 'tis," they
+said, "the whiting be in an' us chaps an't been out to look for 'em. Us
+don't du nort nowadays like us used tu." Later on, however, we heard
+that the Plymouth drifters had been out after an autumn shoal of
+mackerel, had caught some thousands and had made good prices. The
+season for mackerel drifting here usually ends with July or August, but
+good October mackerel, mixed with herring, have occasionally been
+caught. Tony, John and myself decided to put to sea. When the other
+boats saw our fleet of nets being hauled aboard (in a furious hurry),
+they fitted out too.
+
+We shoved off just before dark. The wind was strongish WSW.--off land,
+that is--so that inshore the sea was almost calm, except for the swell
+running in from outside. What it was like outside the white horses and
+the wind-streaks showed. Hardly had we gone half a mile before we heard
+the queer clutching noise which meant that a strong puff of wind had
+compelled Tony to let the sheet fly. The squall past, he hauled it in
+again, put his legs across the stern and hung on. We sailed eight miles
+from land in ten minutes under the hour--speed, that, for a
+twenty-two-foot open boat with its mainsail reefed! Where we downhauled
+to shoot the nets, the sea, unsheltered by cliffs and headlands,
+was--as Tony beautifully put it--'rising all up in heaps.' Whilst I was
+trying to keep the boat before the wind, for net-shooting, a great
+comber plopped over the stern right upon my back. The sky was weird.
+Great wind-drifts of rain-cloud constantly spread out from the west,
+and wolves, higher up in the sky, were driving across the moon. We
+heated tea, but did not try to sleep. Tony and John kept up a curious
+dialogue. "What do 'ee think o' it, then?"
+
+"'Tisn't vitty. I said so all along."
+
+[Sidenote: _HAULING INBOARD_]
+
+"If a skat o' rain comes--and 'tis raining on land, seems so--the
+wind'll back out to sou'west, an' us'll hae to rin for it. A perty
+lop'll get up tu, an' we'm more'n a mile from land."
+
+"Us'll haul in be 'leven. No gude hanging on out here. If the wind
+_du_ back...."
+
+I have never heard them talk so much about the weather. And all the
+while, the sky drove into splendid cloud-forms, all windy, nearly all
+rainy. We lost the Eddystone light, then lost the Seacombe light and
+recovered the former, as a storm drifted along shore. From time to time
+we thought the wind was backing a bit.
+
+Supper, for me, had to be crammed down on a rather queasy stomach.
+"We'm all ways to once!" Tony remarked. The wind did definitely back a
+point or two. "Only let it once die away," said Tony in the tone of _I
+told you so_; "then yu'll see how it can spring from the sou'west when
+'tis a-minded."
+
+One minute I wished myself home, safe in bed, and thought with
+grotesque grief of some unfinished work. Next minute, I knew that I
+would not have missed the night out there for any consideration. The
+grey, slightly sheeny boil of the sea around us; the sweeping savagery
+of the sky; the intimacy of the waters....
+
+But we were all relieved when eleven o'clock came. The watchfulness was
+a strain.
+
+When one is steering instead of hauling, the getting-in of nine
+forty-fathom nets seems interminable. One net, two nets, three nets--a
+third of nine,--four, five--more than half the fleet,--six--two-thirds
+of nine,--seven, eight--nine all but one;--and so on, with an
+occasional wave coming inboard, until the very last square buoy comes
+bobbing towards the boat; hand over hand, buoy by buoy, net by net,
+holding fast when the pull of the tide is too strong, and pausing
+irritably to pick out the fish. We stepped the great mast, shifted all
+the ballast to wind'ard. John came aft to steer, and seated himself on
+the counter, a strangely powerful, statuesque figure in his wet
+oilskins. "Have 'ee got the sheet in yer hand?" Tony called out from
+the bows.
+
+John did not trouble to reply.
+
+"Have 'ee got the sheet in yer hand, John?"
+
+"No, I an't! What the hell do 'ee want the sheet for? Wind's abeam."
+
+"Might want it bad," said Tony.
+
+[Sidenote: _A REMBRANDTESQUE PICTURE_]
+
+We left it fast however; and with the same, an elemental passion took
+possession of my mind; ousted all else. I had been anxious about the
+sheet, had thought John foolhardy. Now I didn't care. I could have
+cried out aloud for joy as the brave old craft rose to the seas with a
+marvellous easy motion and the waves came skatting in over the bows.
+Before long, I was on my knees with the baler; John was getting every
+inch out of the wind, and Tony was standing abaft the nets with the
+sheet dangling through his hand. By the light of the riding-lamp on the
+mizzen mast (its glass patched with an old jam cover), they in their
+angular wet oil-skins--the rain was pelting--and the rich wet brown of
+the boat's varnish, made a wonderful Rembrandtesque picture. I hardly
+know how long we were sailing home; it slipped my mind to take the
+time. About two o'clock I was halfway down the beach with Tony cursing
+above me and John doing the same below. Someone had 'messed up' our
+capstan wire. While Tony was putting that right in the dark--and
+pinching his fingers severely--the boat washed broadside on and began
+to fill. We had only five dozen fish. They sold badly.
+
+In time, and with practice, I could, I believe, do most that these
+fishermen do except one thing: I doubt I could stand the racket of my
+own thoughts. Tony and John would go out to-night, to-morrow, every
+night. But I have slept so dead (not from bodily tiredness) that, the
+door being bolted against the children, they were unable to waken me
+for dinner, and in the end Tony told them to 'let the poor beast bide.'
+Of what nature was that passion, so exultant and so tiring? Are these
+fishermen so used to it that they 'don't take much note o'it'? For they
+feel it. I have seen it in their faces. One can always tell. The eyes
+widen and brighten; hasty movements become so desperately cool. If what
+was an episode in my life, is part and parcel of theirs, how much the
+better for _them_!
+
+
+29
+
+To-day the sea passion, or whatever it is, came again.
+
+While I was asleep, the wind backed and freshened. Balks of wood from a
+naval target kept washing in. Balks make winter firing when coal is
+dear and money scarce. Boats had been bringing them in all the morning,
+till the sea became too rough. Tony had none however. In the afternoon
+he complained bitterly:
+
+"They all got some wude but me, an' us an't got enough in house for the
+winter nuther." Just then we saw a large piece washing along on the
+flood tide over the outside of Broken Rocks. "Get a rope--grass rope,
+mind. Down with her. The _Cock Robin_! Quick. Jump aboard. Take oars.
+Hurry up casn'? Get hold thic oar. Look out!"
+
+[Sidenote: _OUT AFTER FLOTSAM_]
+
+No time to wait for a smooth. Tony shoved the _Cock Robin_ into a surf
+we should not otherwise have thought of facing. As it turned out, we
+got off better than we usually do in only a moderate sea, though we
+should have capsized to a certainty had the boat sheered. 'Twas, "Look
+out! Damme, look out! Here's a swell coming! Get her head to it or we'm
+over. Gude for us!" Some of the waves, rising and topping in the
+shallow water over the rocks, seemed to make the _Cock Robin_ sit
+upright on her stern, like a dog begging, and the higher the seas rose
+the more we gloried in them. Sufficient for the moment was the wave
+thereof. We swore at each other in a sort of chant. I had to repress an
+impulse to jump overboard and swim to the balk, instead of trying to
+work up to it with a boat that had, every other moment, to be turned
+bows on to the sea. The slightest error of judgment on Tony's part, and
+we should indeed have swum for it. I had such a curious feeling of
+being _in_ the sea--as much a part of it as the waves themselves--that
+the affair ceased to be a struggle. It became a glorious great big
+game. Yet for work we were so cool that, though we towed our balk
+ashore and shoved off after another, we hardly got wet above the knees.
+
+We were beside ourselves, and all ourselves. Where does that exultant
+feeling, that devil-beyond-oneself, come from? From what depth of human
+personality does it uprise, whirling, like those primitive
+passions--sex, hunger, rage, fear--which may be boxed up awhile by the
+will, but which, once unloosed, sweep the will aside and carry one off
+like froth in a gale, until physical exhaustion sets in and allows the
+will to re-assert itself? One understands the evolution of the
+primitive self-preservative and race-preservative passions. How has
+this latent daredevilry become so implanted in us that it rises from
+the bottom depths of one's nature; and how has it become ordinarily so
+hidden?
+
+Above all what is the effect of this passion on seafaring men? To say
+that familiarity breeds contempt is--even if it be correct--to beg the
+question. What is the effect of that familiarity? It might be said that
+they are the subjects of a sub-acute, persistent form of the
+daredevilry which uprose in me unexpectedly and acutely. But again, the
+sub-acute lifelong form of it is likely to have the greater influence
+on a man's self, on his morale and his character. Hence, I believe, the
+width of these men, their largeness. It was good to hear Tony talk in
+the most matter-of-fact manner (yet with a touch of reverence, as
+towards an ever-possible contingency) of a Salcombe fisherman who was
+drowned. "Her was drownded all through his own carelessness, and didn't
+rise in the water for a month. ('Tis nine days down and nine days up,
+wi' the crab bites out of 'ee, as a rule.) An' he wer carried up by the
+tide an' collected, like, out o' the water just at the back o' his own
+house. Nice quiet chap he was." That coolness of speech one saw
+plainly, is the outcome not of contempt, still less of non-feeling, but
+of familiarity, of a breadth of mind in looking at the catastrophe. I
+have not noticed such breadth of mind elsewhere except among those who
+live precariously and the few of very great religious faith.
+
+An hour after bringing in the balks, we were hauling the boats over the
+wall, and at high tide the seas swept across the road.
+
+
+30
+
+[Sidenote: _A SING-SONG_]
+
+Many an evening we have had small sing-songs in the kitchen. To-night,
+on account of my going and the need to give me a cheery send-off, we
+had quite a concert. Tony was star.
+
+Supper being pushed back on the table and a piece of wreckage flung on
+the fire, he made himself ready by taking off his soaked boots and
+stockings, and plumping his feet on Mam Widger's lap; then brought
+himself into the vocal mood with a long rigmarole that he used to
+recite with the Mummers at Christmas time. Soon we were humming,
+whistling and singing "Sweet Evelina," whose sole musical merit is that
+her chorus goes with a swing. The fire crackled and burnt blue. The
+fragrant steam of the grog rose to the ceiling and settled on the
+window. We leaned right back in our chairs.
+
+"Missis," said Tony, "I feels like zingin' to-night."
+
+"Wait a minute while I shuts the door, else they kids'll be down for
+more supper."
+
+"Us got it, an't us?"
+
+"Yes, but _they_'ve had enough."
+
+When Tony sings, he throws his head back and closes his eyes, so that,
+but for the motions of his mouth, he looks asleep, even deathlike, and
+is, in fact, withdrawn into himself.
+
+I think he sees his songs, as well as sings them. I often wonder what
+pictures are flitting through his mind beneath (as I imagine) the place
+where the thick grizzled hair thins to the red forehead. His voice is a
+high tenor. I make accompaniment an octave below, whilst Mrs Widger--a
+little nasal in tone and not infrequently adrift in tune--supports him
+from above.
+
+We sang "The Poor Smuggler's Boy"--
+
+    Your pity I crave,
+      Won't you give me employ?
+    Or forlorn I must wander,
+      Said the poor smuggler's boy.
+
+Then the "Skipper and his Boy"--
+
+    Over the mounting waves so 'igh,
+    We'll sail together, my boy and I-I,
+    We'll sail together, my bo-oy and I!
+
+"Have 'ee wrote to George?" Tony asked.
+
+"'Tis your place to du that."
+
+"I an't got time...."
+
+"Thee asn't got time for nort!"
+
+    The fisher's is a merry life!
+        Blow, winds, blow!
+    The fisher and his vitty wife!
+        Row, boys, row!
+    He drives no plough on stubborn land,
+    His fruits are ready to his hand.
+    No nipping frosts his orchards fear,
+    He has his autumn all the year,
+        Blow, winds, blow!
+
+    The farmer has his rent to pay,
+        Blow, winds, blow!
+    And seeds to purchase every day,
+        Row, boys, row!
+    But he who farms the rolling deep,
+    He never sows, can always reap,
+    The ocean's fields are fair and free,
+    There ain't no rent days on the sea;
+      The fisher's is a merry life!
+        Blow, winds, blow!
+        Blow, damn ye, blow!
+
+"Aye!" said Tony with conviction, "thic's one side o'it."
+
+[Sidenote: "_ROLLING HOME_"]
+
+He tried a note or two at different pitches, then struck with energy
+into the fine song, "Rolling Home." (Who that has steered for England
+in a ship--and by ship I do not mean a bustling steam-packet or a
+floating hotel, but a ship to whose crew England stands for fresh food,
+women, wine, home.... Who that has so steered the course for England,
+does not feel a catch at his vitals on hearing the melody, at once
+plaintive and triumphant, of "Rolling Home?")
+
+    Pipe all hands to man the capstan, see your cables run down clear;
+    Soon our ship will weigh her anchor, for old England's shores we steer;
+    If we heave round with a will boys, soon our anchor it will trip,
+    And across the briny ocean we will steer our gallant ship:
+            Rolling home, rolling home!
+            Rolling home across the sea!
+            Rolling home to Merrie England!
+            Rolling home, true love, to thee!
+
+    Man the bars then with a will, boys, clap all hands that can clap on;
+    As we heave around the capstan, we will sing this well-known song;
+    It will bring back scenes and changes of this parting gift so rare;
+    We shall hear sweet songs of music softly whispering through the air.
+            Rolling home, rolling home!
+            Rolling home across the sea!
+            Rolling home to Merrie England!
+            Rolling home, true love, to thee!
+
+    Up aloft amid the rigging, as we sail the waters blue,
+    Whilst we cross the briny ocean, we will always think of you;
+    We will leave you our best wishes as we leave this rocky shore;
+    We are bound for Merrie England, to return to you no more!
+            Rolling home, rolling home!
+            Rolling home, across the sea!
+            Rolling home to Merrie England!
+            Rolling home, my love to thee!
+
+To Mrs Widger's great disgust, Tony has been learning _in bed_ the
+correct words (he knew the tune) of "Gay Spanish Ladies." That he gave
+us as a finale.
+
+    Farewell and adieu to you, gay Spanish Ladies.
+    Farewell and adieu to you, Ladies of Spain!
+    For we've received orders for to sail for old England.
+    But we hope in a short time to see you again.
+
+    We'll rant and we'll roar like true British heroes,
+    We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt seas,
+    Until we strike soundings in the Channel of old England.
+    From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues....
+
+How we did rant and roar the wonderful up-Channel verse, with its
+clever use of the high-sounding promontories of the south!
+
+    The first land we made, it was called the Deadman,
+    Next Ram Head off Plymouth, Start, Portland and Wight,
+    We passed up by Beachy, by Parley and Dungeness,
+    And hove our ship to off the South Foreland light....
+
+Our glasses were empty. We drove out the cat, gutted some fish,
+extinguished the lamp, and came upstairs to the tune, repeated, of
+"Rolling Home." All the tunes are ringing in my head.
+
+[Sidenote: _ART THAT IS LIVED_]
+
+There is something about this singing of sea-songs by a seafarer which
+makes them grip one extraordinarily. They are far from perfect in
+execution, they are not always quite in tune, especially on Tony's high
+notes, yet, I am certain, they are as artistic in the best sense as any
+of the fine music I have heard. Tony sings with imagination: he sees,
+_lives_ what he is singing. Between this sort of song and most, there
+is much the same difference as between going abroad, and reading a book
+of travels; or between singing folk-songs with the folk and twittering
+bowdlerised versions in a drawing-room. However imperfect technically,
+Tony's songs are an expression of the life he lives, rather than an
+excursion into the realms of art--into the expression of other kinds of
+life--with temporarily stimulated and projected imagination. His art is
+perpetual creation, not repetition of a thing created once and for all.
+The art that is _lived_, howsoever imperfect, has an advantage over
+the most finished art that is merely repeated. Next after the music of,
+as one might say, superhuman creative force--like Bach's and
+Beethoven's--comes this kind, of Tony's.
+
+Cultured people talk about the artistic tastes of the poor, would have
+them read--well, they don't quite know what--something 'good,'
+something namely that appeals to the cultured. It has always been my
+experience in much lending of books, that the poor will read the
+literature of life's fundamental daily realities quickly enough, once
+they know of its existence. What they will not read, what in the
+struggle for existence they cannot waste time over, is the literature
+of the _etceteras_ of life, the decorations, the vapourings. Sane
+minds, like healthy bodies, crave strong meats, and the strong meats of
+literature are usually the worst cooked. I am inclined to think that
+the taste of the poor, the uneducated, is on the right lines, though
+undeveloped, whilst the taste of the educated consists of beautifully
+developed wrongness, an exquisite secession from reality. As Nietzsche
+pointed out, degenerates love narcotics; something to make them forget
+life, not face it. Their meats must be strange and peptonized.
+Therefore they hate, they are afraid of, the greatest things in
+life--the commonplace. Much culture has debilitated them. Rank life
+would kill them--or save them.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+                                                         SALISBURY,
+                                                         _October_.
+
+
+1
+
+It is just at dawn that the coming day declares itself most plainly;
+not earlier, not later. This morning at peep o' day the wind was NNW.,
+the air delicate and peaceful. A band of dirty red water washed in
+fantastic outline along the cliffs. The sea, with its calm great
+rollers, bore upon it only the rags of last night's fury; as if it had
+been less a part of the storm than a thing buffeted by the storm, and
+now glad to sink into tranquillity. The air was scented with land
+smells. Shafts of the dawn's sunlight beamed across it. Three punts put
+off to find out if the lobster-pots had been washed away; the sea had
+its little boats upon it again. But the sky, to the SW., was looking
+very wild. The wind was SW. in the offing.
+
+While we were at breakfast a southerly squall burst open the kitchen
+door. Mrs Widger got up to see what child it was. A screaming sea-gull
+mocked her.
+
+The storm came. The trees by the railway bowed and tossed. Rain
+spattered against the carriage windows. Dead leaves scurried by. I
+wanted to get out, to go back. I wanted to know whether Tony was at
+sea. Here, at Salisbury they are already talking about the 'great
+storm'; some of the beautiful elms are down. What must the storm have
+been at Seacombe!
+
+Curiously, I felt, the first time for years, as if I were leaving home
+for boarding school--the warmth behind, the chill in front. I smelt
+again the rank soft-soap in the great bare schoolrooms.
+
+
+2
+
+A postcard from Tony--
+
+    "quite please to get your letter this morning it as been rough ever
+    since you left Seacombe it was a gale the night you went Back the
+    sea was all in over and knocking the boats about the road. I haven
+    been out sea sinsce it is still rough hear now it is blowing a gale
+    of wind I expect we shall get some witing and herring in the bay
+    when the weather get fine the sea hear is like the cliff now red.
+    Us aven catched nort nobody cant go to sea.
+
+    "TONY.
+
+    "I will write a letter soon.
+
+    "P.S. Tony just waked up. George is coming home, Tony mazed with
+    excitement and wishes you was here.
+
+    "MAM W."
+
+So do I!
+
+
+3
+
+[Sidenote: _TONY OFF TO SEA_]
+
+The evening before I left Seacombe, Tony was telling us how upset and
+miserable he was, how he cried, when his two elder brothers left home
+to join the Navy. Also he told us what I knew nothing of before--his
+own one attempt to go to sea aboard a merchantman. When he was at
+Cloade's he looked on fishing as a refuge from groceries, and when he
+had given up groceries for fishing, he looked on a ship's fo'c'stle as
+a refuge from that. Fishing was very bad one summer. He and Dick Yeo
+agreed to run away together:
+
+"Us was doin' nort noway wi' the fishing--nort 't all. Father, Granfer
+that is, wer away to his drill wi' the Royal Naval Reserves. So Dick
+Yeo an' me agreed to go off together. Where he went, I was to go tu,
+an' where I went, he was to come. He had two pounds put away, in gold.
+I only had half a crown, an' cuden't see me way to get no more nuther.
+'Casn' thee ask thy maid for some?' Dick said. I was ashamed, like, but
+I did.
+
+"'What's thee want it for?" her asked.
+
+"'Tisn' nothing doing down here,' I says, 'an' I wants to go to sea.'
+
+"'I an't got no money,' the maid says.
+
+"'Casn' thee get nort?' I asks, having begun, you see. I'd been goin'
+with her for nigh on two years.
+
+"Her cried bitter at the thought o' me going, but her did get seven
+shillin's from a fellow servant. I told me mother--her cried tu'--an'
+off us started, going by train to Bristol and stopping the night at the
+Sailor's Rest. 'Twasn't bad, you know. They Restis be gude things.
+Dick, he woke in the morning wi' a swelled faace, but I didn' feel
+nort.
+
+"Dick Yeo paid both our boat fares from Bristol to Cardiff. The
+steward--what us urned against aboard ship--recommended us to a lodging
+house in Adelaide Street, an' he giv'd me a note for a man at the Board
+o' Trade, sayin' we was Demshire fishin' chaps an' gude seamen.
+
+"Well, us went to the lodging house an' gave in our bags an' took a
+room wi' fude [food] for two an' six a day--each, mind yu. Then us
+looked into a big underground room wer there was a lot o' foreigners
+gathered round a fire an' us didn' much like the looks o' that. So us
+went straight down to the docks an' tried to ship together on several
+sailing ships an' steamers. Some on 'em would on'y take me, an' some
+were down to sail at a future date, like, what our money wouldn't last
+out tu. _I_ cude ha' got a ship, 'cause I had me Naval Reserve ticket,
+but nobody cuden't du wi' both on us--an' where one went t'other was to
+go tu, by agreement.
+
+[Sidenote: _AT THE BOARD O' TRADE_]
+
+"Us went back to the lodging house, into a sort o' kitchen in a cellar,
+where there was a 'Merican wi' a long white beard cooking, an' men
+drunk spewing, an' men lying about asleep like logs. The 'Merican, his
+beard looking so red as hell in the firelight, wer stirring some kind
+o' stew. Yu shade ha' see'd the faaces what the glow o' they coals
+shined on! An' the fude.... An' the tables an' plates.... I've a-gone
+short many a time in my day, but I'd never ha' touched muck like they
+offered to gie us there. Dick an' me crept up the staircase to bed wi'
+empty bellies thic night.
+
+"Soon a'ter we was to bed, Dick says to me: 'Can 'ee feel ort yer
+Tony?'
+
+"'No,' I says, an' whatever 'twas, I didn' feel ort o'it. But I see'd
+'em crawling so thick as sea-lice on the wall in a southerly gale, an'
+I tell 'ee, 'twas they things what took the heart out o' me more'n ort
+else, aye! more'n the food an' being away from home. Us cuden turn out,
+'cause the landlord had our bags an' us hadn' got no money to get 'em
+back wi', nor nowhere else at all to go tu.
+
+"Next morning, us went straight down to the docks again. Cuden' eat no
+breakfast what they give'd us. Didn' know what to du. I only had
+tuppence left, which wuden' ha' taken me home again, not if I'd been
+willing to give up and go. Come to the last, us was forced to break our
+agreement. I signed on as able seaman--_able_ seaman 'cause I was a
+fishing chap an' had me Royal Naval Reserve ticket--aboard the
+_Brooklands_, bound for Bombay. Penny o' me tuppence, I spent writing
+home to tell mother. I cuden' stay aboard the ship (an' get summut to
+eat) 'cause I had my gear to get an' a ship to find for Dick--an' we
+still had hopes, like, o' getting a ship together. Howsbe-ever, us
+cuden't, nohow. The writer aboard the _Brooklands_ wuden't advance
+me no wages to get any gear. He told me the landlord to the lodging
+house wude, him what had our bags a'ready.
+
+"Then I thought o' the steward's note to the Board o' Trade officer,
+an' us inquired our way to the Board o' Trade, where ther was a gert
+crowd outside. 'Twas by that us know'd the place. A man told us as the
+officer what the note was directed tu, wude appear outside the door an'
+call. Sure 'nuff, he did--wi' gold buttons on his coat--an' called out:
+'Six A.B.'s for the _Asia_'!
+
+"'Who be that?' I asked.
+
+"'That's he,' the man said. 'He'll come out again by'm-bye.'
+
+"Us worked our way to the front--getting cussed horrible for our
+pains--an' when Mr Gold-Buttons 'peared again, I give'd him the
+steward's note. He luked at it--an' us. He cude offer me something an'
+said as he'd du his best for me, but he cuden' hold out no promise for
+Dick because, see, he hadn' got no Naval Reserve ticket.
+
+[Sidenote: "_WER DICK GOES, I GOES_"]
+
+"'Wher Dick goes, I goes,' I says, like that. With which the Board o'
+Trade officer leaves us waiting there.
+
+"After an hour or so, he com'd out an' called, as if he hadn' ha'
+know'd us: 'Anthony Widger an' Richard Yeo! Richard Yeo an' Anthony
+Widger o' Seacombe!'
+
+"'Yer we be, sir,' shouts I, thinking we was fixed up.
+
+"'Be yu Anthony Widger an' Richard Yeo? Come in.'
+
+"Dick, he went in behind the officer, an' me behind Dick. 'Twer a
+darkish passage, but as the door closed I luked, an' there, hidden
+behind the door, sort o' flattened against the wall, who did I see but
+Dick's mother; her'd come all that way by herself. I called to Dick.
+
+"'What the bloody hell be doin' here?' said Dick swearing awful.
+
+"'Don't thee swear at thy mother, Dick,' I says.
+
+"'Dick!' her says, 'Dick, come home again. Your father's breakin' his
+heart.'
+
+"'Go to b----ry!' says Dick, swearing worse'n ever, 'cause _he_ was
+wanting in his heart to be home again, yu see.
+
+"I burst out crying, then and there, wi' seeing Dick's mother cry, an'
+all o'it what we'd been drough. The Board o' Trade officer repeated as
+he'd help me an' no doubt find me a ship, but Dick--his mother was
+come'd for he.
+
+"'Wer Dick goes, I goes,' says I.
+
+"Then Dick's mother, her says: 'Will 'ee come home then, Tony?'
+
+"'Wer Dick goes, I goes,' I says again. 'Twas fixed in me head, like.
+
+"'Well,' her says, 'if Dick comes home, will yu come too?'
+
+"I told her: 'I've a-signed on aboard the _Brooklands_, an' I'll hae to
+tramp it 'cause I an't got no money.'
+
+"'Well, if I pays _your_ fare too?'
+
+"'Wer Dick goes, I'll go!' I says.
+
+"So her got over Dick a bit, an' the Board o' Trade man told us to come
+again, saying as he'd do anything for me, but Dick's mother was come'd
+for he. An' Mrs Yeo asked us to go wi' her to a restaurant.... That
+turned me more'n ort else 'cause us hadn' eaten the stuff to the
+lodging house an' us _was_ hungry. An' her telegraphed home to Dick's
+father for a trap to meet us to Totnes, for 'twas a Saturday an' there
+wern't no trains no nearer home.
+
+"Us went to the station, Dick swearing awful, an' in the end us come'd
+to Totnes to find the trap.
+
+"The trap was there at the inn, sure 'nuff, an' the ostler was waiting
+up, but the man what come'd wi' the trap was disappeared. We on'y found
+'en at two in the morning, sleeping dead drunk in the manger, an' then
+he an' the ostler began fighting on account o' the ostler casting out a
+slur 'cause Dick's mother didn' gie him no more than a shilling. A
+policeman come an' cleared us out o' it!
+
+[Sidenote: _CARRIAGE PEOPLE_]
+
+"Two or dree mile out o' Totnes the horse stops dead an' begins to go
+back'ards. Us coaxed 'en, like, an' still he kept on stopping an'
+walking back'ards. Dick an' me got out to walk to the halfway inn.
+There the landlord wuden' come down for us. But he did when the trap
+come'd up--us was carriage people than, yu see. We had drinks round,
+an' us give'd flour an' water to the horse to make 'en go. But us hadn'
+gone far when he stopped an' began to go back'ards again. Dick, he
+started swearing. 'Let's walk on,' I says, to get 'en out o'it; an' so
+us did for a mile or so. 'Twas dark, wi' a mizzling rain--an'
+quiet--an' the trees like shadows. A proper logie night 'twas. Wude 'ee
+believe me when I says I cude smell the flowers I cuden' see? Us was
+glad when a tramp caught up wi' us.
+
+"'Have 'ee see'd ort o' a horse an' trap wi' two persons in 'en?' I
+askis.
+
+"'Two mile back,' he says.
+
+"'Us lef 'en only a mile back,' Dick says.
+
+"'He've a-gone a mile back'ards then!' says I.
+
+"And with the same, Dick laughs out loud, an' I laughs, an' the tramp,
+he laughs.... 'Twas the first laugh us had since us left Seacombe, an'
+I reckon it did us gude. Us went on better a'ter that. I covered the
+tramp up wi' hay in a hay loft, advising of him not to smoke. I could
+ha' slept tu; I wer heavy for a gude bed; but I saw lights in the
+farmhouse winder, an' us wer so near home again.
+
+"Well, we crept into Seacombe by the back (people was jest astir,
+Sunday morning) going each our way from the churchyard, an' I listened
+outside mother's door. Father was home again, an' they was to
+breakfast. Her'd had my letter telling them as I'd a-shipped for
+Bombay.
+
+"'They'll Bumbay the beggar!' father was saying, only 'twasn't 'beggar'
+as he did say.
+
+"Then my sister Mary, cried out: 'Here's Tony!'
+
+"'I know'd _he'd_ never go to Bumbay!' outs father so quick as ever.
+
+"But they was so pleased as Punch to see Tony back, cas I ude see, if
+they'd ha' cared to say so. I don' know 'xactly why I went off to
+sea--summut inside driving of me--'twasn't only 'cause there wern't
+nothing doin'--but I an't never been no more. An' thic Mam Widger
+there'd hae summut to say about it now. Eh, Annie?"
+
+
+4
+
+[Sidenote: _THE SEA'S STAMP_]
+
+It is an Englishman's privilege to grumble, and a sailorman's duty; yet
+one thing always strikes me in talking to seafaring men, namely how
+indelible the sea's stamp is; how indissolubly they are bound to the
+sea--with sunken bonds like those which unite an old married
+couple,--and also what outbursts of savage hatred they have against it.
+Tony says that if he could earn fifteen shillings a week regularly on
+land, he would give up the sea altogether. I very much doubt it. The
+sea has him fast. He says further that nobody would go to sea unless he
+were caught young and foolish, and that few would stay there if they
+could get away. There are, among the older fishermen of Seacombe, some
+who have worked well, and could still work, but prefer to stay ashore
+and starve. Tony holds them excused. "Aye!" he says, "they've a-worked
+hard in their day, an' they knows they ain't no for'arder. An' now
+they'm weary o' it all, an' don't care; an' that's how I'll be some
+day, if I lives--weary o'it, an' just where I was!"
+
+But the sea has her followers, and will continue to have them, because
+seafaring is the occupation in which health, strength and courage have
+their greatest value; in which being a man most nearly suffices a man.
+It is remarkable that Baudelaire, decadent Frenchman, apostle of the
+artificial, who was violently home-sick when he went on a voyage,
+should have expressed the relation of man and the sea--their enmity and
+love--more subtly than any English poet.
+
+    Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer;
+    La mer et ton miroir; tu contemples ton âme
+    Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame,
+    Et ton esprit n'est pas un gouffre moins amer.
+
+    Tu te plais à plonger au sein de ton image;
+    Tu l'embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton coeur
+    Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur
+    Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.
+
+    Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets:
+    Homme, nul n'a sondé le fond de tes abîmes,
+    O mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes,
+    Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!
+
+    Et cependant voilà des siècles innombrables
+    Que vous vous combattez sans pitié ni remord,
+    Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
+    O lutteurs éternels, ô frères implacables!
+
+[Sidenote: _SEA-LARGENESS_]
+
+The sea is never mean. Strife and brotherhood with it give a largeness
+to men which, like all deep qualities of the spirit, can be neither
+specified nor defined; only felt, and seen in the outcome. The
+Seacombe fishermen are more or less amphibious; ocean-going seamen
+look down on them. They are petty in some small things, notably in
+jealousy lest one man do more work, or make more money, than another:
+to say a man is doing well is to throw out a slur against him.
+Nevertheless in the larger, the essential things of life, their
+sea-largeness nearly always shows itself. They are wonderfully
+charitable, not merely with money. They carp at one another, but let a
+man make a mess of things, and he is gently treated. I have never
+heard Tony admit that any man--even one who had robbed him--had not
+his very good points. Is a man a ne'er-do-well, a drunkard, an idler?
+"Ah," they say, "his father rose he up like a gen'leman, an' that's
+what comes o'it." In their dealings, they curiously combine generosity
+and close-fistedness--close-fistedness in earning, and generosity in
+spending and lending. A beachcomber, for simply laying a hand to a
+rope, receives a pint of beer, or the price of it, and next moment the
+fisherman who paid the money may be seen getting wet through and
+spoiling his clothes in order to drag a farthing's worth of jetsam
+from the surf. Tony fails to understand how a gen'leman can possibly
+haggle over the hire of a boat. When he goes away himself, he pays
+what is asked; regrets it afterwards, if at all; and comes home when
+his money is done. "If a gen'leman," he says, "can't afford to pay the
+rate, what du 'ee come on the beach to hire a boat for--an' try to
+beat a fellow down? I reckon 'tis only a _sort o' gen'leman_ as does
+that!"
+
+Like most seafarers, the fishermen are fatalistic. "What's goin' to be,
+will be, an' that's the way o'it." But they are not thoroughgoing
+fatalists, inasmuch as disappointment quickly turns to resentment
+against something handy to blame. If, for example, we catch no fish,
+Tony will blame the tide, the hour, the weather, the boat, the sail,
+the leads, the line, the hooks, the bait, the fish, his mate--anything
+rather than accept the one fact that, for reasons unknown, the fish are
+off the bite. A thoroughgoing fatalist would blame, if he did not
+acquiesce in, fate itself or his luck.
+
+Tony is a black pessimist as regards the present and to-morrow;
+convinced that things are not, and cannot be, what they were; but as
+regards the further future, the day after to-morrow, he is a resolute
+optimist. "Never mind how bad things du look, summut or other'll sure
+to turn up. It always du. I've a-proved it. I've a-see'd it scores o'
+times." He can earn money by drifting for mackerel and herring, hooking
+mackerel, seining for mackerel, sprats, flat-fish, mullet and bass,
+bottom-line fishing for whiting, conger or pout, lobster and crab
+potting, and prawning; by belonging to the Royal Naval Reserve; by
+boat-hiring; by carpet-beating and cleaning up. I have even seen him
+dragging a wheel chair. His boats and gear represent, I suppose, a
+capital of near a hundred pounds. It would be hard if he earned
+nothing. Yet he is certain that his earnings, year in and year out,
+scarcely average fifteen shillings a week. "Yu wears yourself out wi'
+it an' never gets much for'arder." The money, moreover, comes in
+seasons and lump-sums; ten pounds for a catch perhaps, then nothing for
+weeks. Mrs Widger must be, and is, a good hand at household management
+and at putting money by. I doubt if Tony ever knows how much, or how
+little, gold she has, stored away upstairs. Probably it is as well. He
+is a generous man with money. He 'slats it about' when he has it.
+
+[Sidenote: _OPEN BOATS_]
+
+It has to be realised that these fishermen exercise very great skill
+and alertness. To sail a small open boat in all weathers requires a
+quicker hand and judgment than to navigate a seagoing ship. Seacombe
+possesses no harbour, and therefore Seacombe men can use no really
+seaworthy craft. "'Tis all very well," Tony says, "for people to buzz
+about the North Sea men an' knit 'em all sorts o' woollen gear. They
+North Sea men an' the Cornishmen wi' their big, decked harbour boats,
+they _have_ got summut under their feet--somewhere they can get in
+under, out the way o'it. They _can_ make themselves comfor'able, an
+ride out a storm. But if it comes on to blow when we'm to sea in our
+little open craft, we got to hard up an' get home along--if us can.
+For the likes o' us, 'tis touch an' go wi' the sea!"
+
+Tony knows. At places like Seacombe every boat, returning from sea,
+must run ashore and be hauled up the beach and even, in rough weather,
+over the sea-wall. The herring and mackerel drifters, which may venture
+twenty miles into the open sea, cannot be more than twenty-five feet in
+length else they would prove unwieldy ashore. To avoid their heeling
+over and filling in the surf, they must be built shallow, with next to
+no keel. They have therefore but small hold on the water; they do not
+sail close to the wind, and beating home against it is a long wearisome
+job. Again, because the gear for night work in small craft must be as
+simple as possible, such boats usually carry only a mizzen and a
+dipping lug--the latter a large, very picturesque, but unhandy, sail
+which has to be lowered or 'dipped' every time the boat tacks. Neither
+comfort nor safety is provided by the three feet or so of decking, the
+'cuddy' or 'cutty,' in the bows. To sleep there with one's head
+underneath, is to have one's feet outside, and _vice versa_. In
+rough broken seas the open beach drifter must be handled skilfully
+indeed, if she is not to fill and sink.
+
+I have watched one of them running home in a storm. The wind was
+blowing a gale; the sea running high and broken. One error in steering,
+one grip of the great white sea-horses, meant inevitable wreck. Every
+moment or two the coastguard, who was near me with a telescope to his
+eye, exclaimed, "She's down!" But no. She dodged the combers like a
+hare before greyhounds, now steering east, now west, on the whole
+towards home. It was with half her rudder gone that she ran ashore
+after a splendid exhibition of skill and nerve, many times more
+exciting than the manoeuvres of a yacht race. Were there not many
+such feats of seamanship among fishermen, there would be more widows
+and orphans.
+
+[Sidenote: _BOATS SHEERING_]
+
+Those are the craft, those the sort of men--two usually to a boat--that
+put to sea an hour or two before sunset, ride at the nets through the
+night, and return towards or after dawn. Anything but a moderate breeze
+renders drifting impossible. In a calm, the two men are bound to row,
+for hours perhaps, with heavy 16-20 ft. sweeps. Moreover, if the sea
+makes, or a ground swell rises, the least mistake in beaching a boat
+will cause it to sheer round, capsize, and wash about in the breakers
+with the crew most probably beneath it. Yarns are told of arms and legs
+appearing, of a horrible tortured face appearing, while the upturned
+boat washed about in the undertow, and those ashore were powerless to
+help. There is nothing the fishermen dread so much. One of them owns to
+leaving the beach when he has seen a boat running in on a very rough
+sea, so that he might not endure witnessing what he could not
+prevent.--He peeped however.
+
+These risks need considering, not in order to exaggerate the dangers of
+drifting in open beach boats--in point of fact, accidents seldom do
+happen,--but to show what skill is habitually exercised, what a touch
+and go with the sea it is.
+
+Sundown is the time for shooting nets. Eight to fourteen are carried
+for mackerel, six to ten for herrings--the scantier the fish, the
+greater the number of nets. At Seacombe they are commonly forty fathoms
+in length along the headrope which connects them all, and five fathoms
+deep. Stretching far away from the boat, as it drifts up and down
+Channel with the tides, is a line, perhaps a thousand yards long, of
+cork buoys. From these hang the lanyards[16] which support the headrope,
+from the headrope hang perpendicularly the nets themselves. Judgment is
+needed in shooting a fleet of nets. They may get foul of the bottom or
+of another boat's fleet. When, on account of careless shooting or
+tricks of the tide, the nets of several boats become entangled, there
+is great confusion, and the cursing is loud.
+
+      [16] For herrings the lanyards may be of such a length that the
+      foot of the net almost touches the sea-bottom. For mackerel,
+      which is a surface and midwater fish, they are much shorter, so
+      that the headrope lies just below the top of the water.
+
+Nets shot, the fishermen make fast the road for'ard; sup, smoke, sing,
+creep under the cutty, and sleep with one eye open.
+
+Sometimes they are too wet to sleep; often in the winter it is too
+cold.
+
+Afterwards, the laborious hauling in--one man at the headrope and the
+other at the foot. Contrary to a very general impression, the fish are
+not enclosed within the net, as in seining or in pictures of the
+miraculous draught of fishes. They prod their snouts into the meshes,
+and are caught by the gills. There may not be a score in a whole fleet
+of nets, or they may come up like a glittering mat, beyond the strength
+of two men to lift over the gunwale. Twenty-five thousand herring is
+about the burthen of an open beach drifter. Are there more, nets must
+be given away at sea, or buoyed up and left--or cut, broken, lost.
+Small catches are picked out of the nets as they are hauled in, large
+catches ashore.
+
+[Sidenote: _FISHERMEN FLEECED_]
+
+It is ashore that the fisherman comes off worst of all. Neither
+educated nor commercialized, he is fleeced by the buyers. And if he
+himself dispatches his haul to London.... Dick Yeo once went up to
+Billingsgate and saw his own fish sold for about ten pounds. On his
+return to Seacombe, he received three pounds odd, and a letter from the
+salesman to say that there had been a sudden glut in the market.
+Fishermen boat-owners have an independence of character which makes it
+difficult for them to combine together effectively, as wage-servers do.
+They act too faithfully on the adage that a bird in the hand is worth
+two in the bush, and ten shillings on the beach a sovereign at
+Billingsgate. So 'tis, when
+
+    There's little to earn and many to keep,
+
+and no floating capital at a man's disposal.
+
+In recent years, owing to bad prices and seasons and general lack of
+encouragement, or even of fair opportunity, the number of sea-going
+drifters at Seacombe has decreased by two-thirds. Much the same has
+happened at other small fishing places along the coast. This
+decline--so complacently acquiesced in by the powers that be--is of
+national importance; for the little fisheries are the breeding ground
+of the Navy. Nowadays fishermen put their sons to work on land.
+"'Tain't wuth it," they say, "haulin' yer guts out night an' day, an'
+gettin' no forrarder at the end o'it." Luckily for England the sea's
+grip is a firm one, and many of the sons return to it.
+
+When one hears Luscombe talk about the maddening trouble he has had in
+teaching plough-tail or urban recruits to knot and splice a rope, or
+watches, as I have, a couple of blue-jackets drive ashore in a small
+boat because they couldn't hoist sail, then one comprehends better the
+importance of the fisher-families whose work is made up of endurance,
+exposure, nerve and skill; who play touch and go with the sea; and who
+in the slack seasons have--unlike the ordinary workman--only too much
+time to think for themselves. They are the backbone of the Navy.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+                                                          SEACOMBE,
+                                                        _November_.
+
+
+1
+
+Whilst the train was drawing up at the platform, I noticed the people
+moving and looking downwards as if dogs were running wild amongst them.
+Then I saw two whitish heads bobbing about in the crowd. It was Jimmy
+and another boy come to meet me.
+
+We gave the luggage to the busman, and walked on down.
+
+"Tommy's gone tu Plymouth."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"They'm going to cut his eyes out an' gie 'en spectacles."
+
+"When did he go?"
+
+A rather sulky silence....
+
+Then: "Us thought 'ee was going to ride down. Dad said as yu'd be sure
+tu."
+
+"'Tisn't far to walk, Jimmy...."
+
+"Us be tired."
+
+Alack! I had done the wrong thing. Their little festivity, that was to
+have made them the envy of 'all they boys tu beach,' had fallen flat.
+They had expected to ride down 'like li'l gentry-boys.' However, we
+bought oranges, and then I was taken to see yesterday's fire, and was
+told how Tony had rushed into the blazing house to rescue a carpet 'an'
+didn' get nort for it.'
+
+Tony himself came downstairs from putting away an hour in bed. "I'd ha'
+come up to meet 'ee," he said sleepily, "if anybody'd a reminded me
+o'it. Us an't done nort to the fishing since you went away."
+
+"An' yu an't chopped up to-morrow morning's wude nuther!" added Mrs
+Widger.
+
+Grannie Pinn came in at tea-time. We invited her to sit down and have a
+cup. "Do 'ee think I an't got nothing to eat at home?" she asked.
+"Well, I have, then!--Ay," she continued, bobbing her head
+sententiously, "yu got a mark in Seacombe, else yu wuden't be down yer
+again so sune. That's what 'tis--a mark! I knows, sure nuff. Come on!
+who be it now? What's her like, eh?"
+
+She cannot understand how any young unmarried man can be without his
+sweetheart. Everybody according to her, must have a mark, or be in
+search of one. I told her with the brutality which delights her factual
+old mind, that if she herself had been a little less antique and
+poverty-stricken....
+
+"There! if I don't come round and box yer yers. Yu'm al'ays ready wi'
+yer chake."
+
+[Sidenote: _A MARK_]
+
+Then I offered her five _per cent._ of the lady's fortune, if she
+would find me a mark with unsettled money. Though she laughed it off,
+she was not a little scandalized by my levity. The Tough Old Stick has
+not outlived her memory of romance. Indeed, I think she holds to it all
+the tighter for her hardheadedness in every-day affairs.
+
+Midway through tea, Straighty crept into the kitchen. "What do _yu_
+want?" shouted Grannie Pinn. "Bain't there enough kids yer now?"
+Straighty stood in the centre of the kitchen, sucking three fingers
+and looking shyly at me from beneath her tousled tow-coloured hair.
+
+"You've not forgotten me, Straighty?" I asked. "You're not frightened
+of me, are you?"
+
+"Go an' speak to 'en proper," commanded Grannie Pinn. "Wer's yer
+manners, Dora?"
+
+"_Yu_ didn' speak to me proper, Grannie Pinn! Wer's yours?"
+
+"Aw, my dear soul! Now du 'ee shut up wi' yer chake!"
+
+Straighty remained sucking her fingers in the middle of the kitchen.
+She seemed about to cry. Quite suddenly, her eyes brightened. She
+glided over to me, put her wet fingers round my neck ("Dora!" from Mrs
+Widger), and gave me a big kiss on the chin. Then she told me all about
+everything, sitting with her head on my shoulder in the old courting
+chair.
+
+A tiny little episode, I grant; but very sweet.
+
+"That's your mark?" Grannie Pinn shouted. "You'll hae tu wait for she!"
+
+Straighty is established as my mark, and takes her duties, as she has
+learnt to conceive them, with amusing seriousness. She will not let me
+go out through the Square without being told where I am off to, nor let
+me return in house until I tell her where I have been. At the beginning
+of every meal we hear her creeping up the passage; see her yellow hair
+against the door-post. By the end of the meal she has summoned up
+courage to claim a kiss. "Now be off tu your mother!" says Mrs Widger.
+
+
+2
+
+Mrs Widger has let the back bedroom to a young married couple possessed
+of a saucer-eyed baby that cries lustily whenever its mother is out of
+its sight. How they succeed in living, sleeping, baby-tending and doing
+their minor cookery in the one pokey little room, already half filled
+by the bedstead, is difficult to understand. They do it. We see little
+of them, except just when we had rather see nothing at all.
+
+For dinner and the subsequent cup o' tay, Mam Widger allows one hour.
+But usually, before even the pudding is out of the oven, first one of
+us, then another, glances round to make sure that the kettle is well on
+the fire.
+
+[Sidenote: _MRS PERKINS_]
+
+Nowadays, however, when the kettle is beginning to sing, Mrs Perkins,
+the baby in her arms, comes downstairs and proceeds to cook for her
+husband a couple of small chops or a mess of meat-shreds and bubble and
+squeak. She stirs and chatters; she holds forth on the baby's beauty
+and goodness, its health, its father's love of it--and, in short, she
+talks to us as if we were delighted to see her and her baby. Tony's
+good manners triumph comically over his desire to get his cup o' tay
+and put away an hour up over. (He likes to take every chance of making
+up for wakeful nights at sea.) We all wish she would go quickly.
+Meanwhile, we feign an interest in what blousy, skirt-gaping,
+slop-slippered, enthusiastic maternity has to say.
+
+And when she does go, it is with a most joyful haste that we move the
+kettle to the very hottest part of the fire.
+
+
+3
+
+The family hubbub over Tommy's stay in the Plymouth Eye Infirmary has
+hardly died down yet. Recognizing with uncommon good sense that his
+double squint would bar him from the Navy or Army (he shows an
+inclination towards the latter), Mrs Widger took him to Plymouth; and
+on hearing that an operation would cure him, she did not hesitate, did
+not bring him home to think about it; she left him there. Then.... What
+a buzz! The child is to return very thin. Mrs Widger's cousin declares
+loudly that she would rather lead her boy about blind (he squints
+excessively) than let him go to one o' they places. Tony says, "Aye!
+they may feed 'en on food of a better quality like, after the rate, but
+he won't get done like he is at home." Several times daily he wants to
+know how long they will keep Tommy there, and when Mrs Widger replies,
+six weeks, he asks in a woe-begone voice: "Do 'ee think 'er'll know his
+dad when 'er comes home again?"
+
+All of which is easy to laugh at.
+
+No doubt hospitals are a godsend to the poor, immediately if not
+ultimately. At the same time, it cannot be said that the prejudice
+against them is wholly unreasonable. Poor people declare that they are
+starved in hospital, and it is, in fact, now recognized in dietetics
+that comparatively innutritious food, eaten with gusto, is better
+assimilated than the most scientifically chosen but unpalatable
+nutriment. A man, a poor man especially, can be half starved or at all
+events much thinned, on good food, who would do well on the habitual
+coarse fare that he enjoys. His life is a long adventure in a land
+where every other turning leads to starvation, but his adventurousness
+seldom extends to new sorts of food.
+
+[Sidenote: _HOSPITALS_]
+
+No one is so depressed by strange surroundings as the average poor man
+or woman. (Children get on much better.) Very likely he has never been
+alone, has never slept away from some relative or friend, the whole of
+his life. The unfamiliarity and precise routine of hospitals, the faces
+and ways all strange, are capable not only of greatly intensifying a
+man's sufferings, but even of retarding his recovery.
+
+Hospitals must necessarily be governed by two main conditions:--(1) The
+need of doing the greatest good to the greatest number; (2) The
+advancement of medical science and experience. Under (1) the
+overpressure on medical skill and time is bound to diminish tact and
+sympathy. Under (2) the serious or interesting cases are apt--as
+everyone who has mixed with hospital staffs knows very well--to receive
+attention not disproportionate to the nature of the malady, but
+disproportionate to the bodily, and particularly to the mental,
+suffering. The poor man can appreciate sympathy better than skill. He
+may not know how ill he is, but he knows how much he suffers. He is
+quick to detect and to resent preferential treatment. From the point of
+view of the independent poor, hospitals are far from what they might
+be. They are last straws for drowning men, useful sometimes, but best
+avoided.[17]
+
+      [17] I trust I make it plain that these statements imply no
+      general disparagement of hospitals. Whether or no they do the
+      best possible under the circumstances is not to be discussed
+      shortly or by the present writer. Since penning the above, it has
+      fallen to me to take a patient to the out-department of one of
+      the great London hospitals. We had some time to wait, with very
+      many others, on long wooden benches. I cannot express the almost
+      unbearable depression, the sense of ebbing vitality, the feeling
+      of being jammed in a machine, which took possession of me, who
+      was quite well. And I wish I could adequately express my
+      admiration of the visiting surgeon's manipulation of his delicate
+      instruments and his management of the patient.
+
+[Sidenote: _JACKS THE RIPPER_]
+
+Jacks is a very energetic young country surgeon. He is keen on his work
+and will procure admission to the hospital for any operative case. But
+he finds it by no means easy to get his patients there; for he is so
+keen on his work that he treats their feelings carelessly; hustles them
+through an operation; pooh-poohs their fear of anaesthetics and the
+knife. Jacks is well disliked by the poor. He has to live, and
+therefore he has to cultivate a professional manner and to dance
+attendance on wealthy hypochrondriacal patients whom otherwise he would
+probably send to the devil. The poor people have told him to his face
+that he runs after the rich and cuts about the poor; and they have
+nicknamed him _Jacks the Ripper_.
+
+Tony would have to be very far gone before he would willingly go into a
+hospital. Just now, between the mackerel and herring seasons, he is fat
+and sleepy, very sleek for him. Rheumatic fever in boyhood and
+neglected colds have left him rather deaf, and subject to noises in the
+head and miscellaneous bodily pains. He is 'a worriter' by nature.
+"When I gets bothered," he says, "I often feels as if summut be busted
+in me head." As the herring season comes round, so will Tony 'hae the
+complaints again,' and few will pity a man who always looks so well. A
+few years back, Mrs Widger procured for his deafness some quack
+treatment--which did do him good;--but he himself had little faith in
+it, and did not persevere. Like the mothers who rejoice in delicate
+children rather than feed them properly and send them early to bed,
+Tony prefers to think his ailments constitutional, a possession of his,
+a curse of fate, which flatters him, so to speak, by singling him out
+for its attentions. In a couple of years' time, when he comes out of
+the Royal Naval Reserve, he will have the option of accepting £50 down
+at once, or of waiting till he is sixty for a pension of four shillings
+a week. Mrs Widger understands perfectly that unless he wants to buy
+boats and gear--unless, in other words, he can make the £50
+productive--he had much better wait for the pension and be sure of a
+roof over his head when he is past work. Tony, however, will probably
+take the lump sum. He fears he may die and get nothing at all. He does
+not _feel_ that he will never see sixty, but he is of opinion that
+he will not, and sixty to a man of his temperament is such a long way
+hence. He thinks as little as possible of old age. "Aye!" he
+says--almost chants, so moved is he,--"the likes o' us slaves an'
+slaves all our life, an' us never gets no for'arder. Like as us be when
+we'm young, so us'll be at the end o'it all. Come the time when yu'm
+past work, an' yu be done an' wearied out, then all yer slavin's gone
+for nort. Tis true what I says. I dunno what to think--but 'tis the way
+o'it. 'Tain't right like. 'Tain't right!"
+
+
+4
+
+"Go shrimping wi' the setting-nets t'night, I reckon," said Uncle Jake.
+"Tide be low 'tween twelve and one o'clock. Jest vitty, that."
+
+It was one of those evenings, wind WSW., when the sea and sky look
+stormier than they are, or will be. Uncle Jake stood on the very edge
+of the sea wall, his hands in his pockets, his torn jumper askew, and
+his old cap cocked over one ear. From time to time he turned half round
+to deride a dressy visitor, or for warmth's sake twisted his body about
+within his clothing, or shrugged his shoulders humorously with a, "'Tis
+a turn-out o'it!" The seine net had just been shot from the beach for
+less than a sovereign's worth of fish--to be divided, one third for the
+owner of the net and the remainder among the seven men who had lent a
+hand.
+
+[Sidenote: _PRAWNING_]
+
+"Coo'h!" Uncle Jake exclaimed. "_'Tis_ a crib here! Nort 't all doing.
+Not like 't used tu be. I mind when yu cude haul in a seine so full
+as.... Might pick up a shilling or tu t'night shrimping, if they damn
+visitors an' bloody tradesmen an't been an' turned the whole o' Broken
+Rocks up an' down. _I_ tells 'em o'it!"
+
+"Shrimps or prawns, d'you mean?"
+
+"Why, prawns! Us calls it shrimping hereabout. You knows that. There's
+prawns there if yu knows where to look, but not like 't used to be.
+On'y they fules don' know where to look. An' they don' see Jake at it,
+an' I never tells 'em what I gets nor what I sells at; an' so they says
+I don' never du nort. I'd like to see they hae tu work waist-deep in
+water every night for a week when they'm sixty-five. An' in the winter
+tu!--If yu'm minded to come t'night, yu be up my house 'bout 'leven
+o'clock, an' I'll fetch me nets from under cliff if they b----y b----rs
+o' boys an't been there disturbin' of 'em."
+
+Uncle Jake's cottage looks outside like a small cellar that has somehow
+risen above the ground and then has been thatched with old straw and
+whitewashed. Inside, it is a shadowy place, stacked up high with
+sailing and fishing gear, flotsam, jetsam, balks of wood and all the
+odds and ends that he picks up on his prowlings along the coast. With
+tattered paper screens, he has partitioned off, near the fire and
+window, a small and very crowded cosy-corner. There he was sitting when
+I arrived; bread, butter, onions, sugar and tea--his staple foods--on
+the round table beside him, and his prawn-nets on the flagstones at his
+feet. Three cats glided about among the legs of the table and chairs,
+on the lookout to steal. Using the gentle violence that cats love from
+those they trust, Uncle Jake flung them one by one to the other side of
+the room. They returned, purring, to snatch at the none too fresh berry
+[eggs] of spider-crab with which the nets were being baited.
+
+The shallow small-meshed setting-nets are about two feet in diameter at
+the top. Stretched taut from side to side of the rim are two doubled
+strings or _thirts_--which cross at right angles directly above the
+centre of the net, and into which, near the middle, the four pieces of
+bait are ingeniously and simply fixed by little sliders on the thirts
+themselves. The whole apparatus hangs level from a yard or more of
+stout line, at the upper end of which is a small stick, a stumpy
+fishing rod, so to speak, often painted white so that it may be easily
+found as it lies on the dark rocks. Uncle Jake's net-sticks, however,
+are anything but white. Capable almost of finding them with his eyes
+shut, he would sooner lose his nets altogether than let whitened sticks
+point out to other people the pools which he alone knows.
+
+We put the nets into a couple of sacks and shouldered them. A long
+light pole was placed into my hand. "Don't yu never leave your pole
+behind. Yu'll want it, sure 'nuff, afore this night's over."
+
+So we set out. One by one the cats who were following, left us to go
+back home. We did not walk towards the sea. On the contrary we went
+inland, through some roads with demure sleeping villas on either side.
+"If they bloody poachers," Uncle Jake explained, "see'd us going
+straight towards the sea, they'd follow. _I_ knows 'em! They takes away
+the livelihood o' the likes o' us an' sells it. Sells it--an' says 'tis
+sport! I leads 'em a dance sometimes. I goes along a narrow ledge
+that's jest under water, wi' ten or twelve feet depth on either side.
+On they comes a'ter me. 'Uncle Jake knows where to go,' they says. And
+in _they_ goes--not knowing the place like I du--head over heels an' a
+swim for it! O Lor'! they don' like it when I tells 'em they better go
+home an' tumble into dry clothes. Yu shude hear the language they spits
+out o' their mouths 'long wi' the salt water. Horrible, tu be sure!"
+
+[Sidenote: _SETTING-NETS_]
+
+Broken Rocks, a playground for children by day, look wild and strange
+on a night when clouds are driving across the moon, when the cliffs
+fade into darkness high above the beach, and everything not black is
+grey, except where the white surf beats upon the outermost ledge. Then
+Broken Rocks have personality. A sinister spirit rises out of them with
+the heave of the sea. It is as if some black mood, some great monotony
+of strife, were closing in around one. On the sea wall, in the
+sunshine, I used to wonder why Uncle Jake calls Broken Rocks a terr'ble
+place. Now I do not. He works there by night.
+
+We peered out from the beach underneath the cliffs. Nobody had
+forestalled us. Uncle Jake was pleased. He laughed hoarsely, and the
+echo of it was not unlike the natural noises of the place. "Us'll make
+a start there," he said, pointing to a ledge between which and
+ourselves was a wide sheet of water. "Yu follow me an' feel for a
+foothold wi' your pole. _Don't_ yu step afore yu've felt."
+
+Into the water he went; seemed, indeed, to run across it. "Be 'ee wet?"
+he asked when I stepped out the other side.
+
+"Half way up my thighs!"
+
+"Yu hadn't no need to get wet so far up as your knees. I didn't. An' yu
+might ha' gone in there over your head. Yu use your pole, skipper. Feel
+afore yu steps. I'll set 'ee your two nets for a beginning."
+
+With his pole he felt the depth of the water around the ledge. Then he
+dropped the nets down, edging them carefully under the overhanging
+weed, and placed the sticks on the rock above. "Don't yu forget where
+yu sets your nets. Yu won't _see_'em. An' when yu hauls up, go gently,
+like so, else off goes all they master prawns, d'rec'ly they feels a
+jerk.... Leave 'em down a couple o' minutes.... But there, yu knows,
+don' 'ee? Us won't catch much till the tide turns. They prawns knows
+when 'tis beginning to flow so well as yu an' me. Yu work this yer, an'
+along easterly. I be going farther out."
+
+[Sidenote: _PRAWNS_]
+
+When I hauled up my first net I heard the faint clicketty noise--like
+paper scratching metal--of three or four prawns jumping about inside.
+My hand had to chase them many times round the net. One jumped over;
+one fell through. Nothing is more difficult to withdraw from a net than
+prawns, except it be a lobster, flipping itself about, hardly visible,
+and striking continually with its nippers. There was a lobster in the
+second net. It had to go into the same pocket as the prawns. It was
+something of an adventure afterwards to put a hand into the pocketful
+of lobster claws and prawn spines.
+
+Working eastward and outward, plunging in to the water or sliding with
+bumps and bruises off a rock, I must have passed Deadman's Rock, Danger
+Gutter, Broken Rock and the Wreckstone. (Things of the sea nearly
+always take name from their evil aspects.) Uncle Jake could have told
+me at any moment exactly where I was.
+
+At last, near the surf, I saw in front of me a flat table-rock,
+standing up alone, and as I descended towards the foot of it, a high
+black rocky archway became plain. Broad-leaved oarweed covered it like
+giant hair, and hung drooping into the deep black pool beneath. The
+moonlight glinted on the oarweed. The pool, though darkly calm, ebbed
+and flowed silently with the waves outside. I recognized the place. It
+was Hospital Rock--the rock the little boats strike on because it is
+smooth on top and the waves do not break over it very much. I half
+expected the ugly head of a great conger to look out at me from the
+pool. As I lay flat on the rock to drop my nets, the rattle and roar of
+the sea beyond, vibrating through the solid stone, the whistle of the
+wind through the downhanging oarweed, sounded like an orchestra of the
+mad damn'd.
+
+I caught nothing there, and was not sorry. The place was too eerie to
+stay in long. "Ah!" said Uncle Jake when we met again on the inner
+reef, "I've knowed they amateurs run straight off home when they've
+a-found theirselves under Hospital. A terr'ble place! Yu knows now. Did
+'ee set your nets there? Eh?"
+
+He took some fresh bait from his prawn bag and fixed it in the thirts
+of my nets. "'Tis nearly over," he said, "but jest yu try that, an' if
+they'm there that'll hae 'em. There's no bait like that there when yu
+can get it, on'y nobody knows o'it."
+
+The nature of that bait I shall not divulge, any more than I shall name
+the place where Uncle Jake goes to play with the young ravens in the
+spring. Somebody might catch his prawns; somebody would shoot his
+ravens. We had caught about two hundred prawns between us, a few
+lobsters and some wild-crabs. As we walked homewards, the three cats
+came down the lane, one by one, to welcome Uncle Jake.
+
+[Sidenote: _EAST WITH A SKIM-NET_]
+
+Next day we sailed east in the _Moondaisy_. Uncle Jake straddled the
+pools and lifted the heavy stones. Then in a skim-net,[18] with
+marvellous dexterity, he caught the almost invisible prawns as they
+darted away. He dragged lobsters out of holes, and cursed the
+neighbouring villagers who had been down to the shore after crabs and
+had disturbed his favourite stones. He knows how each one ought to lie;
+he even keeps the seaweed on some of them trimmed to its proper length.
+"But 'tain't like 't used to be," he says.
+
+      [18] Like a landing net, but shallower and with a shorter handle.
+
+He has almost given up going to sea for fish; some say because he will
+not take the trouble; but I think it is because he loves his rocks and
+cliffs so well. No one knows how much by night and day he haunts the
+wilder stretches of shore, nor how many miles he trudges in a week. But
+the gulls know him well, and will scream back to him when he calls. His
+laugh has something of the gulls' cry in it. I have heard it remarked
+that when his time comes (no sign of it yet) he will be found one
+morning dead among his familiar rocks. He is acquainted with death
+there. He has borne home on his shoulder by night the body of a woman
+who had fallen from the cliffs above; and again a negro that had washed
+ashore. With a little self-control one might have carried the woman all
+right, but the drowned nigger.... Imagine his face in the darkness--his
+eyes! Only a man with greatness in him, or a very callous man, could
+have brought such a corpse home, all along under the crumbling cliffs;
+and Uncle Jake is certainly not callous.
+
+
+5
+
+"Let 'em try any o' their tricks on me! They can turn out the likes o'
+us all right, I s'pose. But I can tell 'em what I thinks on 'em, here's
+luck. Thank God I don't live in no tradesman's house, an' can deal
+where I likes. Not that I shouldn't anyway...."
+
+Grannie Pinn's shrill angry voice pierced the kitchen door. The
+occasion was a mothers' gossiping; the subject, a kind of boycott that
+is practised in Seacombe. On the table there was a jug of ale and stout
+and an hospitably torn-open bag of biscuits. Around it sat Grannie
+Pinn--bolt upright in the courting chair, with her hands folded--Mrs
+Meer and Mam Widger. The feathers in Grannie Pinn's hat shook like a
+bush on the cliff-edge. All of them looked as if they felt a vague
+responsibility for the right conduct of the world. In short, they
+looked political.
+
+[Sidenote: _POOR MAN v. TRADESMAN_]
+
+The poor people here live in small colonies scattered behind the main
+street and among the villas, in little blocks of old neglected
+property, some of which has been bought up by tradesmen. So much of the
+former village spirit still survives, and so many of the tradesmen have
+but recently risen from poorer circumstances, that between some of the
+oldest and the youngest of them, and the workmen, there is even yet a
+rather mistrustful fellowship. They call each other, Jim, Dick, Harry
+and so on--over glasses, at all events. The growth of the class spirit,
+as opposed to the old village spirit, can be seen plainly when Bessie
+returns from school, saying: "Peuh! Dad's only a fisherman. Why can't
+'er catch more fish an' get a little shop an' be a gen'leman?" Seacombe
+tradesmen have been withdrawing into a class of their own--the class of
+'not real gen'lemen'--and have been showing a tendency to act together
+against the rest of the people, and to form rings for the purpose of
+keeping shops empty or prices up. Nobody minds their bleeding visitors.
+That is what God sends visitors for; and besides, the season is so
+short. But when they began to overcharge their fellow townsmen, in
+summer because it was the season and in winter because it wasn't the
+season, the poor people revolted, and amid tremendous hubbub, thunders
+of talk and lightnings of threat, a co-operative store was opened. Then
+did the tradesmen remind the poor of old family debts, legacies from
+hard times. Then did the poor say: "Very well, us'll hae our own store
+and bakery, and pay cash down to ourselves." Unable to obtain the
+tenancy of a shop, they bought one. They refused to raise the price of
+bread. They laughed at advertisements which professed to point out the
+fallacies of all co-operation. They succeeded, but the class difference
+was widened and clinched--poor man _versus_ tradesman.
+
+Grannie Pinn, Mrs Meer and Mam Widger were reckoning up the number of
+people who have been turned out of their cottages, or are under notice
+to quit, for neglecting to deal with their tradesmen landlords.
+
+Their indignation having found vent, they went on to talk of Virgin
+Offwill, who has acquired celebrity by living alone in a cottage on no
+one knows what, by sleeping in an armchair before the fire (when she
+can afford one), and by never washing. Sometime last month, Virgin sent
+for Dr Jacks because, so she said, she was wished [bewitched]; and she
+would not let him go until he threatened to report the state of her
+house to the medical officer of health.
+
+[Sidenote: _GOD SAVE--THE DINNER_]
+
+The tale of Virgin Offwill was capped by another--that of old Mrs
+Widworthy. Several years ago (these gossips have long memories) she
+received a postal order from her son together with an invitation to
+visit him in London. The post arrived after her man had gone to work.
+She did not wait; she sent out a neighbour's child to change the order,
+packed her few things in a basket, and went off to her son by the
+midday train. On the table she left a note:
+
+    "Widworthy, I am gone to London. Your dinner is in the saucepan. I
+    shall be back directly."
+
+There was loud laughter in the kitchen; another round of stout and ale;
+then silence. The mothers fidgeted, each after her own manner,
+meditatively. In all the world, and Seacombe, there seemed nothing to
+talk about--or too much.
+
+"Have 'ee heard ort lately of Ned Corry?" asked Grannie Pinn with a
+delightful mixture of gusto and propriety. "Have 'er still got Dina wi'
+'en?"
+
+"Yes, I think."
+
+"An' his wife tu?"
+
+Bessie burst into the room. Neither Tony nor Mrs Widger approve of
+discussing the intimate humanities before children, so Bessie was
+allowed to fling her news to us unchecked. "Mother, Miss Mase says I
+can leave school so soon as yu've found me a place. Then I'll hae some
+money o' my own earnings, won't I?"
+
+"Yu'll bring it to me, same as I had to what I earned, an' yu'll stay
+on to school till I thinks vitty. You'm not fit for a gen'leman's
+house."
+
+"Yes, I be. I can work. That's what yu'm paid for, ain't it?"
+
+"How many cups an' saucers have yu smashed this week?"
+
+"Have they learned 'ee all yu wants to know up to school?" inquired
+Grannie Pinn quietly, but with a twinkle at the company.
+
+"They an't learned me to play the pi-anno. That's what I wants now. If
+Dad 'd get one, _I_'d play."
+
+"Have they learned 'ee to cook a dinner?"
+
+"Anybody can du thic. I've learned to play _God Save the King_ on the
+school pi-anno."
+
+"How do 'ee start then?"
+
+"Why, you puts your fingers...."
+
+"Naw! I means how du 'ee start to cook dinner?"
+
+"Peuh!"
+
+"Her an't learned tidiness," said Mam Widger. "Lookse! Her scarf on one
+chair, gloves flinged on another, coat slatted on the ground an' her
+hat on the dresser--now, since her's come in! Pick 'em up to once, else
+thee't hae my hand 'longside o'ee!"
+
+Bessie scrabbled up her clothes and, making sounds of disgust, went
+out.
+
+"Her'll steady down, I hope," remarked Mrs Widger. "Her's wild, but a
+gude maid to try an' help a body, though her makes so much work as her
+does."
+
+"Ay!" said Grannie Pinn grimly. "If work don't steady her, there's
+nothing will."
+
+[Sidenote: _NED CORRY_]
+
+When Bessie was gone the conversation reverted to Ned Corry and the
+ages of his children. I met him last summer--have never ceased hearing
+about him, for his sayings are often repeated and his adventures at sea
+recounted. He came down here on holiday with his wife, who appeared to
+be very happy and was obviously very proud of her Ned. The morning he
+went back, he collected all of his old mates he could find, before
+breakfast, into a public-house, treated them to whisky until his
+pockets were empty, and then borrowed money to return to London. His
+personality seems to have left a deeper impression than any other on
+Seacombe. He is a man very alive; big, generous and uncontrollable in
+all things; so broad that he seems short; great in voice, great in
+strength, greatest in laughter. Very dark, and prominent in feature
+where his fierce black beard allows any of his face to be seen, he is a
+kind of Hebraic Berserker in general appearance, in the uncompromising
+force of him and the squat sloppiness of his clothes. Yet his eyes,
+almost bedded in hair, have often the bright peeping humorousness of a
+shaggy dog's.
+
+He had the most boats on the beach, and mighty strokes of luck with the
+fish; employed more men than anyone before or since; paid them well
+when he had the money, and with an irregularity which would have been
+tolerated from no other boat-owner. Dina went to lodge at his house. He
+made of her, so gossip says, a second wife. He succeeded in running a
+household of three; then bought two lodging houses and set a wife to
+manage each. "Ned was all right," Tony says, "on'y he didn't know how
+to look after hisself--didn't care--nor after his money when he made
+it." One evening, Tony found him in his bath in the middle of the
+kitchen whilst his womenfolk were cooking him a good hot supper. It was
+not his being in his bath which made Tony blush, but the freedom with
+which he called, "Come in!"
+
+When the prudent-minded of Seacombe clamoured to Ned for their money,
+he sold up his boats and furniture, went to London, took without
+apprenticeship a well-paid job at the docks, and now, as he walks home
+along the dockside streets, he is given _Good Night_ from London
+Bridge to Tilbury. The exerting of strength seems to have been his
+leading impulse; pride in Ned Corry his only check. He was too big for
+Seacombe. In London he remains entirely himself--'West-country Ned!'
+
+Before Ned Corry's affairs were finished with, Tony came into the
+kitchen, saying: "I just been talking out there to Skinny Chubb. Nice
+quiet chap, he is. His wife _is_ gone."
+
+"Well, didn't 'ee know that?"
+
+[Sidenote: _SELF-RESTRAINT_]
+
+Then I heard a wonderful tale of self-restraint. Chubb is a good
+workman, a man of about fifty with grown up boys and girls. His wife
+has been no good to him. She used to have men in the house when he was
+away. She provided them with grog and food, but there was never
+anything for Chubb to eat, except abuse. She won the daughters over to
+her side. Sometimes she would go away to London, taking perhaps one of
+the girls with her. Only the eldest son, who was not at home, sided
+with his father. Neighbours used to hear the couple quarrelling half
+the night, but during the whole of their married life he never once
+struck or beat her. All he used to tell other people was:--"'Tis a
+wonder how a man can stand all her du say to me, day an' night, early
+an' late."
+
+Just before Michaelmas, she decided to leave her husband: to go to
+London with a German flunkey. They broke up the home. Chubb packed up
+for her the best of the furniture. He wrote out her labels, said
+_Good-bye_, paid her cab fare to the station. Now he is living in
+lodgings. Rumour has it that the German has left her. In answer to
+inquiries, Chubb merely says: "Well, I tell 'ee, _I_ be glad to be out
+o'it all at last. _I_'ll never hae her back."
+
+It is a sound old piece of psychology which distinguishes a man's bark
+from his bite. The poor man's bark is appalling; I often used to think
+there was murder in the air when I heard some quite ordinary
+discussion; there would have been murder in the air had I myself been
+worked up to speak so furiously. But, comparatively speaking, he seldom
+bites; hardly ever without warning; and he can as a rule stay himself
+in the very act. The educated man, on the other hand, does not bark
+much; one of the most important parts of his education has been the
+teaching him not to do so; but when he does bite, it is blindly, and he
+makes his teeth meet if he can. We hear, of course, much more of the
+poor man in the police courts, and we imagine (spite of Herbert
+Spencer's warning) that education is to diminish his crimes. How very
+simple and fallacious! In the first place, the poor, the uneducated or
+but slightly educated, greatly out-number the educated. Suppose by
+means of complete and trustworthy criminal statistics, we could work
+out the _percentage criminality_ of the different classes. I fancy
+that the poor man would not then show--even judged by our whimsical
+legal and moral standards--a greater percentage criminality than the
+educated. And if in our statistics we could include degrees of
+provocation to the various crimes, such as hunger, poverty, want of the
+money to leave exasperating surroundings--it would probably be found
+that the poor are, if anything, less criminally disposed than other
+sections of the community; that, though they lack something of the
+secondary self-restraint which prevents bark and noise, they are, other
+things being equal, actually stronger in that primary self-restraint,
+the lack of which leads directly to crime. On _a priori_, historical,
+grounds one would anticipate such a conclusion.
+
+It is certain that they forgive offence more readily.
+
+I have often wondered how many nice quiet respectable vindictive
+murders are yearly done by educated men too clever to be found out. The
+poor man is a fool at 'Murder as a Fine Art.' He hacks and bashes.
+
+
+6.
+
+Sighting, as we thought, some balks of timber, floating away on the ebb
+tide over the outside of Broken Rocks, two of us shoved a small boat
+down the beach. Our flotsam was a trick of the fading light on the sea,
+just where Broken Rocks raised the swell a little; but in the
+exquisite, the almost menacing, calm of the evening, we leaned on our
+oars and watched for a while. To seaward, the horizon was a peculiar
+lowering purple, as if a semi-opaque sheet of glass were placed there.
+On land, over the Windgap, the sunset was like many ranks of yellow and
+shining black banners--hard, brassy. The sea was a misty blue. One by
+one, according to their prominence, the bushes on the face of the
+cliffs faded into the general contour. As we landed, a slight lop came
+over the water from the dark south-east. "Ah!" said Uncle Jake. "We'm
+going to hae it. South-easter's coming!"
+
+[Sidenote: _CALLED OUT BETIMES_]
+
+There was some discussion as to whether or not we should haul the boats
+up over the sea-wall. In the end we hauled the smaller ones, leaving
+the _Cock Robin_ and the drifter upon the beach.
+
+In the very early morning--it was so dark I could not see the outline
+of the window--I half awoke to an indistinct sensation that the house
+was rocking and hell unloosed outside. Something solid seemed to be
+beating the wall. Than I heard Grandfer's voice roaring at the foot of
+the stairs:--"What is it? Why, tell thic Tony he'd better hurry up else
+all the boats 'll be washed away. Blowing a hurricane 'tis! Sea's
+making. Oughtn't to ha' left they boats...."
+
+"Be quiet! yu'll wake all the kids up."
+
+"Blowing a hurricane 'tis! Nort to me if the boats du wash off. Tony'd
+never wake."
+
+"All right, I'll wake him."
+
+In five minutes we were downstairs, with the fire lighted and the
+kettle on.
+
+Outside, it was pitch dark. There was nothing there, it seemed, except
+a savage wind and stinging splotches of rain and the cry of the low
+tide on the sand. I felt my way up the Gut and out, sliding one foot
+before the other so as not to fall over the sea-wall. John Widger
+bumped into me, and together we crept along to the capstan. A white
+shadow of surf was just visible. We dropped gingerly off the wall to
+the beach, trusting there was no iron gear there to smash our ankles.
+Then for an hour we fumbled our way about; pushed, hauled,
+disentangled, slid and swore; grasping sometimes the right rope and
+sometimes the wrong one with hands almost too cold and stiff, too
+painful, to grasp anything at all.
+
+Out of the blackness came another hurricane squall with rain that
+lashed. The rushing air itself shook. We crouched, all humped up, in
+the lew of a drifter's bows, whilst the rain water washed around our
+boots and coat-tails. "This 'll tell 'ee what 'tis like for us chaps,"
+said Tony. "I be only sorry," Uncle Jake added, "for them what's out to
+sea now in ships wi' rotten gear."
+
+[Sidenote: _A DISCOLOURED FURY_]
+
+As the dawn broke thick, the sea rose still further, until it was a
+discoloured fury battering the shore. With Uncle Jake I watched some
+long planks, four inches in thickness and ten broad, swept off the top
+of the beach. We saw them hurtled over Broken Rocks, now dashed against
+the cliff, now careering, so to speak, on their hind legs. Such were
+their mad capers that we laughed aloud. We were far from wishing to
+save them. We rejoiced with them.
+
+As the day blew on, the wind moderated inshore and the lop gathered
+itself together into a heavy swell. And after dark, at half tide, Uncle
+Jake and myself worked hard. We dragged the heavy planks from a surf
+that seemed ever advancing on us to drive us towards the cliffs, yet
+never did, and we propped up the planks against cliffs whose crumbling
+drove us constantly down to the sea. There's a winter's firing there.
+
+We talked--out-howling the noise jerkily--of wrecks and wreckages. Had
+we had the chance, we might then conceivably have wrecked a ship. For
+there, on the narrow strip of shingle between the wash of the waves and
+the unstable cliff, we were primitive men, ready without ruth to wreck
+for ourselves the contrivances of civilization.
+
+
+7.
+
+Tony has received one or two presents this autumn, and now the gales
+have put an end to all kinds of fishing, he is beginning to write his
+letters of thanks. Or rather, he bothers Mam Widger to write them for
+him, and when she has said sufficiently often, "G'out yu mump-head! Du
+it yourself!" he sets to work. After long hesitation, pen in hand, and
+a laborious commencement, he dashes off a letter, protests that it
+ought to be burnt, and sends it to post. He acts, indeed, a comic
+version of the groans and travail about which literary men talk so
+much.
+
+[Sidenote: _PRESENTS AND TIPS_]
+
+Whether he prefers a present or a tip is doubtful, and depends largely
+on the amount of money in the house. Presents are more valued; tips
+more useful. He feels that 'there didn't ought to be no need of tips';
+knows obscurely that they are one of the effects, and the causes, of
+class difference; that they are either a tacit admission that his
+labour is underpaid, or else such an expression of good-will as a man
+would not presume to give to 'the likes o' himself,' or else an
+indirect bribe for some or other undue attention. Usually, however, not
+wishing to go into the matter so thoroughly--having come in contact
+with outsiders chiefly when they have been on holiday and least
+economical--he considers a tip merely as the outflowing of a
+gen'leman's abundance. "They can afford it, can't 'em? They lives in
+big houses, an' it helps keeps thees yer little lot fed an' booted."
+
+If, however, he has reason to believe that 'a nice quiet gen'leman' is
+really hard-up, then he is very sorry, and will reduce the rate of hire
+by so much as half. In such cases, it is well that the gen'leman should
+add a small tip, for his niceness' sake. Then is Tony more than paid.
+
+The gentleman, as such, seems to be losing prestige. Gentility is being
+made to share its glory with education, 'Ignorant' is becoming a worse
+insult than 'no class.' Grandfer, in argument will think to prove his
+case by saying: "Why, a gen'leman told us so t'other day on the Front.
+A gen'leman told me, I tell thee!" Grandfer's sons would like the
+gen'leman's reasons. In fact the stuff and nonsense that the chatting
+gen'leman, feeling himself safe from contradiction, will try to teach a
+so-called ignorant fisherman, is most amazing. If he but knew how
+shrewdly he is criticised, afterwards....
+
+Education even is esteemed not so much for the knowledge it provides,
+still less for its wisdom, as for the advantage it gives a man in
+practical affairs; the additional money it earns him. "No doubt they
+educated people knows a lot what I don't," says Tony, "an' can du a lot
+what I can't; but there's lots o' things what I puzzles me old head
+over, an' them not the smallest, what they ain't no surer of than I be.
+Ay! an' not so sure, for there's many on 'em half mazed wi' too much
+o'it."
+
+
+8.
+
+[Sidenote: _BESSIE_]
+
+Bessie has finally left school. The excitement, the chatter, the sudden
+air of superiority over the other children, the critical glance round
+the room when she returns home.... She has learnt next to nothing of
+school-work--which matters little, since she is strong, hopeful, and
+has a genuine wish to do her best. What does matter is, that she is
+careless, inclined to be slatternly, and has no idea of precision
+either in speech or work. (Few girls have.) This is in part, no doubt,
+mere whelpishness to be grown out of presently. She picks up some piece
+of gossip. "Mother! Mrs Long's been taken to hospital. Her's going to
+die, I 'spect."
+
+"No her an't gone to hospital nuther. Dr Bayliss says as her's got to
+go if she ain't better to-morrow. Isn't that what you've a-heard now?"
+
+"Yes--but I thought her'd most likely be gone 'fore this," says Bessie
+without, apparently, the least sense of shame, or even of inexactitude.
+
+The other day she reached down a cup to get herself a drink of water.
+Then she took some pains to see if the cup still _looked_ clean, and
+finding it did, she replaced it among the other clean ones on the
+dresser.
+
+Her mother sent her out to the larder for some more bread. Bessie
+brought in a new loaf.
+
+"That ain't it," said Mrs Widger. "There's a stale one there."
+
+"No, there ain't."
+
+"Yes, there is."
+
+"I've looked, an't I?"
+
+"Yu go an' look again, my lady."
+
+"Well, 'tis dark, an' I an't got no light to see with."
+
+Protesting vehemently, Bessie found the stale loaf. Were I her
+mistress, she would irritate me into a very bad temper, and then, by
+her muddle-headed willingness, would make me sorry. She is untrained.
+School has in no way disciplined her mind. From early childhood, of
+course, she has had to do many odd jobs for her mother, but a woman
+with the whole burden of a house on her shoulders, who has never found
+the two ends more than just meet, cannot spare time or thought to train
+her girls systematically. It is so much easier to do the whole of the
+work herself. Bessie's usefulness, such as it is, speaks a deal for her
+disposition. After all, how many women in any station of life, have
+precision and forethought enough to lay a fire so that it will burn up
+at once? Bessie is only thirteen. It is, indeed, her ability for her
+age that tempts one to judge her by a standard which elsewhere--except
+among women discussing their servants--would only be applied to a girl
+of twenty.
+
+Suppose fathers judged their daughters as mothers judge their
+servants....
+
+[Sidenote: _GOING INTO SERVICE_]
+
+For the present, Bessie is in daily service at a lodging-house. For a
+'gen'leman's residence,' which would be better for her, she is
+over-young and would, besides, need an outfit of dresses, caps and
+aprons which she is not yet old enough to take care of, nor will be
+until she is ready to fall in love. She can go to Mrs Butler's in a
+torn dress and dirty pinafore. She is not expected to appear before the
+visitors; only to do the dirty, rough, and heavy work behind the
+scenes. It was a condition of her leaving school so young, that she
+should go into service and sleep there. Very naturally, Mrs Widger and
+Mrs Butler soon arranged that the 'education lady,' when she came to
+inspect, should be shown Bessie's bedroom at the lodging-house--and
+that Bessie should sleep at home. It was better for all three; for Mrs
+Butler who is short of room, for Mrs Widger who wants Bessie's help,
+and for Bessie who still requires her mother's authority and oversight.
+Educationalists don't seem to understand.
+
+In return for two shillings a week and her food, Bessie is supposed to
+work twelve hours a day, from eight till eight. All she does might
+possibly be crammed into three hours a day; that is all she is paid
+for. She brings home her supper in a piece of newspaper. One evening
+she brought some chicken bones which had been in turn the foundation of
+roast chicken, cold chicken, stewed chicken, and soup. Bessie rather
+enjoyed them. Another evening, she unwrapped a whole cake. It fell on
+the floor, whack! neither bouncing, nor breaking. It was full of dough.
+A basin of soup-dregs which she brought home two days ago was found to
+contain a length of stewed string. Stewed to rags, it was, like badly
+boiled meat. Bessie says that Mrs Butler did miss a bell-rope.
+
+
+9
+
+There was a rush and a banging up the passage. The kitchen door burst
+violently open. A girl (though she wore long skirts her figure was
+unformed and her waist had a stiff youthful curve) ran quickly into the
+room.
+
+Her eager bright-coloured young face--that also not yet fully
+formed--was overshadowed by a flapping decorated hat obviously
+constructed less for a woman's head--less still for a maiden's--than
+for a cash draper's window. Her chest was plastered with a motley
+collection of cheap jewellery and lace. Her boots had not been cleaned.
+
+She dropped her cardboard boxes on the floor. Regardless of her womanly
+attire, like nothing so much as a hasty child, she flung her arms round
+Tony's neck.
+
+"Hallo, Dad! How be 'ee? Eh? How's everybody? Lord, I'm hungry. Look
+what I got for 'ee. An't forgot nobody this time, though 'tisn't
+everybody as remembers me. Look, Dad!"
+
+"What is it?" asked Tony, looking blankly, as if he could hardly
+realise so much clatter.
+
+"Lookse, Dad! What do 'ee think o'it?"
+
+A box was torn open. From it came a couple of glass ornaments, and
+various sorts of 'coloured rock' and sticky toffee for the children.
+
+[Sidenote: _BACK FROM SERVICE_]
+
+It was Tony's eldest daughter, Jenny, come home from service. She
+walked round the room picking up things to examine, things to eat,
+things that she claimed were hers, and things that she desired given
+her. She talked without, so far as I could see, any connection between
+the sentences. Mouthfuls of food reduced her babbling shriek to a
+burr-burr.
+
+"Be 'ee glad to see your daughter, Dad?"
+
+"Iss...." said Tony, looking at her very fondly, but still puzzled.
+
+"Don't believe yu be. Why didn't 'ee write then if yu loves me so?"
+
+"Thic's Mam 'Idger's job."
+
+"G'out!" said Mrs Widger,--"Jenny, you an't see'd our addition, have
+'ee."
+
+I held out my hand. Jenny blushed; then she said: "Good evening, sir";
+then she giggled; and finally she turned her back on me. It took a
+minute or two for her happy carelessness to return.
+
+Domestic servants on holiday, more than any other class of people,
+strain one's tact and rouse one's ingrained snobbery. They tend to be
+over-respectful--the sort of respectfulness that presupposes
+reward,--and to brandish _sirs_, or to be shy and silly, or else
+to treat one with a more airy familiarity than the acquaintanceship
+warrants. In the matter of manners, they sit between two chairs, the
+class they serve has one code; the class they spring from has another,
+equally good perhaps, certainly in some respects more delicate, but
+different. In imitating the one code, unsuccessfully, they lose their
+hold on the other. Their very speech--a mixture of dialect and standard
+English with false intonations--betrays them. They are like a man
+living abroad, who has lost grip on his native customs, and has
+acquired ill the customs of his adopted country. It is not their fault.
+Circumstances sin against them.
+
+Mrs Widger tells me that, when she left her mother's for service, she
+felt nothing so keenly as the loneliness, the isolation, of being in a
+house where no one could be in any full sense of the word her
+confidant, where she was at the beck and call of strangers from the
+time she got up till the time she went to bed, where her irregular
+hours of leisure were passed quite alone in a kitchen. It seems, as
+might be anticipated, that _mental_ comfort or discomfort is at the
+bottom of the servant question, and that class differences, class
+misunderstandings, are ultimately the cause of it. Often enough the
+mistress wishes to be kind, but she fails to understand that what she
+values most differs from what is most valued by her servants. Often
+enough the servants wish to do their best, but little irritations,
+unsalved by sympathy and not to be discussed on terms of equality, lead
+to sulky, don't-care moods which exasperate the mistress into positive,
+instead of negative, unkindness. So a vicious circle is formed. The
+covert enmity between one woman and another simply calls for give and
+take where both are of the same class, but when one of them is, for
+payment and all day, at the disposal of the other.... How many homes
+there are where the menfolk can get anything done willingly, and the
+mistress nothing whatever! The girls go out so early. They miss the
+rough and tumble of their homes. They have their own little ambitions,
+hardly comprehensible to anyone else. Whether or no they desire to be
+satisfactory, they do want their own little flutters.
+
+
+10
+
+[Sidenote: _LITTLE SERVANT GIRLS_]
+
+Poor brave small servant girls, earning your living while you are yet
+but children! I see your faces at the doors, rosy from the country or
+yellowish-white from anæmia and strong tea; see how your young breasts
+hardly fill out your clinging bodices, all askew, and how your hips are
+not yet grown to support your skirts properly--draggle-tails! I see you
+taking the morning's milk from the hearty milkman, or going an errand
+in your apron and a coat too small for you, or in your mistress's or
+mother's cast-off jacket, out at the seams, puffy-sleeved, years behind
+the fashion and awry at the shoulders because it is too big. I see your
+floppety hat which you cannot pin down tightly to your hair, because
+there isn't enough of it;--your courageous attempts to be prettier than
+you are, or else your carelessness from overmuch drudgery; your
+coquettish and ugly gestures mixed.
+
+I picture your life. Are you thinking of your work, or are you dreaming
+of the finery you will buy with your month's wages; the ribbons, the
+lace, or the lovely grown-up hat? Are you thinking of what he said, and
+she said, and you said, you answered, you did? Are you dreaming of
+_your_ young man? Are you building queer castles in the air? Are
+you lonely in your dingy kitchen? Have you time and leisure to be
+lonely?
+
+I follow you into your kitchen, with its faint odour of burnt grease
+(your carelessness) and of cockroaches, and its whiffs from the
+scullery sink, and a love-story that scents your life, hidden away in a
+drawer. I hear your mistress's bell jingle under the stairs. You must
+go to bed, and sleep, and be up early, before it is either light or
+warm, to work for her; you must be kept in good condition like a cart
+horse or a donkey; you must earn, earn well, your so many silver pounds
+a year.
+
+In mind, I follow you also into your little bedroom under the roof,
+with its cracked water-jug that matches neither the basin or the
+soap-dish, and its boards with a ragged scrap of carpet on them, and
+your tin box in the corner; and the light of the moon or street lamp
+coming in at the window and casting shadows on the sloping whitewashed
+ceiling; and your guttered candle. What will you try on to-night? A
+hat, or a dress, or the two-and-eleven-three-farthing blouse? Shift the
+candle. Show yourself to the looking-glass. A poke here and a pull
+there--and now put everything away carefully in the box under the bed,
+and go to sleep.
+
+Though I say that I follow you up to your attic, and watch you and see
+you go to sleep, you need not blush or giggle or snap. I would not do
+you any harm; your eyes would plague me. And besides, I do not entirely
+fancy you. You are not fresh. You are boxed up too much. But I trust
+that some lusty careless fellow, regardless of consequences, looking
+not too far ahead, and following the will of his race--I trust that he
+will get hold of you and whirl you heavenwards, and will fill your
+being full to the brim; and will kiss you and surround you with
+himself, and will make you forget yourself and your mistress and all
+the world, the leaves and birds of the Lover's Lane, the shadowy cattle
+munching in the field and the footsteps approaching.
+
+I wish you luck--that your young man may stick to you. It is after all
+a glimpse of God I wish you, perhaps your only one.
+
+You've got a longish time before you.
+
+
+11
+
+[Sidenote: _MRS YARTY_]
+
+Mrs Yarty, up Back Lane, is reduced to that last extremity of poor
+women: she is cleaning her cottage and preparing as well as she can 'to
+go up over' on credit, without either doctor or midwife--unless she
+becomes so ill that someone sends for the parish doctor. She will not
+wish that done, and probably when her time comes, some neighbour will
+look in to see if she is going on as well as can be expected. Were
+Yarty and his wife sufficiently servile to attend church or chapel,
+prayer-meetings or revivals, all sorts of amateur parsons, male and
+female, would flock round; but in any case, Mrs Yarty has no time for
+such goings-on, and if Yarty found anyone sniffing about his house, he
+would certainly tell them that it _was_ his house.
+
+A while ago one of the 'district ladies' came here, to Tony's. We were
+a little short with her, and as a last resource, she remarked
+superciliously, in a tone of pleasant surprise: "You are really _very_
+clean here." 'Twas an untruth. We are not _very_ clean: we are as
+cleanly as is practicable. I should have liked to show her the door.
+"'Tis only the way of 'em!" said Mrs Widger. "They'm stupid, but they
+means all right."
+
+[Sidenote: _THE YARTY CHILDREN_]
+
+Mrs Yarty is not low-spirited at all, and though her voice sounds
+rather hysterical, it is merely her manner of speaking, slightly
+accentuated perhaps by more trouble than usual. She is fairly well used
+to such events by now. Yarty himself is angry. His ordinary habits are
+bound to be upset for a few days; for ever, if Mrs Yarty dies. He is
+what successful and conceited people call a waster. "There ain't no
+harm in him," Tony says. "He wuden't hurt a fly. The only thing is, 'er
+don't du much." I have never seen him actually drunk. He keeps very
+nearly all his irregular earnings for his own use in a strong locked
+box upstairs. His house is a sort of hotel to him, where he expects to
+find a bed and food, and it is apparently not his business to inquire
+how the food is obtained. If there is none, he makes a fuss, and will
+not take for an answer that he has failed to bring the money. Bobby
+Yarty, thin, pale, big-eyed, the eldest son but one--a nice intelligent
+boy though he swears badly at his mother--is ill of a disease which
+only plenty of good food can cure. If, however, food is scarce, it is
+first Mrs Yarty who goes short, then the children. Whether they do, or
+don't, have as much as a couple of chunks each of bread and dripping,
+Yarty must have his stew or fry. The wage-earner has first claim on the
+food, and even when the wage-earner does not earn, the custom is still
+kept up. It is possible also that Mrs Yarty has still an underlying
+affection for her man, a real desire, become instinctive, to feed him.
+
+She does not say so. Far from it. She says that she is sorry she ever
+left a good place to marry Yarty. She would, she declares, go back into
+service but for her children. Washing-day, she swears, is her jolliest
+time, and she boasts, with what pride is left her, of there being
+places at twelve or fourteen shillings a week still open to her. She
+did take a place once--was allowed to take her baby with her--but at
+the end of a fortnight she arrived home to find that her husband,
+impatient for his tea, had thrown all the crockery on the floor. She
+saw then that she must be content with things as they are.
+
+Her present worry is, what will become of the children while she is up
+over, and who will feed them? Mam Widger will do her share, I don't
+doubt. Very often now she puts aside something for them. There is a
+sort of pleasantness in watching them take it: they run off with the
+dish or baking tin like very polite and very hungry dogs, and bring it
+back faithfully with exceeding great respectfulness towards a household
+where there is food to spare.
+
+Mrs Yarty is one of those people who work better for others than for
+themselves. She is no manager. "They says," she remarked the other day,
+"as He do take care of the sparrows." She is a sparrow herself; she
+grubs up sustenance, rubs along without getting any forwarder, where
+others would go under altogether. Years ago she must have been
+good-looking. Her patchily grey hair is crisp; she still has a few
+pretty gestures. But trouble and too much child-bearing have done next
+to their worst with her. Sensible when she grasps a thing, she is often
+a bit mazed. She has the figure of an old woman--bent, screwed--and the
+toughness of a young one. Her words, spoken pell-mell in a high
+strained voice which oscillates between laughter and tears, seem to be
+tumbling down a hill one after another. Spite of all her household
+difficulties, she retains the usual table of ornaments just inside the
+front door. Last summer she reclaimed from the roadway a tiny
+triangular garden, about five inches long in the sides, by wedging a
+piece of slate between the doorstep and the wall. There she kept three
+stunted little wall-flowers--no room for more--which she attended to
+every morning after breakfast. Cats destroyed them in the end. She
+laughed, as it were gleefully. Her laugh is her own; derisive,
+open-mouthed, shapeless, hardly sane--but she has a smile--a smile at
+nothing in particular, at her own thoughts--which is singularly sweet
+and pathetic. I cannot but think that the spirit which enables her to
+live on without despair, to love her little garden and to smile so
+sweetly, is better worth than much material comfort. Hers, after all,
+is a life that has its fragrance.
+
+
+12
+
+[Sidenote: _TONY AS NURSEMAID_]
+
+Mrs Widger went off after tea to look at Rosie's grave. She likes to go
+alone, without the children, and she also likes to stop and have a chat
+with someone she knows up on land. In consequence, Tony, taking his
+Sunday evening promenade, found the children on the Front just in that
+state when they want, and do not wish, to go to bed. They followed him
+in.
+
+"Wer's thic Mam 'Idger?"
+
+"Don' know!"
+
+"Her's gone to cementry."
+
+"Didn' ought to leave 'ee like thees yer."
+
+"Her's gone to see Rosie."
+
+Tony felt himself rather helpless. "Now then," he cried with a vain
+nourish, "off to bed wi' 'ee!"
+
+"No!--No!--Shan't!--Us an't had no supper."
+
+"Wer is yer supper? What be going to hae?"
+
+"Don' know.--Mam! Mam 'Idger!"
+
+One started crying, then the other.
+
+"Casn' thee put 'em to bed thyself?" I asked.
+
+"I don' know! Better wait.... Her's biding away a long time. I'll hae
+to talk to she."
+
+Tony sat down in the courting chair. The two boys climbed one on each
+of his knees. They wriggled themselves comfortable, and fell asleep. He
+woke them. "Won' 'ee go to bed now? I wants to go out."
+
+"No! No!" they cried peevishly. "Wer's thiccy Mam?"
+
+Their white heads, turned downwards in sleep on either side of Tony's
+red weathered face, looked very patient and bud-like. Tony's eyes
+twinkled over them with a humorous helplessness, crossed occasionally
+by a shade of impatience. So the three of them waited for the
+household's source of energy to return. Tony had been wanting a glass
+of beer. He nearly slept too.
+
+Mam Widger said, when she did come, that they were 'all so big a fule
+as one another.' "Casn' thee even get thy children off to bed?" she
+asked.
+
+"I can't help o'it," was Tony's reply.
+
+[Sidenote: _LOSS OF TEMPER_]
+
+She has taken the household affairs so completely on her shoulders that
+he is almost helpless without her. In many ways, and in the better, the
+biblical, sense of the word, he is still so childlike that he often
+gets done for him what it would be useless for other people who have
+little of the child in them, to expect. For the same reason, bullies
+choose him out for attack. If I should happen to lose my temper with
+him, it is a fault on my part, quickly repented of and quicker
+forgiven, but a fault nevertheless. If he, on the other hand, loses his
+temper with me, he merely says afterwards: "Ah! I be al'ays like
+that--irritable like; I al'ays was an' I al'ays shall be to the end o'
+the chapter." He assumes that there was no fault on his part, that his
+loss of temper was simply the outcome of the nature of things and of
+himself, and consequently that there was nothing to call for
+forgiveness. The curious thing is that one feels his view to be right.
+One does not _forgive_ children; nor the childlike spirit either.
+
+Returning from sea one evening, more lazy than tired, he said: "You
+wash me face, Mam, an' I'll wash me hands myself." His face was washed
+amid shouts of laughter, and I tugged off his boots. We were all quite
+pleased. Happy is the man for whom one can do that sort of thing!
+
+Mrs Widger explained the other day at dinner that for a time after they
+were married, Tony used to help a great deal with the housework, until
+once, when he was doing something clumsily, she said: "Git 'long out
+wi' 'ee, I can du that!"
+
+"Iss," added Tony, "I used to scrub, and help her wi' the washing (an'
+kiss her tu), but I ain't done nort to it since her spoke to me rough,
+like that, an' now I be got out the way o'it, an' that's the reason
+o'it--thic Mam 'Idger there!"
+
+"G'out! 'tis thy...."
+
+"Oh well, I du cuddle 'ee sometimes, when yu'm willing!"
+
+
+13
+
+Against the beach the listless sea made a sound like a rattle, very
+gently and continuously shaken by a very tired baby. Nothing was doing.
+The air was a little too chilly for pleasure boating. Tony had gone to
+'put away up over' the after-dinner hour. I lay down to read, and fell
+asleep to the meg-meg of Mam Widger's voice chatting in a neighbour's
+doorway.
+
+Two or three small pebbles jumped through the open window. Uncle Jake
+was below. When he says, on the Front, that he is going somewhere, he
+may set off this week, next week, or never; but when he wakes one
+up.... I hastened down.
+
+[Sidenote: _PRAWNING WITH BOAT-NETS_]
+
+"Going shrimpin' wi' the boat-nets," he said, flavouring, as it were, a
+tit-bit in his mouth. "Must try and earn summut if I bean't going to
+feel the pinch o' _thees_ winter." Then he added as if it were an
+afterthought: "Be 'ee coming?"
+
+"When?"
+
+"Now--so sune as I can get enough bait. I've a-got a beautiful cod's
+head towards it. Back about midnight, I daresay."
+
+"All right."
+
+"Put some clothes on your back. I'll bring a bottle o'tay--better than
+brewers' tack--an' go'n get the boat ready. Take the _Moondaisy_.... Eh?"
+
+Tony, just downstairs and still rubbing his eyes (when he snoozes he
+goes right to bed), asked what was up. "Shrimping wi' Uncle Jake," I
+replied. "That'll gie thee a doing!" he said. "Yu ask George. George
+used to be Uncle Jake's mate. 'Tis, 'Back oar-for'ard--back wi'
+inside--steady--steady--damn yer eyes!' George couldn't put up wi' it.
+Jake don' never sleep hisself, and wuden' let he sleep."
+
+The poor little _Moondaisy_, lying on ways at the water's edge, looked
+as if she had a small deckhouse aft. Sixteen boat-nets,[19] with their
+lines and corks, were piled up on the stern seats. In the stern-sheets
+were two baskets, one of them very smelly, and a newspaper parcel that
+reeked. Piled up in the bows were bits of old rope, sacks and bags
+(very catty), chips of wood, empty tea-bottles, and all the litter that
+collects in a boat used by Uncle Jake.
+
+      [19] Boat-nets are the same in construction as setting-nets (see
+      p. 192), but upwards of a yard in diameter. Instead of a cord and
+      stick, they have attached to them four or five fathoms of grass
+      line. A few small flat oval corks are spliced at short intervals
+      into the end of the line remote from the net, and at the
+      extremity is a cork buoy about half as large as a man's head.
+
+"Where are we going?" I asked.
+
+"_I_ knows; but if anybody asks yu where we'm going, or where we've
+been, don't yu tell 'em. Don't want none o' they treble-X-ers on our
+ground. You say like ol' Pussey Pengelly used to: 'Down to Longo.' I
+don't hae nobody 'long wi' me what can't keep a quiet tongue.--I can
+see some o' they hellers down there now, but they ain't so far west as
+we'm going, not by a long way. An' yu wuden' see 'em where they be if
+they didn't think 'twas going to be a quiet night with not much pulling
+attached to it. But _I_ shuden' be surprised to see a breeze down
+easterly 'fore morning. Don't du to get caught down to Longo be an
+easterly breeze. Lord, the pulls I've a-had to get home 'fore now!"
+
+[Sidenote: _THE HIGH-TIDE WAVES_]
+
+A very old-fashioned figure Uncle Jake looked, standing up in the
+stern-sheets and bending rhythmically, sweep and jerk, sweep and jerk,
+to his long oar, as if there were wires inside him. His grey
+picture-frame beard seems to have the effect of concentrating the
+expressiveness of his face, the satiric glint of his eyes, the dry
+smile, the straightness of his shaven upper lip, and the kindly
+lighting-up of the whole visage when he calls to the sea-gulls and they
+answer him back, and he says with the delight of a child, "There! Did
+'ee hear thic?" Keeping close along shore in order to avoid the
+strength of the flood tide against us, we rode with a perfection of
+motion on the heave of the breaking swell. As we were passing over the
+inside of Broken Rocks, three waves ran far up the beach. "Did 'ee hear
+thic rattle?" Uncle Jake exclaimed. "That was the high-tide wave, then,
+whatever the tide-tables say. Yu'll hear the low tide t'night if yu
+listens."
+
+Once I backed the boat ashore for Uncle Jake to go and look at one of
+the numerous holes under the cliffs, in every one of which he has
+wreckage stored up for firewood against the winter. He can at least
+depend on having warmth. When he is nowhere to be found, he is a as a
+rule down-shore carrying jetsam into caves. Much of it he gives away
+for no other payment than the privilege of talking sarcastically at
+those who don't trouble to go and of blazing forth at them when they
+do.
+
+The November sun went down while we rowed, an almost imperceptible
+fading of daylight into delicate thin colours and finally into a shiny
+grey half-light. More and more the cliffs lowered above us. They lost
+their redness except where a glint of the sun burned splendidly upon
+them; coloured shadows, as it were, came to life in the high earthern
+flanks, lifted themselves off, and floated away into the sunset, until
+the land stood against and above the sea, black and naked, crowned with
+distorted thorn bushes. Very serene was the sky, but a little hard.
+"Wind down east t'morrow," Uncle Jake repeated. We passed Refuge Cove,
+over Dog Tooth Ledge, and along Landlock Bay. We tossed over the Brandy
+Mull, a great round pit in a reef, where even in calm weather the tide
+boils always. No further were there any beaches. The sea washed to the
+sheer cliffs through tumbled heaps of rocks. "_'Tis_ an ironbound
+shop!" said Uncle Jake. "Poor fellows, that gets wrecked hereabout! I
+knows for some copper bolts when they rots out o' the wreck where they
+be."
+
+We had rowed down to Longo on the calm sea; we were on the sea, almost
+in it, in so small a boat; and shorewards were the tide-swirls, the
+jagged rocks, the high black cliffs. The relation of sea and land was
+become reversed for us. The sea was no longer a thirsty menace, an
+unknown waste. It was the land, the rocks and the cliffs, which
+threatened hungrily. Night-fears, had there been any, would surely have
+sprung out from the land.
+
+[Sidenote: _A COD'S HEAD_]
+
+We rowed into a bay whose wide-spreading arms were like an amphitheatre
+of shadows.
+
+"Take thees yer oar," said Uncle Jake. "Wer's thic cod's head?"
+
+Everywhere in the boat, to judge by one's nose. He found it, hacked it,
+then beat it with a pebble, and hacked again, and tore. From it came
+two awful separate smells--one like that of a dissecting room, the
+other like bad crab's inside, or like fearfully perverted cocoa, just
+wetted--a sort of granulated stink that stopped one's breath. Beautiful
+bait!
+
+"Now then, while I fixes the bait between the thirts," said Uncle Jake,
+"yu paddle westward. Keep 'en straight, else if a bit of a breeze
+comes, us'll never find the buoys." While I rowed very slowly, he flung
+overboard first a buoy and then its net, a buoy and its net, till he
+had hove the whole sixteen with about four boat's lengths between each.
+The _plop_ was echoed from the cliff, and as the nets sank the sea-fire
+glittered green upon them. He drew on a ragged pair of oilskin
+trousers, stationed himself on the starboard side of the stern-sheets,
+and grasped the longer tiller. On account of the ebb tide and
+consequent lay of the corks, we worked back, in reverse order,
+eastwards. It was for me to row the boat up until the bow was just
+inside the large buoy. Then Uncle Jake's directions, more or less
+abbreviated, came fast one after another:
+
+_Back outside oar_ (or _Pull inside oar_), to bring the bows round
+towards the buoy.
+
+_Pull both oars_, to bring the boat up to the buoy.
+
+_Pull outside oar_, to bring the stern of the boat a nice striking
+distance from the line between the buoy and the small corks. (Uncle
+Jake strikes under and up with the tiller.)
+
+_Pull both oars_, while he hauls in the loose line.
+
+_Back both_, to stop the boat's way.
+
+_Back outside oar_, to keep the line just clear of the gunwale.
+
+_Stop_, while he hauls very slowly and stealthily at first, lest prawns
+and lobsters jump out, then swiftly, raising his arms high above his
+head, until the net is aboard.
+
+So, in single and even half strokes, with variations according to
+current and wind, for all the sixteen buoys and nets. Whilst Uncle
+Jake, on his part, dropped the prawns into a bag which hung from his
+neck, flung the wild-crabs amidships, and the lobsters under the stern
+seat, and hove out the net again a few yards from where it was at
+first--I, on my part, had to spy the next buoy, a mere rocking blot on
+the water, to find out how the line lay from it, and then to hold the
+boat steady till he was ready with the tiller. After a time, one became
+a little mazed, one's head ached with screwing it round to sight the
+buoys, and his directions ceased so long as everything was going right.
+
+[Sidenote: _MAKING THE ROUNDS_]
+
+Very wonderful, even exhilarating was the silence and loneliness, the
+feeling that ourselves only, of all the world, were in that beautiful
+mysterious place. Had I had prayers to say, I should have said them,
+sure that some sort of a God was brooding on the waters and suspicious
+perhaps, at the back of my mind, that where the black cliffs upreared
+themselves, there the devil was.
+
+After we had hauled and shot again the sixteenth net, Uncle Jake
+counted one hundred and seventy odd prawns from his bag into the
+basket. "Do 'ee see how whitish they be?" he asked. "They'm al'ays like
+that in the dirty water after a gale. Lord, what a battering they poor
+things must get when it blows on thees yer coast!" He picked over the
+lobsters to see if any were saleable, but found only small
+ones--cockroaches--that, as he said, "it don't do to let the bogie-man
+[fishery inspector] glimpse.--An' I've a-catched," he added, "more than
+five shill'orth o' fine lobsters in one round of the prawn-nets 'fore
+they bloody men from the west'ard came up hereabout wi' their pots. Ah,
+shrimpin' ain't what 't used to be!"
+
+We made three more rounds in that bay, then hauled all our nets into
+the boat, rowed further west, and shot our nets round a submarine
+ledge, the whereabouts of which Uncle Jake knew to a yard. A couple of
+rounds there, and we brought up to the buoy of a lobster pot (for the
+ebb tide, washing round the headland, kept on hurtling us out to sea),
+had our supper, and waited. Prawns take longer to go into the nets
+after a second round in the same water.
+
+A haziness that had been in the sky, strengthened into a lurry of
+little cloudlets between us and the stars. "That's where 'tis going to
+be," said Uncle Jake. "Easterly! Do 'ee feel this bit of a swell? Us
+won't be here to-morrow night.--There! Did 'ee hear that? Eh?"
+
+Two waves gave forth a peculiar confidential chuckle, long drawn out
+and very gentle, very fatigued--as if the sea were making some signal
+to us; as if it wished to say that it was tired of ebbing and flowing.
+The cliff shadow listened, I thought, immovable and pitiless, but I
+fancy that I heard the cry of a bird a quarter of a mile to the
+eastward. Sea life wakes up with the flow of the tide. I had forgotten
+the gulls and the ravens; had forgotten the existence of all living
+things except prawns, lobsters and wild-crabs. No more waves
+chuckled.... "That's the low tide waves sure 'nuff--thic chuckle.
+There's mostly three on 'em. An' I can al'ays hear the rattle of the
+high tide waves tu--iss, even in a gale o' wind. What a rattle they
+makes on the beach, to be sure! They fules o' visitors 'ould laugh at
+'ee if yu was to tell 'em that--they've a-laughed at me--but 'tis true.
+Yu've heard, an't 'ee?"
+
+The end buoy was troublesome to find. And in the middle of the round, I
+rowed up to a shadow thinking to find a buoy, and there close beside
+the boat, revealed as the swell sank, was a reef of rock, humped and
+covered with seaweed which stood up on end as the water flowed
+shallowly over the ledge. It was like a grisly great head, ages old,
+immense, and of terrible aspect, heaving itself up through the sea at
+us.
+
+[Sidenote: _UNCLE JAKE'S MATES_]
+
+With much careful working of the boat, we picked up the middle buoys
+from the ledge, and hove them further to sea. Uncle Jake swore at the
+reef, at the nets, at himself, at his luck. "_'Tis_ a bloody crib!
+Didn't think the tide was going to fall so far. This same happened the
+very last time I was down yer wi' old Blimie--old Sublime, us calls
+'en. 'Let's get out o' this!' he said. 'Leave the blasted nets an'
+let's get out o' it quick!' But I 'ouldn't let 'en, not I--us had three
+thousand shrimps thic night; an' he very nearly cried, he did. '_Tis_
+some mates I've had for thees yer job. Most of 'em won't come when they
+can pay the brewer any other way. _I'll_ never come out again wi' the
+last three on 'em, not if I starves for it. One of 'em went to sleep;
+t'other cuden' see the buoys; an' old Blimie was blind and not willing
+neither. 'Wer be the cursed things?' he'd say. 'Back!' I'd say. 'Back
+oars! You'm on top o' it!' 'Well, I be backing, bain't I?' he'd say,
+an' go on pulling jest the same. Then 'er said 'er was ill and wanted
+to go home. _He_ won't come no more, not if he starves, an' me too.
+I won't hae 'en!"
+
+A ripple came down from the east. The sound of its _lap-lap-lap_ under
+the boat stole on one's ears sleepily, but it roused Uncle Jake to
+quick action. "Do 'ee see thees little cockle on the water?" he said.
+"Do 'ee feel the life o'it in the boat? Must get out of thees yer, else
+we shan't never find the buoys."
+
+We picked up the buoys--those we had shifted out of line were hard to
+find, for the stars were now all hidden by cloud--and a little breeze
+followed the ripple from the east. Rowing along under the cliffs, even
+inside some of the rocks, through passages that only Uncle Jake is sure
+of, we caught the young flood tide. The north-easter, that blew out
+freshly from the Seacombe valley, chilled us to the bone.
+
+Seacombe was asleep. No one was on the Front. We had to carry the nets
+up from the water's edge to the seawall before our utmost straining
+could drag the _Moondaisy_ up the bank of shingle. For more than an
+hour we hauled.
+
+When at last it was over, I brought Uncle Jake in house and made him a
+cup of cocoa. We had been nine hours' rowing. Though he could have done
+the same again, without food or rest, he looked a little haggard. It
+seemed impossible to believe that the grey old man with disordered hair
+and beard, clothed in rags and patches, sipping cocoa in a windsor
+chair, was that same alert shadow who had been reckoning up life, so
+humorously and wisely, in the darkness under the cliffs. He referred
+again to the winter's pinch. It must mean that he has not enough money
+put by from summer for the days coming, when even he will not be able
+to find some odd job. Yet, as I know very well, when the pinch does
+come he will go short and say nothing whatever to anybody. He will be
+merely a shade more sarcastic. One of the children may come home saying
+that 'thic Uncle Jake an't had half a pound of butter all this week,'
+or that he has been in one of his passions with Aunt Jake for taking in
+a loaf of bread without paying cash for it. He will bring out a
+ha'penny from a little screw of newspaper to buy milk for his cats, and
+he will take some crumbs to leave on dry rocks under the cliffs for the
+robins that flutter after him there. "Poor things!" he'll say. And to
+people he will still be saying what he thinks, fair or foul, gentle or
+hard. To understand his sternness and his kindness, it needs to go with
+him wrinkling in the sunshine and prawning in the dark. He is become
+very like his beloved rocks and cliffs. He is, as one might say, a
+voice for them, and his words and deeds are what one would expect their
+words and deeds to be, did they not stand there, warm, sunny and
+graciously coloured, or dark and stern, fronting the sea immovably, as
+Uncle Jake fronts life. "Du _I_ want to die?" he says when asked his
+age. "Why, I'd like to live a thousand years!"
+
+
+14
+
+[Sidenote: _NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS_]
+
+Tony is singularly free from any craving either for narcotics or
+stimulants. Most people I know, especially those who do brain work or
+live in cities, are satisfied if they can strike a working balance
+between the two. Granfer must have his glass of beer regularly, but
+neither smokes nor drinks much tea; Uncle Jake snuffs and loves his
+tea, but drinks no alcohol whatever; John Widger smokes heavily; and I
+have never known Mrs Widger get up in the morning without her cup o'
+tay. Tony, on the other hand, smokes, for politeness' sake, an
+occasional cigarette when it is offered him, does not hanker after his
+tea, and scarcely ever drinks alone. He gets drunk now and then, not
+because he greatly wants to, but socially; because, when half-a-dozen
+of them are drinking in rounds, 'What can a fellow du?' Even then he
+often leaves untouched a glassful that has been ordered for him, though
+all the while after his third or fourth glass, he may be asking other
+men to 'drink up and hae another.' Drinking with him is an expression
+of jollity, not the means of it.
+
+The Perkinses went at the end of last week into a jerry-built villa up
+on land. To escape the brunt of moving in, probably, Perkins took Tony
+to a football match at Plymouth. It was not so much that they drank a
+great deal, as that they came home, singing, in a very overcrowded and
+smoky railway carriage. "I s'pose I got exzited like," Tony says. He
+was all right until they got out into the fresh air, and then ...
+Perkins brought him in house and laid him along the passage. "Here's
+your husband, Mrs Widger." Being rather afraid of Mrs Widger, because
+she always speaks her mind, Perkins disappeared quickly.
+
+[Sidenote: _TONY ON DRINK_]
+
+_In vino veritas_, no doubt. When Tony is drunk he becomes most
+affectionate, and begins 'slatting things about'--not violently or
+maliciously, but simply out of joyous devilment and a desire to feel
+that he is doing something. Mrs Widger neither wept nor upbraided him.
+"Yu silly gert fule!" she said. "Yu silly gert fule! Shut up, or yu'll
+wake they chil'ern."
+
+"Be glad tu see yer Tony?"
+
+"G'out! Git yer butes off."
+
+Tony made the chairs skip round the room and thought he'd like to see
+the table (with the lamp) upside down. The window curtains annoyed him.
+Mrs Widger took steps.
+
+Luckily, she is not with child, or otherwise delicate, and can
+therefore stand a deal of rough and tumble. She pushed him headlong
+into a chair and took off his boots. (Those two, there alone, for Under
+Town was asleep.) Then she shouldered him upstairs, like a heavy piece
+of luggage, and laid him on their bed. Poor Tony was more than leery.
+He swam. He moaned. He was sick. He could neither lie down nor get up.
+"Sarve thee damn well right!" said Mam Widger.
+
+"_I_ can't help o'it...."
+
+"_Yu can't help o'it!_"
+
+Between three and four in the morning, she went downstairs, relighted
+the fire and made him and herself a cup o' tay. After that, not so very
+long before daylight, they slept.
+
+To-day Tony is ill and subdued, if not repentant. He reckons he will do
+the same again ("What chap don't, 'cept they mump-headed long-faced
+beggars?"), but at present he turns from liquor; he always does for a
+day and a half after 'going on the bust.' "Didn' ought never to drink
+more'n one glass," he says; "no, n'eet none at all!" Seeing what it
+would mean for the family if Tony took to drink, Mrs Widger is, and was
+at the time, wonderfully calm and cheerful--how far from reliance in
+herself, or from trust in Tony, is not plain. I asked her what she
+would do if he became a drunkard and brought no money home.
+
+"Oh," she said carelessly, "I s'pose I should turn tu and get some work
+to du and keep things going somehow."
+
+"Would you let him have any pocket-money?"
+
+"Ay, I 'spect I should--enough for his pint."
+
+There's not a shadow of doubt but she would do both.
+
+
+15
+
+Tony has always been a man for the girls; so much so, and so naively,
+that whatever he might do would seem quite innocent; as innocent as the
+love-play of animals. Along the Front, of an evening, he calls out,
+"How be 'ee, my dear?" to any girl he chooses, and perhaps takes her
+arm for a few steps. Given half a chance, he snatches a playful kiss.
+They never seem to turn rusty with him. He has the primitive quality of
+knocking their conventionality to bits at one blow.
+
+[Sidenote: _FLIRTATIONS_]
+
+Just before the Perkinses left, he turned out at five in the morning to
+see if the high long tide was flowing up to the boats. At six he made
+tea and went with it to bed again. When he came downstairs at eight
+o'clock (in his pants, darning the seat of his trousers), Mrs Widger
+and Mrs Perkins both had breakfasts frying on the fire. Mrs Widger,
+very loud-voiced that morning, was packing the children off to school;
+Mrs Perkins was bent over the pan, browning sausages. Tony crept up
+behind her, seized her by the waist, and kissed her.
+
+"Oh, you naughty man!" said Mrs Perkins, who was married out of a
+drapery establishment and has the drapery style of talking to
+perfection. "If my dear hubby knew...."
+
+"Tell him!" retorted Tony. "I be ready for 'en. I feels lively this
+morning. I'll gie 'ee another if yu'll darn thees yer trousers for me.
+Thic Mam 'Idger there won't du nort. You wuden' think I'd had two
+nights o'it, wude 'ee? I went to bed last night, an' then I got up,
+five o'clock, and 'cause there weren't nort doing I went to bed again
+an' had an hour or an hour an' a half's more sleep."
+
+"Oh, you sleepy man!"
+
+"I didn' want to sleep. I wanted the missis here to cuddle me, on'y her
+'ouldn't. Her turned away from me that cold.... I went off to sleep.
+An' when I woke up again, thinkin' her'd cuddle me then, her gave me a
+kick an' got out bed. I never see'd ort like it. Her ain't what her
+used to be, for all her ain't a bad li'l thing, thee's know."
+
+"G'out!" said Mrs Widger. "I be older--and wiser."
+
+"Don' know about that. I shall go into Plymouth an' git a nice li'l
+girl there.... Oh, I've know'd plenty on 'em. All the li'l girls likes
+ol' Tony."
+
+"I know they do," remarked Mrs Perkins sententiously, while Mrs Widger
+laughed rather proudly.
+
+"Iss; us was to Plymouth once, an' a nice li'l girl wi' a white bow
+roun' her neck came up an' spoke to me when I was a-looking into a shop
+window, an' her said, 'I lives jest here,' an' I said, 'Do 'ee, my
+dear? I'll be 'long in a minute....'"
+
+"Where was Mrs Widger then?"
+
+"Oh, her was 'bout ten yards in front."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Iss; if her won't be nice to me when I wants her tu, I shall go into
+Plymouth an' find out my li'l girl there...."
+
+"Garn then, yu fule! I can du wi'out 'ee. I shall hae thic divorce.
+Thee's think, I s'pose, as I can't get 'long wi'out 'ee? Thee's much
+mistaken!"
+
+"Well...."
+
+"Git 'long out wi' 'ee!" repeated Mrs Widger, laughing and very
+proudly. "Git 'long out an' let me clear these yer breakfast things."
+
+"What have yu got for dinner, me dear? Then I'll remain with 'ee an'
+not go out at all."
+
+"G'out!"
+
+Amid loud laughter, Tony snatched a kiss from both ladies, and pranced
+out.
+
+
+16
+
+[Sidenote: _MRS WIDGER_]
+
+"'Tisn't no use to be jealous," Mrs Widger says. "I used to be a bit
+taken that way once, but I ain't now, an' 'twuden' make no difference
+if I was." Doubtless she is quite right, and she certainly succeeds in
+never showing what jealousy she may feel when, for instance, she
+catches sight of Tony strolling in through the Gut with his arm half
+round another woman's waist, as his playful way is. If Tony speaks of
+his first wife she does not, like most second wives, stop talking. If
+she hears of a woman unhappily married, she usually dismisses the
+affair with a "Well, her shuden't ha' married 'en: her must put up wi'
+'en now her's got 'en." The goings-on of unmarried people do not easily
+scandalise her. "I reckon," she says, "yu can du as yu like afore yu'm
+married, but after that yu'm fixed." She is so confident of the
+fastness of the marriage tie (it is, of course, much more indissoluble
+for poor people who cannot travel, have no servants, and cannot afford
+lawyers for divorce proceedings) that she can afford to give Tony
+plenty of rope in small things. Her trust in his faithfulness is
+absolute, and justified. She has him; he cannot get along without her;
+she knows that. Her attitude is founded on experience and common-sense;
+not on some abstract system of morality that never controlled men's
+lives, and never will.
+
+When I used to look upon fishermen as picturesque common objects of the
+seashore, I thought their womenfolk rather dreadful. Now, however, the
+more I see of this household the more I admire Mrs Widger's management
+of it. I know of few other women who could direct it better and with
+less friction. Indeed, I am acquainted with no middle-class woman at
+all who could direct any of these poor men's households as their own
+wives so noisily and so cleverly do. Mrs Widger does not attempt to
+gain her own way by sheer force and hardness, not even with the
+children; she bends to every current; but she never breaks, and finally
+prevails. Like most West-country people, she has more staying power
+than visible energy. By going not straight over the hills, like a Roman
+road, but round by the valleys and level paths, she arrives at her
+journey's end just as quickly and with much less disturbance and
+fatigue. She does nothing quite perfectly; neither cooking, mending,
+cleaning nor child-rearing; but she does everything as well as is
+practicable, as well as is advisable. Tony would often like things a
+little better done, but if he had to do them they would be done a
+little worse. Some people here greatly pride themselves on keeping
+their homes spotlessly clean, and their front doors locked so that no
+dirty boot shall soil the oilcloth in the passage. Mrs Widger says that
+her house is for living in. Children run in and out of it, laughing and
+shouting.
+
+In some respects, she and Tony remind one of a French bourgeois couple.
+He has the sentiment, the expressed ideality, the sensitiveness. He
+perceives a great deal, but perceives much of it vaguely. He seldom
+makes up his mind--then unalterably. He is like the little man in
+Blake's drawing, who stands at the foot of a long ladder reaching up to
+the moon, and cries, "I want!" What he wants, he does not precisely
+know. Summut or other. Mrs Widger, on the other hand, knows what she
+wants very exactly; so exactly that she is content to bide her
+opportunity. When they were married, Tony had neither boats nor gear.
+He has them now.
+
+[Sidenote: _A STEADY HEAD_]
+
+How she keeps a steady head passes my understanding; at breakfast-time,
+for example, when the boys are clamouring for their kettle-broth or
+loudly demanding fish, or trying to sneak lumps of sugar; and the
+girls, nearly late for school, are asking what she wants from the
+butcher's or stores; and one or two of them require clean things, or
+something darned, or have not washed their faces or combed out their
+hair properly; and Tony's and my breakfasts are cooking; and the kettle
+is boiling out or over; and Tony is asking her where he has left his
+other guernsey, and everybody is talking nineteen to the dozen--and she
+wants her own breakfast too. It is at such a moment that she displays
+best her most characteristic gesture.
+
+Most people who work with a will, possess some gesture or movement
+which is typical of, and sums up, the major part of their
+activities--the gesture that sculptors and painters try to catch. To
+lay out on home and family the earnings of a workman who is regularly
+paid, calls for skill and care enough on the part of a wife who has no
+reserve fund and must make the weekly accounts balance to within a few
+ha'pence. But successfully to lay out, and to lay by, the earnings of a
+man like Tony, whose family is large and whose money comes in with
+extreme irregularity, requires a combination of forethought and
+self-control which falls little short of genius. And it has to be done
+on a cash basis, for debt would worry Tony out of his wits. The family
+purse must necessarily be the centre, and the symbol, of Mrs Widger's
+household activities; a matter to which she must give more thought than
+to any other one thing.
+
+"Mabel, I want you to go out for me," she says. "Get me my purse."
+
+[Sidenote: _CHARACTERISTIC GESTURE_]
+
+Standing, as a rule, by the dresser, she receives the purse into her
+hand, opens it meditatively, looks in, pokes a ringer in, tips the
+purse and peers between the coins as they fall apart; takes one or two
+out and replaces them as if they fitted into slots. Then with a
+wide-armed gesture, curiously commanding and graceful, she hands out to
+the child perhaps a ha'penny. "Get me a ha'porth o' new milk, quick!"
+
+The purse is put away.
+
+So striking is the little ceremony, so symbolic, so able to stop our
+chatter while we look, that we have nicknamed Mam Widger _The Purse
+Bearer_.
+
+That is the name for her--Purse Bearer.
+
+
+17
+
+Downstairs in the front room there are two or three photographs of
+George, that he himself has sent home since that day he went off to the
+Navy. The earliest shows him still boyish, sitting small, as it were,
+and a little shy of his new uniform. In the latest, taken not long ago,
+nor very long in point of time after the first, he is sitting bolt
+upright, chest inflated, arms akimbo with a straight, level, almost
+ferocious look in his eyes. He has apparently taken a measure of the
+world outside Under Town, and is all the surer of his feet for having
+stood up against greater odds and for having walked the slippery plank
+of Navy regulations. "If you'm minded to run up against me," he seems
+to be saying, "come and try; here I am." The two photographs suggest
+the difference between a bird in winter and in the mating season.
+George's uniform, in the later photograph, has become his spring
+plumage.
+
+[Sidenote: _GEORGE HOME_]
+
+When he sent word that he was coming home on leave, I was prepared for
+a great change in him, but scarcely for the new George. He used to be
+so like a cat on a sunny wall; used to lie along the stern seat of the
+_Moondaisy_ so lazy and content that only his ever-watchful eyes
+held any expression. He was deeply sunburnt: scraggy in the neck;
+strong and lissome, but not very smart.
+
+He is returned home no less strong and lissome, and exceedingly smart.
+The sunburn is gone; indeed there's many a maiden would envy his
+complexion; and his long stout neck, with the broadening bands of
+muscle, would delight a sculptor. The alert expression, that used to be
+more or less limited to his eyes, has spread, so to speak, over all his
+face, over the whole of him and into all his movements. He is
+organised; unified. In repose now, he would not be simply lazy; he
+would be _being lazy_. His features, rather indeterminate of old, have
+become curiously refined, almost delicate, almost supercilious (in the
+pride of young strength), but not quite either. It is noticeable
+generally that an orderly mental existence has great power to
+regularise the features, and in so doing, to refine them. Hence perhaps
+this refinement of feature in George; for if, in the effort to gain
+promotion, he has been putting his heart into his work--the routine
+work of his ship and the Naval barracks--it follows that his mental
+existence must have been very orderly and regular. But how far the
+total change in him is due to Navy discipline, and how far to his
+arrival at mating time, one cannot say, neither probably could he.
+Among working people nothing so smartens a young man and so quickly
+sets him on his own feet as a little traffic with the maidens;
+especially when he can't get his own way too easily. George, I gather,
+is paying attention to two or three.
+
+Whereas his toilet used to consist of dragging on trousers, guernsey
+and boots, and lacing up the last-named aboard his boat, if at all, it
+is now a function delightful to witness as he stumps backwards and
+forwards between the kitchen looking-glass and the scullery-sink. What
+a washing and spluttering! what a boot-blacking and hair brushing! what
+retouches and last glances into the glass! The cap comes off and is
+replaced at a jauntier angle, a ribbon is tied again, the lanyard is
+put just right, and George goes forth to a war that began before
+battleships were thought of. One makes fun of his titivations, and
+admires nevertheless. Pride o' life, I have heard it called. Hitching
+one's wagon to a star is doubtless good; so is driving one's wagon
+along mankind's track. Thank God we have still a deal of the monkey in
+us.
+
+I should like to see how Master George would carry on the land campaign
+if he had money to spare. That, however, he has not. The presents he
+brought home for the whole family, as is customary, must have cost him
+a good deal. He has had, too, a spell in the Naval barracks--which
+means spending money on shore amusements instead of putting it by. And
+as he has bought some civilian clothes on the instalment system, and
+will have that to pay off, he cannot borrow much of his father or
+mother.
+
+Being 'on his own' now, he does not, of course expect a supply of money
+from his father, nor on the other hand does Tony try to force his
+authority upon George. Whilst he was here, George met a few of his old
+chums up in the Town, and about midnight he came home rather drunk. We
+were all abed; he had to knock several times; and in the end Tony went
+down to let him in. 'Twas a good opportunity for a quarrel that would
+have wakened the whole Square. But Tony said nothing then. He saw
+George safely to bed, and merely remarked next day in George's hearing,
+that "'Tisn't gude to drink tu much if you can help o'it, specially
+when yu'm young; besides, it costis tu much." George was very ashamed.
+
+[Sidenote: _MRS WIDGER'S DIPLOMACY_]
+
+Mrs Widger it was who had the row over George's spree, but not with
+George, and owing to her clever diplomacy it was hardly a row at all.
+
+Mabel rushed into the house at breakfast-time.
+
+"Mother, is George come home?"
+
+"Course he is. What next?"
+
+"Well, Lottie Rousdon says as he come'd home last night an' yu an' Dad
+wuden' let 'en in. Drunk's a handcart, falling about, her says he was."
+
+"Tis a lie!" began Mrs Widger loudly. Then she appeared to think of
+something; her eyes widened, and she spoke quietly.
+
+"Who told yu thic tale?"
+
+"Why, May Rousdon jest as I was coming in now. Her stopped me an' asked
+if what Lottie'd told her was true."
+
+"Yu go an' tell Lottie Rousdon that if she has a minute to spare when
+she comes home this afternoon to clean herself [Lottie Rousdon is a day
+servant], as mother'd like to see her. Don't yu"--this with rising
+voice--"don't yu tell anything more'n that or I'll break your neck for
+yu."
+
+Mabel rushed out full of importance.
+
+"The lying bitch!" remarked Mam Widger.
+
+Lottie Rousdon walked into the trap. She came in the early evening,
+feathers flying, very innocent. She was in a strange house, not in the
+Square or among her relatives. Mrs Widger was on her own ground. Both
+went into the front room.
+
+"What for did yu--" we could not help hearing.
+
+"Oh, I didn't, Mrs Widger; I'm sure I didn't----"
+
+"Yu did!"
+
+"Mabel," called Mrs Widger. "Go'n ask May Rousdon to kindly step this
+way."
+
+May Rousdon came.
+
+"Who told yu what yu told Mabel about George, this morning? Did _yu_
+make it up?"
+
+"'Twas Lottie told me, Mrs Widger."
+
+"There! if I didn't think.... Don't yu ever say such a wicked thing
+again! Yu don' know what harm...."
+
+The parlour door was shut fast. A hubbub went on within. After a time,
+Lottie, weeping, was led out of the house by her sister.
+
+"The lying bitch," Mrs Widger repeated. "I've a-give'd it to her.
+Making up that tale so pat as if 'twas all true! That's the sort o'
+thing they used to put about when Tony and me was first married, but I
+fought 'em down, I did, an' I thought 'twas all stopped long ago. They
+tried to make out as 'twas me drove George to sea. Nobody can't ever
+say I haven't luked after Tony's first wife's children so well as I
+have me own--but they _have_ said it, all the same, an' I've up an'
+give'd it to 'em 'fore now. Whenever I used to correct the children,
+they'd only to run out o' the house an' they cude always find someone
+to listen to 'em and say as I was cruel to 'em and God knows what. One
+time, when I wasn't very well, I felt I cuden' put up wi' it any
+longer. But I did. An' here I be, same's ever. Pretty times us used to
+have, I can tell yu, when we was first married an' some of 'em put my
+blood up!"
+
+I understand that she cursed several--literally kicked one or two--out
+of the house; but now when anybody is ill, or anything has to be done,
+she is the first person to be sent for; and when George said goodbye to
+her at the station, he wept.
+
+
+18
+
+[Sidenote: _IN THE BAR_]
+
+I was in the Alexandra bar this evening, drinking bitter ale. Apart
+from the new saloon counter, it is an old-fashioned place, full of
+wooden partitions and corners and draughts. The incandescent light was
+flickering dimly in the draught that the sea-wind drove through the
+window and the front door. Seated around the fireplace or against the
+painted partitions, and standing about in groups, were fishermen in
+guernseys, ex-fishermen, some bluejackets, and some solid-looking men
+who were pensioners or sailors in mufti. A couple of repulsive
+lodging-house keepers (they eat too much that falls from the lodgers'
+tables) were talking local politics with a foxy-faced young tradesman
+of the semi-professional sort. The barman, who had had enough to drink,
+was thumb-fingered, loud-voiced, hastily slow. Sometimes the sound of a
+heavier wave than usual broke through the buzz of conversation, and
+sometimes, when the conversation dropped, wave after wave could be
+heard sweeping the shingle along the beach.
+
+A party of vagrant minstrels came to the front-door steps. They played
+a comic song, and the voices within rose in defiance of the music, so
+that when it stopped suddenly, they were surprised into silence.
+
+Up through that silence welled the opening notes of Schubert's
+_Serenade_. Nobody spoke. The barman took up a glass cheerily. "My
+doctor ordered me to take a little when I feel I need it," he said; and
+was _hushed_ down. Some edged towards the door, others sat back with
+faces and pipes tilted up, and others gazed down at the floor. A
+memory-struck, far-away look came into their eyes. Only the barman with
+his glass, and the tradesman in his smart suit, seemed wholly
+themselves.
+
+The _Serenade_ ceased. None spoke. The light gave a great flicker.
+"What the bloody hell!" exclaimed John Widger. The day-dreamers awoke,
+as if from a light sleep. An everyday look came quickly into their eyes
+and each one shifted in his seat. Some even shook themselves like dogs.
+A joke was made about the woman who came in to collect pence, and the
+conversation rose till nothing of the sea's noise could be heard.
+
+I realised with a shock that in four days I shall not be here, and when
+I left the bar, I forgot entirely to say _Good-night_.
+
+[Sidenote: _A GLIMPSE_]
+
+It was as if, for the moment, we had all been very intimate; as if we
+had all gone an adventure together and had peeped over the edge of the
+world.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+                                                         SALISBURY,
+                                                         _January_.
+
+
+1
+
+[Sidenote: _CONTRASTS_]
+
+Chilliness--a social and emotional chilliness that can with difficulty
+be defined or nailed down to any cause--is, above and below all, what
+one feels on returning from a poor man's house into middle-class
+surroundings. It is not unlike that chill with which certain forms of
+metropolitan hospitality strike a countryman. He meets a London friend,
+a former fellow-townsman, perhaps, who has migrated to London and whom
+he has not seen for a year or two. "Glad to see you," says the
+Londoner. "You must call on my wife before you go back. Her day is
+Wednesday." Or, "You must come to dinner one evening. When are you
+free? Next Tuesday? or Friday?" If the hospitality had begun forthwith,
+and the countryman had been haled off, country fashion, to the very
+next pot-luck meal, he would have had a pleasant adventure. It would
+have been like old times. The former glow of friendship would have more
+than revived. But the calculated invitation for a future date, the idea
+that the countryman will like to call for a twenty minutes' chat on
+generalities and a couple of cups of bad afternoon tea.... Though he
+may understand that a multiplicity of engagements in London renders
+this sort of thing convenient, he none the less feels a chill when it
+is applied to himself, and usually cares little whether he go or not.
+He becomes conscious of the desire to save trouble, which is at the
+bottom of such calculations. Had the Londoner revisited the country, he
+would have found old friends ready to upset all their arrangements for
+the sake of entertaining him. The London hospitality is the 'better
+done,' but country hospitality is warmer. Middle-class life runs
+smoother than the poor man's, it is more arranged and in many ways
+'better done,' and it is chillier precisely because, for smooth
+running, the warmer human impulses, both good and bad, must be
+repressed. 'Something with a little love and a little murder' in it,
+was what the illiterate old woman wanted to learn to read. It is what
+we all want in our hearts, much more than smooth running and
+impenetrable uniform politeness.
+
+Down at Seacombe we warm our hands, so to speak, at the fire of life;
+hunger lurks outside, and the fire is dusty and needs looking after;
+but it glows, and we sit together round it. Here at Salisbury,
+throughout the social house, we have an installation of hot-water
+pipes; they may be hygienic (which is doubtful), and they are little
+trouble to keep going; but they don't glow. Give me the warmth that
+glows, and let me get near the heart of it.
+
+Voices are often raised in Under Town and quarrels are not infrequent,
+but the underlying affections are seldom doubted, and when they do rise
+to the surface, there they are, visible, unashamed. 'Each for himself,
+and devil take the hindmost,' is more admired in theory than followed
+in practice. 'Each for himself and the Almighty for us all,' is Tony's
+way of putting it. The difference lies there.
+
+My acquaintances here are well off for the necessities of life. No one
+is likely to starve next week. Nevertheless, they are full of worry,
+and by restraining their expressions of worry so as not to become
+intolerable to the other worriers, they make themselves the more lonely
+and increase their panic of mind. They are afraid of life.
+
+At Seacombe, though there were not a fortnight's money in the house, we
+lived merrily on what we had. In Tony's "Summut 'll sure to turn up if
+yu be ready an' tries to oblige" there is more than philosophy; there
+is race tradition, the experience of generations. The Fates are
+treacherous; therefore, of course, they like to be trusted, and the
+gifts they reserve for those that trust them are retrospective.
+
+[Sidenote: _INSTANCES_]
+
+All of us at Tony's wanted many things--a pension, enough to live on,
+work, a piano, or only 'jam zide plaate'--God knows what we didn't
+want! But the things that men haven't, and want, unite them more than
+those they have. _I want_ is life's steam-gauge; the measure of its
+energy. It is the ground-bass of love, however transcendentalised, and
+whether it give birth to children or ideas. _I have_ is stagnant. And
+_I am afraid_ is the beginning of decay.
+
+It is still _I want_, rather than _I am afraid_, that spurs the poor
+man on.
+
+
+2
+
+For his first marriage and towards setting up house, Tony succeeded in
+saving twenty shillings. He gave it to his mother in gold to keep
+safely for him, and the day before the wedding, he asked for it. "Yu
+knows we an't got no bloody sovereigns," said his father. It had all
+been spent in food and clothes for the younger children. So Tony went
+to sea that night and earned five shillings. A shilling of that too he
+gave to his mother; then started off on foot for the village where his
+girl was living and awaiting him. She had a little saved up: he knew
+that, though he feared it might have gone like his. They were married,
+however; they fed, rejoiced, and joked; and 'for to du the thing proper
+like,' they hired a trap to drive them home. With what money was left
+they embarked on married life, and their children made no unreasonable
+delay about coming. "Aye!" says Tony, "I'd du the same again--though
+'twas hard times often."
+
+Before I left Seacombe I asked a fisherman's wife, who was expecting
+her sixth or seventh child, whether she had enough money in hand to go
+through with it all; for I knew that her husband was unlikely to earn
+anything just then. "I have," she said, "an' p'raps I an't. It all
+depends. If everything goes all right, I've got enough to last out, but
+if I be so ill as I was wi' the last one, what us lost, then I an't.
+Howsbe-ever, I don't want nort now. Us'll see how it turns out." She
+went on setting her house in order, preparing baby linen and making
+ready to 'go up over,' with perfect courage and tranquillity. When one
+thinks of the average educated woman's fear of childbed, although she
+can have doctors, nurses, anæsthetics and every other alleviation, the
+contrast is very great, more especially as the fisherman's wife had
+good reason to anticipate much pain and danger, in addition to the
+possibility of her money giving out.
+
+Those are not extraordinary instances, chosen to show how courageous
+people can be sometimes; on the contrary, they are quite ordinary
+illustrations of a general attitude among the poor towards life. To
+express it in terms of a theory which in one form or another is
+accepted by nearly all thinkers--the poor have not only the _Will to
+Live_, they have the _Courage to Live_.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE COURAGE TO LIVE_]
+
+On the whole, they possess the _Courage to Live_ much more than any
+other class. And they need it much more. The industrious middle-class
+man, the commercial or professional man, works with a reasonable
+expectation of ending his days in comfort. He would hardly work
+without. But the poor man's reasonable expectation is the workhouse, or
+some almost equally galling kind of dependency. The former may count
+himself very unlucky if after a life of work he comes to destitution;
+the latter is lucky if he escapes it. Yet the poor man works on, and is
+of at least as good cheer as the other one. If he can rub along, he is
+even happy. He is, I think, the happier of the two.
+
+The more intimately one lives among the poor, the more one admires
+their amazing talent for happiness in spite of privation, and their
+magnificent courage in the face of uncertainty; and the more also one
+sees that these qualities have been called into being, or kept alive,
+by uncertainty and thriftlessness. Thrift, indeed, may easily be an
+evil rather than good. From a middle-class standpoint, it is an
+admirable virtue to recommend to the poor. It helps to keep them off
+the rates. But for its proper exercise, thrift requires a special
+training and tradition. And from the standpoint of the essential, as
+opposed to the material, welfare of the poor, it can easily be
+over-valued. Extreme thrift, like extreme cleanliness, has often a
+singularly dehumanising effect. It hardens the nature of its votaries,
+just as gaining what they have not earned most frequently makes men
+flabby. Thrift, as highly recommended, leads the poor man into the
+spiritual squalor of the lower middle-class. It is all right as a means
+of living, but lamentable as an end of life. If a penny saved is a
+penny earned, then a penny earned by work is worth twopence.
+
+_The Courage to Live_ is the blossom of the _Will to Live_--a flower
+far less readily grown than withered. It might be argued that since
+apprehensiveness implies foresight, the poor man's _Courage to Live_
+is simply his lack of forethought. In part, no doubt, it is that. But
+he does think, slowly and tenaciously, as a cuttlefish grips. He
+foresees pretty plainly the workhouse; and he has the courage to face
+its probability, and to go ahead nevertheless. His reading of life is
+in some ways very broad, his foothold very firm; for it is founded
+closely on actual experience of the primary realities. He looks
+backwards as well as forwards; his fondness and memory for anecdote is
+evidence of how he dwells on the past; instead of comparing an
+occurrence with something in a book, he recalls a similar thing that
+happened to So-and-so, so many years ago, you mind.... He knows vaguely
+(and it is our vaguer knowledge which shapes our lives) that only by a
+succession of miracles a long series of hair's-breadth escapes and
+lucky chances, does he stand at any moment where he is; and he doesn't
+see why miracles should suddenly come to an end. Hence his active
+fatalism, as opposed to the passive Eastern variety. In Tony's opinion,
+"'Tis better to be lucky than rich." I have never heard him say that
+fortune favours the brave. He assumes it.
+
+
+3
+
+[Sidenote: _INTELLECTUAL TYRANNIES_]
+
+As one grows more democratic in feeling, as one's faith in the people
+receives shock after shock, yet on the whole brightens--so does one's
+mistrust of the so-called democratic programmes increase. One becomes
+at once more dissatisfied and less, more reckless and much more
+cautious. One sees so plainly that the three or four political parties
+by no means exhaust the political possibilities. The poor, though
+indeed they have the franchise, remain little more than pawns in the
+political game. They have to vote for somebody, and nobody is prepared
+to allow them much without a full return in money or domination. They
+pay in practice for what theoretically is only their due. Justice for
+them is mainly bills of costs. The political fight lies still between
+their masters and would-be masters; not so much now, perhaps, between
+different factions of property-owners as between the property-owners
+and the intellectuals. Out of the frying-pan into the fire seems the
+likely course; for the intellectuals, if they have the chance, enslave
+the whole man; they are logical and ruthless. The worst tyrannies have
+been priestly tyrannies, whether of Christians, Brahmins or negro
+witch-doctors; and those priests were the intellectuals of their time.
+I wonder when we shall have a party of intellectuals content to find
+out the people's ideals and to serve them faithfully, instead of trying
+to foist their own ideals upon the people.
+
+Law-makers, however, will probably continue to work for the supposed
+benefit of the people rather than on the people's behalf; and equally,
+the supposed welfare of the people will continue to be the handiest
+political weapon; for the property-owning, articulate classes are
+better able to prevent themselves being played with. To those two facts
+one's political principles must be adjusted. The articulate classes,
+moreover, are actually so little acquainted with the inner life of the
+poor that there is no groundwork of general knowledge upon which to
+base conclusions, and it is impossible to do more than speak from one's
+own personal experience. I don't mind confessing that, though I should
+prefer justice all round, yet, if injustice is to be done--as done it
+must be no doubt--I had rather the poor were not the sufferers. There
+is no reason to believe that present conditions cannot be bettered--to
+believe, with Dr Pangloss, _que tout est au mieux dans ce meilleur
+des mondes possibles_. I have found that to grow acquainted with the
+class that is the chief object of social legislation is to see more
+plainly the room for improvement, and also to see how much better, how
+much sounder, that class is than it appeared to be from the outside:
+how much might be gained, of material advantage especially, and at the
+same time how much there is to be lost of those qualities of character
+which have been acquired through long training and by infinite
+sacrifice. To learn to care for the poor, for their own sake, is to
+fear for them nothing so much as slap-dash, short-sighted social
+legislation.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE WILL TO LIVE_]
+
+The man matters more than his circumstances. The poor man's _Courage to
+Live_ is his most valuable distinctive quality. Most of his finest
+virtues spring therefrom. Any material progress which tends to diminish
+his _Courage to Live_, or to reduce it to mere _Will to Live_, must
+prove in the long run to his and to the nation's disadvantage. And the
+_Courage to Live_, like other virtues, diminishes with lack of
+exercise. Therefore every material advance should provide for the
+continued, for an even greater, exercise and need of the _Courage to
+Live_. If not, then the material advance is best done without.
+
+That is the main constructive conclusion to be drawn. Somewhat akin to
+it is another conclusion of a more critical nature.
+
+In Nietzsche's _Beyond Good and Evil_ there is an apophthegm to the
+effect that, "Insanity in individuals is something rare--but in groups,
+parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." And whilst, on the one
+hand mental specialists have been extending the boundaries of insanity
+to the point of justifying the popular adage that everyone is a bit
+mad, they have, on the other hand, tended to narrow down the difference
+between sanity and its reverse until it has become almost entirely a
+question of mental inhibition, or self-control.
+
+    The highest aim of Mental Hygiene should be to increase the power
+    of mental inhibition amongst all men and women. Control is the
+    basis of all law and the cement of every social system among men
+    and women, without which it would go to pieces.... _Sufficient
+    power of self-control should be the essence and test of
+    sanity._[20]
+
+          [20] "The Hygiene of Mind," by T. S. Clouston, M.D.,
+          F.R.S.E., (London, 1906). Without an extension which Dr
+          Clouston provides, though not in so many words, the
+          definition I have italicized is psychologically a little
+          superficial. Mental inhibition, generally, needs dividing
+          into self-control and, say, auto-control. Where one man may
+          _self-control_ himself by an effort of will, another man,
+          in the same predicament, might _auto-control_ himself
+          instinctively, without a conscious effort of will. Which is
+          the saner, and likelier to remain so, under ordinary
+          circumstances and under extraordinary circumstances, would be
+          most difficult to determine. Many people are only sane in
+          action because they know that they are insane in impulse, and
+          take measures accordingly. They keep a sane front to the
+          world by legislating pretty sternly for themselves.
+
+[Sidenote: _SOCIAL HYGIENE_]
+
+It is too gratuitously assumed by law-makers (_i.e._ agitators for
+legislation as well as legislators) that the poor man is woefully
+deficient in inhibition and must be legislated for at every turn.
+Because, for instance, he furnishes the police courts with the
+majority of 'drunks and disorderlies,' he is treated as a born
+drunkard, to be sedulously protected against himself, regardless of
+such facts as (1) there is more of him to get drunk, (2) he prefers
+'going on the bust' to the more insidious dram-drinking and drugging,
+(3) he has more cause to get drunk, (4) he gets drunk publicly, (5)
+tied-house beer and cheap liquors stimulate to disorderliness more
+than good liquor. The truth is that the poor have a great deal of
+self-restraint, quite as much probably as their law-makers; but it is
+exercised in different directions and, possibly, is somewhat frittered
+away in small occasions. The poor man has so much more bark than bite.
+He fails to restrain his cuss-words for example--but then cuss-words
+were invented to impress fools. There is much in his life that would
+madden his law-makers, and _vice versa_. If control is the cement of
+every social system and if it is the highest aim of mental hygiene, it
+follows that control should be the highest aim of legislation and
+custom, which together make up social hygiene. And--always remembering
+that control is of all virtues the one which strengthens with use and
+withers with disuse--every piece of new legislation should be most
+carefully examined as to its probable effect on the self-control of
+the people. Control, in short should be the paramount criterion of new
+legislation. A proximate advantage, unless it be a matter of life and
+death, is too dearly purchased by an ultimate diminution of
+self-control.
+
+
+4
+
+Since the Industrial Revolution and rise of the press, the middle-class
+has become more and more the real law-maker. The poor have voted
+legislators into power; the upper class in the main has formally made
+the laws; but the engineering of legislation has been, and is, the work
+of the middle class. And the amusing and pathetic thing is that the
+middle class has used its power to try to make other classes like
+itself. That it has succeeded so badly is largely due to the fact that
+the poor man is not simply an undeveloped middle-class man. The
+children at Seacombe showed true childish penetration in treating a
+_gentry-boy_ as an animal of another species: the poor and the middle
+class are different in kind as well as in degree. (More different
+perhaps than the poor and the aristocrat). Their civilizations are not
+two stages of the same civilization, but two civilizations, two
+traditions, which have grown up concurrently, though not of course
+without considerable intermingling. To turn a typical poor man into a
+typical middle-class man is not only to develop him in some respects,
+and do the opposite in others; it is radically to alter him. The
+civilization of the poor may be more backward materially, but it
+contains the nucleus of a finer civilization than that of the middle
+class.
+
+[Sidenote: _TWO CIVILIZATIONS_]
+
+The two classes possess widely dissimilar outlooks. Their morale is
+different. Their ethics are different.[21] Middle class people
+frequently make a huge unnecessary outcry, and demand instant
+unnecessary legislation because they find among the poor conditions
+which would be intolerable to themselves but are by no means so to the
+poor. And again, the benevolent frequently accuse the poor of great
+ingratitude because, at some expense probably, they have pressed upon
+the poor what they themselves would like, but what the poor neither
+want nor are thankful for. The educated can sometimes enter fully, and
+even reasonably, into the sorrows of the uneducated, but it is seldom
+indeed that they can enter into their joys and consolations.
+
+      [21] "The more one sees of the poor in their own homes, the more
+      one becomes convinced that their ethical views, taken as a whole,
+      can be more justly described as different from those of the upper
+      classes than as better or worse." ("The Next Street but One." By
+      M. Loane. London, 1907.)
+
+Broadly speaking, the middle-class is distinguished by the utilitarian
+virtues; the virtues, that is, which are means to an end; the
+profitable, discreet, expedient virtues: whereas the poor prefer what
+Maeterlinck calls 'the great useless virtues'--useless because they
+bring no apparent immediate profit, and great because by faith or
+deeply-rooted instinct we still believe them of more account than all
+the utilitarian virtues put together.[22]
+
+      [22] "When one begins to know the poor intimately, visiting the
+      same houses time after time, and throughout periods of as long as
+      eight or ten years, one becomes gradually convinced that in the
+      real essentials of morality, they are, as a whole, far more
+      advanced than is generally believed, but they range the list of
+      virtues in a different order from that commonly adopted by the
+      more educated classes. Generosity ranks far before justice,
+      sympathy before truth, love before chastity, a pliant and
+      obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one. In brief, the
+      less admixture of intellect required for the practice of any
+      virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation." ("From their
+      Point of View." By M. Loane. London, 1908.)
+
+      It is difficult to see on what grounds Miss Loane implies--if she
+      does mean to imply--that the poor would do well to exchange their
+      own order of the virtues for the other order. Christianity
+      certainly affords no such grounds, nor does any other philosophy
+      or religion, except utilitarianism perhaps.
+
+The poor, one comes to believe firmly, if not interfered with by those
+who happen to be in power, are quite capable of fighting out their own
+salvation. A clear ring is what they want--the opportunity for their
+'something in them tending to good' to develop on its own lines. (When
+I say 'a clear ring' I do not mean that one side should have seconds
+and towels provided and that the other side should be left with
+neither.) That their culture, so developed, will be different from our
+present middle-class culture, is certain; that it will be superior is
+probable. The middle class is in decay, for its reproductive instincts
+are losing their effective intensity, and it is afraid of having
+children; its culture, that it grafted on the old aristocratic stem,
+must decay with it. When the culture derived from the lower classes is
+ready to be grafted in its turn upon the old stem it is possible that
+mankind's progress will go backwards a little to find its footing, and
+will then take one of its great jumps forward.
+
+
+5
+
+[Sidenote: _THE SOCIO-POLITICAL PROBLEM_]
+
+The socio-political problem turns out, on ultimate analysis, to be a
+wide restatement of the old theological Problem of Pain. Suffering does
+not necessarily make a fine character, but the characters that we
+recognise as fine could not, apparently, have been so without
+suffering. It is possible to say, "I have suffered, and though I am
+scarred and seared, yet I know that on the whole I am the better for
+that suffering. I do not now wish that I had not had that suffering. I
+even desire that those I love shall suffer so much as they can bear,
+that their conquest may be the greater, their joys the fuller, and
+their life the more intense." Nevertheless, the very next moment, the
+same man will try by every means possible to avoid suffering for
+himself and for those he loves. That is the dualism which dogs humanity
+in the mass no less than in the individual. That lies at the core of
+domestic politics. But it may be that the part of our nature which
+finds reason to be grateful for past suffering is higher than that part
+which seeks to avoid it in the future.
+
+Waste of the benefits of suffering is waste indeed.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+                                                          SEACOMBE,
+                                                        _December_.
+
+
+1
+
+We hired a drosky--one of the little light landaus that they use with a
+single horse in this hilly district--and thus we came down from the
+station. On the box were the coachman (grinning), a cabin trunk, a
+portmanteau, a gaping gladstone bag, and a rug packed with sweaters and
+boots. On the front seat, a large parcel of books, a typewriter, a
+dispatch case, a grubby moon-faced little friend of Tommy's, Tommy
+himself, and Jimmy. On the back seat, Straighty, Dane and myself. The
+small boy stood up on the seat, and Dane squatting on his haunches,
+overtopped us all.
+
+Down the hill we drove, swerving, wobbling, laughing--a May party in
+leafless winter. Dane, in his efforts to lick the children's faces,
+tumbled off his perch. We helped him back to his seat amid a chorus of
+happy screams. The grubby boy was just too astonished to cry, just too
+proud of travelling in a carriage. He screwed up his face--and
+unscrewed it again. Every now and then Tommy sat back as far as he
+could from the disorder, the collection of jerking arms and legs, in
+order to adjust the Plymouth spectacles, of which he is so proud, on
+his small pug nose. As we passed the cross-roads, Straighty was trying
+to snatch a kiss. While we drove along the Front, the children waved
+their hands over the sides of the drosky, and shouted with delight.
+'Twas a Bacchanal with laughter for wine. The Square turned out to
+witness our arrival. "Her's come!" the kiddies cried. Dane leapt out
+first, found a rabbit's head and bolted it whole. The rest of us
+scrambled out. The luggage was piled up in the passage. Hastening in
+his stockinged feet (he had been putting away an hour) to say that he
+was on the point of coming up to station, Tony bruised a toe and barked
+a shin. But it was no time to be savage. I wonder where else the two
+shillings I paid for the drosky would have purchased so much delight.
+Or rather, the delight was in ourselves, in the children; the two
+shillings served only to unlock it.
+
+[Sidenote: _CHILDREN_]
+
+What precisely there is of difference between these children and those
+of the middle and upper classes has always puzzled me. That there is a
+difference I feel certain. A few years ago, when I had so much to do
+with the boys and girls of a high school, they liked me pretty well, I
+think, and trusted me, but they did not take to me, nor I very greatly
+to them. They went about their business, and I about mine. If I invited
+them for a walk, they came gladly, not because it was a walk with me,
+but because I knew of interesting muddy places, and where to find
+strange things. Their manners to me were always good: good manners
+smoothed our intercourse. But in no sense were our lives interwoven. We
+were side-shows, the one to the other. I was content that it should be
+so, and they were too.
+
+Here, on the other hand, my difficulty is to get rid of the children
+when I wish to go out by myself. They follow me out to the Front, and
+meet me there when I return, running towards me with shouting and arms
+upraised, tumbling over their own toes, and taking me home as if I were
+a huge pet dog of theirs. "Where be yu going?" they ask, and, "Where yu
+been?" Jimmy regards me as a fixture. "When yu goes away for two or
+dree days," he says, "I'll write to 'ee, like Dad du." I cross the
+Square, and some child, lolling over the board across a doorway, laughs
+to me shrilly and waves its arms. If by taking thought, I could send
+such a glow to the hearts of those I love, as that child, without
+thinking, sends to mine.... But I cannot. I can only wave a hand back
+to the child, and be thankful and full-hearted. Often enough I wish I
+could have a piano and find out whether my fingers will still play
+Chopin, Beethoven, and Bach; often I hanker after a sight of a certain
+picture or a certain statue in the Louvre or Luxembourg, for a concert,
+a theatre, a right-down good argument on some intellectual point, or
+for the books I want to read and never shall. Yet, all in all, I am
+never sorry for long. This children's babble and laughter, these
+simple, commonplace, wonderful affections, are a hundred times worth
+everything I miss.
+
+It is not that I buy the children bananas or give them an infrequent
+ha'penny. When bananas and ha'pence are scarce, their love is no less.
+It is not that I am always good-tempered and jolly. Sometimes I snap
+unmercifully, so that they look at me with scared, inquiring eyes. It
+is not that they are always well-behaved. Frequently they are very
+naughty indeed. The causes of our sympathy lie deeper.
+
+They are more naïve than the children who are in process of being
+well-educated; more independent and also more dependent. They feel more
+keenly any separation from those they love; they cry lustily if their
+mother disappears only for an hour or two; and nevertheless they can
+fend for themselves out and about as children more carefully nurtured
+could never do. Less able to travel by themselves, they do travel
+alone, and in the end quite as successfully. They make more mistakes
+and retrieve them better. Affection with them more rapidly and frankly
+translates itself into action. They laugh quickly, cry quickly, swear
+quickly. "Yu'm a fule!" they rap out without a moment's hesitation; and
+I suppose I am, else they wouldn't want to say so. Perhaps I overvalue
+the physical manifestations of love, but if a child will take my hand,
+or climb upon my knee, or kiss me unawares, then to certainty of its
+affection is added a greater contentment and a deeper faith. The peace
+of a child that sleeps upon one's shoulder, is given also to oneself.
+The appurtenances of love mean much to me; nearness, warmth, caresses.
+But I cannot make the advances; I was bred in a different school where,
+though frankness was encouraged, _naïveté_ was repressed; and I am the
+more grateful to these children for taking me in hand--for being able
+to do so.
+
+[Sidenote: _MANNERS_]
+
+Tommy has returned from the Plymouth Eye Infirmary much quietened down
+in many respects and, as most people would say, much better mannered.
+He is neater and a better listener to conversation. He puts his shoes
+under the table, does not throw them. But he has brought back also some
+of the nurses' exclamations of surprise--"Oh, I say!" "Not I!" "You
+don't say so!" "What idiocy!" and the like. No doubt those expressions
+sounded quite proper among the nurses, but on Tommy's lips they seem
+curiously more vulgar than his natural and rougher expletives. It is,
+besides, as if one were eavesdropping outside the nurses' common room.
+
+Much of the charm of these children, and of the grown-ups too, lies in
+the fact that, apart from a few points on which etiquette is very
+strict, they have no manners. I don't mean that they are bad-mannered;
+quite the contrary; what I mean is that their manners are not codified.
+Having no rules for behaviour under various circumstances, they must on
+each occasion act according to their kindliness and desire to please,
+or the reverse. They must go back to the first principles of manners.
+What they are, that they appear. What they feel at the moment, that
+they show. The kind man or child is kindly; the brutal or spiteful by
+nature are brutal or spiteful in manner. Elsewhere, among people of
+breeding, manners make the man--and hide him. Here, the man makes his
+own manners, and in so doing still further reveals himself.
+
+I have known a professional man who was rather well-spoken of for his
+good manners, fail lamentably so soon as he found himself in
+surroundings not his own. His code of manners did not apply there, and
+outside his code he had no manners. He was excessively rude. He showed
+at once that his customary good manners were founded on rules well
+learnt, and not on any real consideration for other people's feelings.
+The incredible impertinence of clergymen and district visitors
+furnishes plenty of cases in point. Their manners, no doubt, are pretty
+good among themselves. Yet it is a common saying here, "What chake they
+gentry've got!" A 'district lady' entered Mrs Stidson's cottage without
+knock or warning, just when Mrs Stidson was cleaning up and wanted no
+visitors of any sort. "What's the matter with your eye?" asked the
+district lady. Mrs Stidson refused to answer. ("Untidy, intractable
+woman!") But a neighbour upspoke and said, "Tis her husband, mam, as
+have give'd her a black eye." At which the district lady exclaimed, "My
+good woman, why don't you leave him. You _ought_ to leave him--at
+once!" Mrs Stidson has a number of young children.
+
+[Sidenote: _TONY'S FOOT IN IT_]
+
+It might have been expected, on the other hand, when Tony and myself
+went on holiday up-country, stayed at a largish much-upholstered hotel,
+and dined out several times as he had never done before, that he would
+have been like a fish out of water, very awkward, and would have
+committed a number of bad _faux pas_. Nothing of the sort. He was
+nervous, certainly, and the numerous knives, forks and glasses somewhat
+confused him at first. But Tony's good manners are not codified. He is
+sensitive, kindly, desirous of pleasing, quick to observe. On that
+basis, he invented for himself, according to the occasion, the manners
+he had not been taught. At the same time he remained himself. And he
+was a complete success. Nobody had any reason to blush on Tony's
+behalf. Except once; when he remarked to some ladies after dinner that
+he found Londoners very nice and free-like; that a pretty young lady
+had stopped him in the Strand the evening before, and had called him
+Percy; that he hadn't had time to tell her she'd made a mistake, and
+that, in fact, he might have knowed her tu Seacombe, only he didn't
+recollect.
+
+There was a bad pause.
+
+Tony doesn't think ill of anybody without cause. _Honi soit qui mal y
+pense_ might very well be _his_ motto.
+
+
+2
+
+News has come along from Plymouth that the boats there have fallen in
+with large shoals of herring. The air here has since been charged with
+excitement--the excitement of men who earn their livelihood by gambling
+with the sea. The drifters have fitted out. Most of the boats are up
+over--lying on the sea wall--but a few days ago many busy blue men slid
+the big brown drifters down their shoots to the beach. Looking along,
+one saw a couple of men standing in each drifter and, with the
+leisurely haste of seamen, drawing in their nets. It gave a peculiar
+savour, a hopeful animation, to the blank wintry sea. It was as if the
+spring had come to us human beings prematurely, before it was ready to
+seize on nature.
+
+[Sidenote: _ON THE CLIFFS_]
+
+Yesterday afternoon I felt too unwell to lend a hand in shoving off the
+boats. So I climbed to the top of the East Cliff. The air was cool and
+still--so still that all the Seacombe smoke hung in the valley and
+drifted slowly to seawards and faded there. While the sun was setting
+behind a bank of sulky dull clouds, some woolpacks, faintly outlined in
+white against the grey, rose almost imperceptibly in the western sky.
+Everything, the sea itself, seemed very dry. Nothing moved on the
+cliffs, except some small birds which flittered homelessly among the
+black and twisted burnt gorse. They were very tiny and pitiful against,
+or indeed amid, the solemn gathering of the great slow clouds. On
+looking down from the edge of the cliff, a slight mistiness of the air
+gave one the impression that there was, lying level above the sea, a
+sheet of glass that dulled the sound of the water yet allowed one to
+discern every half-formed ripple, and even the purple of the rocks
+beneath. Five hundred feet below and a quarter of a mile out, were
+three boats. They also, like the birds, seemed pitifully tiny. But,
+unlike the birds, they did not seem purposeless. It was evident they
+were moving, though one could not see rowers, oars, or splashes, for
+they progressed in short jumps and above the dulled rattle of a billow
+breaking on the pebbles, the faint click-thud of oars between
+thole-pins was plainly audible. I had an odd fancy that the six men
+were rowing through immensity, into eternity, to meet God; and that
+they would so continue rowing, eternally.
+
+This morning, very early, the crackle of burning wood in the kitchen
+fireplace awoke me. Then I heard the sea roaring; then Tony's bare feet
+on the stairs. "Wind's backed an' come on to blow," he said. "They've
+a-had to hard up an' urn for it. Two on 'em's in, an' one have a-losted
+two nets. I told 'em 'twasn't vitty when they shoved off. 'Tis blowing
+hard. I be going out along to see w'er t'other on 'em's in eet."
+
+The sea was angry, the moon obscure. The dead-asleep town stood up
+motionless before the madly-living breakers. It seemed as if a horrible
+fight was in progress; loud rage and dumb treachery face to face in the
+semi-darkness; and between the livelong combatants, little men ran to
+and fro, peering out to sea.
+
+Presently the third boat ran ashore. Its bellied sail hid everything
+from us who waited at the water's edge. It was hoisted on a high wave,
+and cast on land. The sea did not want it then. The sea spewed it up.
+The sea can afford to wait, even until the clean bright little town is
+a ruin on a salt marsh.
+
+Returning in house, we made hot tea, and laughed.
+
+
+3
+
+We had, as it were, said _Good-Night_ to the town, though it was only
+half-past three in the afternoon. Most lazy we must have looked as we
+sailed off to the fishing ground with a light fair wind, NNW. John's
+young muscular frame was leaning against the mainmast, like a
+magnificent statue dressed for the moment in fishermen's rig. Tony aft
+was lounging across the tiller. He fits the tiller, for he is older and
+bent and his eyes are deeply crowsfooted with watching. Both of them
+showed the same splendid contrast of navy-blue jerseys against sea eyes
+and spray-stung red and russet skins. I was lying full length along the
+midship thwart. We lopped along lazily, about three knots to the hour.
+
+[Sidenote: _HERRING DRIFTING_]
+
+As we lounged and smoked, each of us sang a different song, more or
+less in tune. It sounded not unmelodious upon the large waters. At
+intervals we asked one another where the 'gert bodies of herrings' had
+gone off to. Eastwards, westwards, to the offing, or down to the bottom
+to spawn?
+
+So near the land we were, yet so far from it in feeling. There, to the
+NE. was the little town, sunlit and brilliantly white, with the church
+tower rising in the middle and the heather-topped cloud-capped hills
+behind. There around the bay, were the red cliffs, crossed by deep
+shadows and splotched with dark green bushes. The land was there. We
+were to sea. The water, which barely gurgled beneath the bows of the
+drifter, was rushing up the beaches under the cliffs with a
+myriad-sounding rattle. Gulls, bright pearly white or black as
+cormorants, according as the light struck them, were our only
+companions. The little craft our kingdom was--twenty-two foot long by
+eight in the beam,--and a pretty pickle of a kingdom!
+
+Mixed up together in the stern were spare cork buoys, rope ends, sacks
+of ballast and Tony. Midships were the piled up nets and buoys. For'ard
+were more ballast bags and rope ends, some cordage, old clothes, sacks,
+paper bags of supper, four bottles of cold tea, two of paraffin oil and
+one of water, the riding lamp and a very old fish-box, half full of
+pebbles, for cooking on. All over the boat were herring scales and
+smelly blobs of roe. It's sometime now since the old craft was scraped
+and painted.
+
+But the golden light of the sunset gilded everything, and the probable
+catch was what concerned us.
+
+We chose our berth among the other drifters that were on the ground. We
+shot two hundred and forty fathom of net with a swishing plash of the
+yarn and a smack-smack-splutter of the buoys. We had our supper of
+sandwiches and tatie-cake and hotted-up tea.
+
+"Can 'ee smell ort?" asked John sniffing out over the bows.
+
+"Herring!" said I. "I can smell 'em plainly."
+
+"Then there's fish about."
+
+Tony however remarked the absence of birds, and declared that the water
+didn't look so fishy as when they had their last big haul. "They
+herrings be gone east," he repeated.
+
+"G'out! What did 'ee come west for then? I told yu to du as yu was
+minded, an' yu did, didn' 'ee? Us'll haul up in a couple o' hours an'
+see w'er us got any."
+
+We didn't turn in. We piled on clothes and stayed drinking, smoking,
+chatting, singing--a boat-full of life swinging gently to the nets in
+an immense dark silence, an immense sea-whisper.
+
+[Sidenote: _HAULING IN THE NETS_]
+
+About nine o'clock we hauled in for not more than nine dozen of fish.
+The sea-fire glimmered on the rising net, glittered in the boat, and
+then, with an almost painful suddenness, snuffed out. "They be so full
+as eggs," said John every minute or two, holding out fish to Tony, who
+felt them and answered, "Iss, they'm no scanters [spawned or undersized
+fish]. _They_ bain't here alone."
+
+Nets inboard, we rowed a little east of another boat, to shoot a second
+time. John said, "Hoist the sail, can't 'ee." Tony said, "What's the
+need?"
+
+Before eleven we were foul of the other boat's nets and had again to
+haul in. Tony puffed and panted with the double weight; John
+disentangled the mesh and swore.
+
+"If we'd a-hoisted the sail..." he grumbled.
+
+"There wasn't no need if we'd a-pulled a bit farther."
+
+"What's the good o' pulling yer arms out?"
+
+"I knowed where to go, on'y yu said we was far enough."
+
+"No I didn't!"
+
+"S'thee think I don' know where to shute a fleet o' nets?"
+
+"Well, we'm foul, anyhow."
+
+"I was herring drifting afore yu was born. I knows well enough."
+
+"Why don' 'ee hae yer own way then, if yu knows. Yu'm s'posed to be
+skipper here."
+
+"If I'd had me own way...."
+
+"Hould thy bloody row, casn'!"
+
+It sounded like murder gathering up; but Tony calls it their brotherly
+love-talk, and they are no worse friends for it all. The better the
+catch, the more exciting the work, and the livelier the love-talk. They
+say, therefore, that it brings luck to a boat.
+
+A third time we shot nets, safely to the east of every other craft.
+Then John with his legs in a sack and a fearnought jacket round him,
+snored in the cutty, whilst Tony nodded sleepily outside. The sky
+eastwards had already in it the weird whitish light of the coming moon.
+The risen wind was piping out from land. I could see the bobbing lights
+of the other drifters to westward, and the glint of the Seacombe lamps
+on the water. Every now and then a broken wave came up to the boat with
+a confidential hiss. I had a constant impression that out of the dark
+flood some great voice was going to speak to me--speak quite softly.
+
+"Shall us hot some more tea?" said Tony. "My feet be dead wi' cold."
+
+We took the old fish-box and placed on the pebbles in it an old
+saucepan half full of oakum soaked in paraffin. Across the saucepan we
+ledged a sooty swivel, and on the swivel a black tin kettle which
+leaked slowly into the flame. Tony and myself lay with our four feet
+cocked along the edge of the box for warmth. The smoke stank in our
+nostrils, but the flame was cheery. By that flickering light the boat
+looked a great deep place, full of lumber and the blackest shadows. The
+herring scales glittered and the worn-out varnish was like rich brown
+velvet. And how good the tea, though it tasted of nothing but sugar,
+smoke, paraffin and herring.
+
+[Sidenote: _A LONG NIGHT AT SEA_]
+
+It was nearly midnight. Tony suggested forty winks.
+
+John was still sprawling beneath the cutty. Tony and I snoozed under
+the mainsail, huddled up together for the sake of warmth, like animals
+in a nest. At intervals we got up to peep over the gunwale or to bale
+the boat out. Then with comic sighs we coiled down together again. It
+was bitterly cold in the small hours. We pooled our vitality, as it
+were, and shared and shared alike. When we finally awoke, about five in
+the morning, the wind had died down, the sky and moon were clouded, and
+a dull mist was creeping over the sea.
+
+We hauled in the net--fathoms of it for scarcely a fish.
+
+"Have 'ee got anything to eat?" asked Tony.
+
+"No."
+
+"Have yu got ort to drink?" asked John.
+
+"No."
+
+"Got a cigarette?" I asked.
+
+"Not one."
+
+"If we was to go a bit farther out and shute...." said Tony.
+
+"G'out! Hould yer row!"
+
+"All very well for yu. Yu been sleeping there for all the world like a
+gert duncow [dog-fish]. Why didn' 'ee wake up an' hae a yarn for to
+keep things merry like?"
+
+[Sidenote: _NORT' AT ALL_]
+
+John was leaning out over the bows. He rose up; stretched himself.
+"Shute again!" he said with scorn. "Us an't got nort to eat, nort to
+drink, nort to smoke, nor nort to talk about, an' us an't catched nort.
+Gimme thic sweep there, an' let's get in out o' it, I say."
+
+It was foggy. I steered the boat by compass over a sea that, under the
+smudged moon, was in colour and curve like pale violently shaken liquid
+mud. In time we glimpsed the cliffs with the mist creeping up over
+them. Day was beginning to break, and with a breath of wind that had
+sprung up from the SE., we glided like a phantom ship on a phantom sea
+towards a phantom town between whose blind houses the wisps of the fog
+writhed tortuously.
+
+Sixteen hours to sea in an open boat--for three hundred herrings--and
+the price three shillings a hundred!
+
+It is nothing to fishermen, that; but we were all glad of our
+breakfast, a smoke and our beds.
+
+
+4
+
+Tony was gone to sea on Christmas Eve. (They caught three thousand).
+Mrs Widger had cricked her back, or had caught cold in it standing at
+the back door with the steaming wash-tub in front of her and a
+northerly wind behind. We wanted some supper beer....
+
+I felt more than a little shy on entering the jug and bottle department
+with a jug. It is such a secret place. To face a bar full of people and
+plump a jug down on the counter, is one thing; but it is quite another
+to slink up the stairs and into the wooden box--about seven feet high
+and four by four--that does duty for the jug and bottle department, and
+the privy tippling place, of the Alexandra Hotel. There is no gas
+there. Light filters in from elsewhere. It holds about five people,
+jammed close together. Round it runs a shelf for glasses, and at one
+end is a tiny door through which jugs are passed to the barman. Once
+there was a curtain across the entrance, but it was put to such good
+and frequent use that they removed it. Talk in the jug and bottle box
+is usually carried on in soft whispers punctuated by laughter.
+
+Three cloaked old women were there and one young one. Their jugs stood
+on the shelf, ready to take home, but meanwhile they were having a
+round of drinks on their own account. They looked surprised at my
+arrival (it was an intrusion); and more surprised still when, on
+hearing that the barman was merely having a chat the other side, I
+rattled the jug on the shelf and bumped the little door. They gasped
+when I slipped the bolt of the little door with a penknife. What chake
+to be sure! The hotel shows respect to its light-o'-day customers, but
+the dim jug and bottle box is supposed to show respect to the hotel. It
+calls the barman _Sir_. It said, "Good-night, sir!" in astonished
+chorus to me.
+
+But just as the mere act of jumping a skipping rope made me long ago a
+freeman among the children, so I notice that fetching the supper beer
+has resulted in another indefinable promotion. I am not so much now
+'thic ther gen'leman tu Tony Widger's.' I am become 'Mister
+So-and-so'--myself alone.
+
+When I returned with the jug Jimmy was seated at the table and saying
+between tears, "I want some supper, Mam. I be 'ungry."
+
+"Yu daring rascal! Yu'll catch your death o' cold if yu goes on getting
+your feet wet like this, night after night. I'll break every bone in
+your body, I will! Take off they beuts to once, an' go on up over. An't
+got no supper for the likes o' you. Yu shan't wear your best clothes
+to-morrow, n'eet at all, spoiling 'em like this, yu dirty little cat!
+I'll beat it out o' 'ee. Now then! Up over!"
+
+Very tearful, very hungry, and very slowly, Jimmy went to bed.
+
+"No supper's the thing for the likes o' he," his mother remarked. "I
+shall gie it to him one o' these days, but I don't hold wi' knocking
+'em about tu much."
+
+Her impatience in speech and patience in action are alike
+extraordinary. She says she will half kill the children and seldom
+strikes even: if I had the responsibility of them, I fear I should do
+both.
+
+[Sidenote: _SUNDAY CLOTHES_]
+
+Next morning there was a fine dispute over the Sunday clothes. Both
+Jimmy and Tommy went upstairs defiantly, and routed them out. The
+kitchen was filled with cries and jeers and threats. Tommy appealed to
+me. I told him I knew nothing about it, because I hadn't got any Sunday
+clothes myself.
+
+"Iss, yu 'ave," said Tommy.
+
+"No, not a rag."
+
+"Yu 'ave."
+
+"I haven't. I've none at all. You've never seen them."
+
+"G'out!"
+
+"That's right."
+
+"Well," said Tommy confidentially, "Yu got a clean chimie-shirt then,
+an't 'ee?"
+
+In the laughter which followed, the Sunday clothes were slipped on. And
+while Jimmy was struggling with a new pair of boots, he paid me the
+nicest compliment I have ever heard. He looked up, red but thoughtful.
+"Yu'm like Father Christmas," he said.
+
+"Why for, Jimmy?"
+
+"'Cause yu'm kind."
+
+Jimmy doesn't know how kind he is to me. And I don't suppose it would
+do him any good to tell him.
+
+We had a very typical and enjoyable English Christmas. We over-ate
+ourselves, and were well pleased, and the children went to bed crying.
+
+
+5
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "SHOOTING STAR" FITS OUT_]
+
+"_Shuteing Star o' Seacombe!_ '_Tis_ a purty crew to go herring
+driftin'! I'd so soon fall overboard in a gale o' wind as go out to say
+wi' thic li'l Roosian like that ther. Lord! did 'ee ever see the like
+o'it? I never did. But there, what can 'ee 'spect when the herring be
+up in price an' men an' boats as hasn' been to sea for years fits out
+for to go herring driftin'? Coo'h! driftin'!"
+
+That was Uncle Jake's opinion. He stood on the shingle with his old
+curiosity of a hat cocked on one side and his hands deep in his trouser
+pockets, turning himself round inside his clothes to rub warmth into
+his skin; talking, always talking, whilst his twinkling eyes watch sea
+and land; but ready to help a boat shove off, and willing to take as
+pay the opportunity of talking to, and at, its crew. "'Tis blowing a
+fresh wind out 'long there, I tell 'ee," was his formula of
+encouragement for a starting boat.
+
+Herrings were up! Sixteen shillings a thousand they had been before
+Christmas; then eighteen, twenty-three, thirty-one.... "They'm fetching
+two poun' a thousand tu Plymouth, what there is, an' buyers there
+waiting from all over the kingdom. An' they'm still going up, 'cause
+there ain't none. Nine bob a hunderd tu St Ives, I've a-heard say.
+There's a Plymouth buyer here to-day. I've a-see'd our Seacombe buyers
+luke. They Plymouth men be the bwoys!"
+
+Herrings too have been in our bay as they have not come for
+years--'gert bodies of 'em'--while a succession of gales and blizzards
+has been sweeping the whole of the rest of the British coasts, and
+driving the steam-drifters into harbour. Hence the price of fish:
+quotations very high; business nil, or next door to it. Our bay
+however, by a fortunate freak of the weather, has been amply calm for
+our little undecked drifters, though squalls off land have made sailing
+tricky in the extreme. We have seen the snow on the distant hills but
+none has fallen here. We have had the ground-swell, rolling in from
+outside, but of broken seas, not one.
+
+The boats that came in early on Christmas night (they didn't like the
+look of the weather) brought hauls of ten thousand or so. They had
+given away netfuls of herring to craft from other places, because they
+had caught so many, and the wind was against them and the sky wild.
+
+Next night, much the same thing. It was rumoured that some Cornish
+craft were beating up to the bay.
+
+Next day, the Little Russian, a small, snug, ragged, much-bearded man,
+was to be seen painting the stern of his old boat--a craft more
+tattered and torn, if possible, than her owner.
+
+"What be doing, Harry?"
+
+No reply. Great industry with the paint-brush.
+
+"Be going to sea then?"
+
+"Iss intye! What did 'er think?"
+
+The Little Russian went on doggedly with his work, and when he rose
+from his knees, there appeared complete, on the stern of his boat, in
+lanky, crooked white letters: _Shooting Star of Seacombe_.
+
+"Be it true yu'm going to sea t'night, Harry?"
+
+"Iss."
+
+"What do 'ee 'spect to catch? Eh?"
+
+No answer again. The Little Russian was hauling a couple of nets
+aboard.
+
+"Who be going with 'ee?"
+
+"Ol' Joe Barker an' 'Gustus Theodore."
+
+"Good Lord! '_Tis_ a crew, that! Be 'ee going to catch dree dozen or
+ten thousand?"
+
+"We'm on'y taking two nets," replied the Little Russian quite
+seriously.
+
+He was very busy.
+
+[Sidenote: _AND SHOVES OFF_]
+
+About three in the afternoon, when the drifters put out to sea, the
+nor'west wind was springing out from land in squalls. It had not
+sea-space to raise big waves, but it blew the white tops off the
+wavelets which hurried out against, and on the top of, the sou'westerly
+swell that was heaving its way in. As Uncle Jake remarked: "'Tis
+blowing fresh, I can tell 'ee, an' not so very far out at that. An'
+'tis blowing half a gale from the sou'west outside in the Channel. Do
+'ee see thic black line across the horizon? That's the sou'west wind,
+an' plenty o'it. Luke at thees yer run along the shore, wi' a calm sea.
+'Tis the sou'west outside as makes that tu."
+
+The boats hoisted their smaller mainsails. "Aye, an' they'll hae to
+reef they down afore they gets out far. There! did 'ee see thic? That's
+thiccy seine-boat as fitted out. Seine-boats ain't no fit craft for
+herring driftin'."
+
+The mainmast of the seine boat had toppled over to port. No sooner was
+it re-stepped, and the sail hoisted, than over it went again. "Step o'
+the mast gone, I'll be bound," said Uncle Jake. "They'm going to
+capsize, going on like that, if they bain't careful. Poor job! when
+mastises goes over like that. Better to row.... There's thic Li'l
+Roosian shoving off!"
+
+In fact, the _Shooting Star_ was shoved off, but a wave threw her back
+upon the shore. She was again shoved off. Again she grounded on the
+sand, and there she stuck. A roar of laughter broke forth all along the
+beach. The Little Russian and his crew stood up in the heeled-over
+boat, and by using their oars like punt poles, they tried to prevent
+the seas from slewing them round broadside on. Very helpless they
+looked, very comic, very futile.
+
+A swarm of small boys buzzed around and jeered. The Little Russian
+jumped up and down with vexation. Augustus Theodore, rowing frantically
+in a foot or so of water, splashed and 'caught crabs.' Joe Barker,
+tall, patriarchal, thin and thinly clad, stood up to his oar, looked
+savage curses from his sunken old eyes and muttered them into his
+beard.
+
+[Sidenote: _AND GETS OFF_]
+
+"That _be_ a purty crew!" repeated Uncle Jake. "I 'ouldn' go to say wi'
+'em, not if.... A purty fellow, thic 'Gustus Theodore! They calls
+chil'ern by names nowadays, but they called he 'Gustus Theodore, an' us
+can't get over thic, so us al'ays calls 'en 'Gustus Theodore in long.
+Bain't no gude tu hisself nor nobody else. I've a-took 'en to say....
+Never again! 'Er ain't no fisherman nuther. An' thic Joe Barker's past
+it. He've had his day. Been in the Army an' been in the Navy, an' an't
+brought no pension out o' the one n'eet out o' t'other. Helped throw a
+'Merican midshipman overboard once, so they say, drough a porthole.
+Thought they was going to be hanged for it, but they wasn't. He've
+a-lived wildish in his time, I can tell 'ee; an' now he's the man for
+sleep. Take 'en out shrimping or lifting crab-pots, stop rowing a
+minute an' he's fast asleep. The Li'l Roosian hisself an't been to say
+thees dozen years. 'Tis a crew o'it! Luke! _they_ can't shove off. I
+can see they wants Uncle Jake there."
+
+The _Shooting Star_ was still being shoved. The Little Russian was
+still jumping up and down in the stern-sheets; Augustus Theodore was
+still rowing fast and fruitlessly; and Joe Barker stood impassively
+tall--a mummy of a man, wrapped up in aged clothes and a great dirty
+white beard. Life was contracted within him. No more than his eyes
+seemed alive, and hardly those until you looked closely; for the yellow
+rims and whites appeared to be dead, and the old cursing flame of life
+burnt only in the pupils.
+
+"Do 'ee really mean to go?" asked Uncle Jake, taking up a long oar to
+shove with. "'Tisn't nowise fit for a crazy craft like thees yer."
+
+"When a man," said the Little Russian solemnly, "when a man has a
+chance to catch herring and pay his way, and pay a debt or two maybe,
+'tis on'y right to try."
+
+"For sure 'tis. But why an't 'ee been to say thees twelve year then?"
+
+"An't been fit...."
+
+"Fit! Tis the price o' herring fetches the likes o' yu. Have 'ee got
+yer lead-line and compass aboard?"
+
+"I've broke mine."
+
+"'Tis tempting Providence to go away wi'out 'em Be yu off? Off yu goes
+then. Luke out!"
+
+A yell went up as a wave broke in over the stern and soaked Joe
+Barker's back.
+
+"They'm off!" cried Uncle Jave with ironic merriment. "Wet drough to
+the skin they be!"
+
+The Little Russian rowed steadily on the same side as 'Gustus Theodore.
+Both of them just balanced Joe Barker, who rowed on the other side in
+strong jerks, as if his aged strength revived for a part only of each
+stroke.
+
+Darkness, drawing in over the sea, hid the drifters from sight. Along
+the beach we asked one another in jest, "I wonder what the _Shuteing
+Star_ is doing now?"
+
+The commonest answer was a laugh. But we did want to know.
+
+Between eleven o'clock and midnight sail after sail appeared silently
+on the black darkness, as if some invisible hand had suddenly painted
+them there. The boats were coming in. Creaks and groans of winches
+sounded along the beach.
+
+[Sidenote: _AND RETURNS_]
+
+"Who be yu?" was the greeting from a rabble of youths who scuttled up
+and down the waters' edge to guide boats to their berths and gain first
+news of the catches. "Have 'ee see'd ort o' the _Shuteing Star_?" they
+shouted.
+
+"No-o-o-o!"
+
+"_I_ shan't go to bed till they comes in," said Uncle Jake. "Cuden'
+sleep if I did. '_Tis_ a craft! Her's so leaky as a sieve, lying dry
+all these years. Not but what her was a gude 'nuff li'l craft in her
+time--tu small for winter work. But I wishes 'em luck, I du."
+
+At last, the _Shooting Star_ did row in. They had not dared to sail
+her. She touched the beach before we glimpsed her, for all our
+watching. A crowd ran down to haul her up and to crack jokes on her.
+
+"Have 'ee catched ort, Harry?"
+
+"Tu or dree dizzen, an' half a ton o' coral an' some wild-crabs."
+
+"Did 'er sail well--keep up to the wind? Eh?"
+
+"Us rowed. 'Tis blowin' a gale out there."
+
+"What yu done to your nets?"
+
+"Broke 'em."
+
+"On to the bottom?"
+
+"Iss."
+
+"Why didn't 'ee go crab-fishing proper? Be 'ee going again?"
+
+The little Russan saw no joke. He bustled about the boat and replied:
+"A-course we be, if 'tis fit."
+
+"Well, I wishes 'ee luck then."
+
+We all wished luck to the _Shooting Star_--to that cranky old boatload
+of pluck, ill-luck, and ancient desperation.
+
+Said Uncle Jake: "I'd rather see they come in wi' a boatload o' herring
+than any boat along the beach. 'Tis a purty craft an' a purty crew, but
+they du desarve it."
+
+So said we all. 'Twas the least payment we could make for our
+entertainment.
+
+As soon as they were hauled up, Joe Barker lit his pipe, and, instead
+of going to bed, he went west along the shore, and carried up and
+sifted sand till dawn.
+
+"Jest what he be fit for now," Uncle Jake remarked. "That'll get 'en
+his bread an' baccy far sooner'n drifting for herring in thic _Shuteing
+Star_."
+
+But if we only could have looked into the _Shooting Star_ at sea. The
+_Shooting Star of Seacombe_!
+
+
+6
+
+"Us got 'em at last then!" so we tell one another. We have caught the
+catch of the season.
+
+For three or four days the hauls had been fairly good. Elsewhere on the
+coast, the snow, sleet, wind and wrecks continued. Here alone, in
+Seacombe Bay, it got colder and colder, and the sea became calmer and
+sunnier. "Tis like old days," Uncle Jake said while he spliced a new
+cut-rope to the drifter. "The herring be come again, in bodies, and the
+price be up. Us'll hae 'em."
+
+[Sidenote: _PAYING CALLS AT SEA_]
+
+An hour before sunset on Saturday afternoon we were shoved off the
+beach--Tony, John, and myself. Every article of underclothing in
+duplicate, a couple of guernseys and a coat or two were next to
+nakedness. We were bloated with clothes, but that northerly air, it
+seemed to be fingering our very skins. Yet there was hardly wind enough
+to fill the sail. Ricketty-rock, ricketty-rock, went the sweeps between
+the thole-pins, as we rowed to the fishing ground six miles or so away.
+Not one of us wished to shirk the heavy work. 'Twas indeed our only
+source of warmth. The sun was setting. The moon began to rise. The sea
+was all of a glimmer and glitter.
+
+"I should think we was nearly where they fish be," said John.
+
+"Bit farther," said Tony. "Us'll drift back 'long when the flid tide
+makes."
+
+"Du as yu'm minded tu."
+
+"Steer her a little bit in," directed Tony.
+
+"A little bit out," directed John the next minute.
+
+It was a middle course that turned out so happily.
+
+We shot our nets--seven forty-fathom nets we had aboard--between the
+dying sunlight and the rising moon. Very still was the sea, and quiet,
+except where the other drifters were shooting their nets. Their talk
+lingered on the water; small voices that yet sounded strong. By the
+light of the moon I counted twenty-seven drifters, some of them great
+harbour craft from Cornwall, carrying fifteen or more nets. It seemed
+as if not a herring on that little fishing ground could escape the long
+fleets of nets.
+
+We lighted the paraffin flare; supped on sandwiches and oily tea. We
+stamped about the stern-sheets to try and warm our feet. We sat awhile
+beneath the cutty. We thought we smelt fish, but it might have been
+only the smoke from our oil fire and the herring roe plastered about
+the boat. Despairing of sleep in such a cold, we sang and smoked.
+
+Presently a plash of oars. Little punts were detaching themselves from
+the larger drifters and flitting about on the sea like slow-winged
+moon-butterflies. One came alongside.
+
+"Whu's that there?"
+
+"Tony an' John Widger--Have 'em been catching much to Hallsands?--Be
+they Plymouth drifters up t'night?--What price yu been making?--How
+deep yu got yer nets?--Have 'ee catched holt the bottom?--How's Aaron
+an' Charles?--Did he get back ort o' his gear?--Us an't done a gert
+deal eet. Few thousands thees week. Be yu going to haul in
+soon?--Better, be her? Thought her was dead by now...."
+
+[Sidenote: _HAULING IN_]
+
+The fish-gossip over, we knew all the news of our stretch of coast.
+After taking another cigarette and another pull at our 'drop o' summut
+short,' the man in the punt rowed off to his drifter.
+
+"D' yu know your fourth buoy's awash?" he shouted back.
+
+"Is it, by God!" said John.
+
+"I can see 'tis," said Tony.
+
+"G'out! why didn' 'ee see 'twas afore then? Let's go an' luke."
+
+We buoyed the end of the road and started rowing alongside the
+net-buoys. The fourth was bobbing up and down. The fifth appeared now
+and then. None of the others was visible.
+
+"Damn'd if us bain't going to see some sport!" shouted John as we
+hastened back to take up the road.
+
+We tugged on oilskins and then waited watchfully--for the inside net to
+fill as well. The third buoy disappeared. The second went awash. "Now
+'tis time, ain't it?"
+
+"Iss, I reckon."
+
+We bent to it, and began to haul.
+
+The road come in heavy: John hauled and Tony coiled. As the net rose we
+saw a shimmer in the water, not of sea-fire--it was too cold--but of
+silver-sided herring. Then John took the foot of the net, Tony the mesh
+and myself the headrope. One strain. Altogether! Net and fish came in
+over the gunwale.
+
+"No use to try and pick 'em out yer!" said John.
+
+"Us 'ould never ha' got 'em in wi' two," panted Tony.
+
+"Haul, casn'! Trim the boat. We'm going to hae all us can carry if
+t'other nets be so full as thees yer."
+
+We hauled, and pulled, and puffed and swore. The fish came over the
+side like a band of jewels, like shining grains on a huge and
+never-ending ear of corn, like a bright steel mat.... It was as if the
+moonlight itself, that flooded air and water, was solidifying into fish
+in the dimmer depths of the sea. A good catch must have dropped back
+out of the net. At times, it seemed as if nothing could move the
+headrope. I jammed a knee against the gunwale, waited till the dipping
+of the boat gave me a foot or two of line, then jammed again to hold
+it. The sea-birds screeched at their feast.
+
+Tony, an inflated mannikin, danced on the piled-up nets and fish.
+"Help, help!" he cried to the next drifter. "Us got a catch."
+
+"Hould yer row!"
+
+"Help, help!"
+
+"Shut up, yu fule!--We'm not done yet.--Thee doesn't want to pay for
+help, dost?"
+
+[Sidenote: _THE CATCH OF THE SEASON_]
+
+We hauled, pulled, puffed and swore again. Yard by yard the nets came
+up, now foul, now broken, now tangled, now wound about the headrope and
+almost solid with fish.
+
+"Oh, my poor back."
+
+"Lord, my arms!"
+
+"Casn' thee trim a boat better'n that?"
+
+"Where 'er down tu?"
+
+"There's only two strakes to spare."
+
+The water was within less than a foot of the gunwale, and we were five
+or six miles from home.
+
+"Help, help!" shouted Tony again, and this time we let it pass. Five
+out of our seven nets were aboard; we could not take the remaining two.
+
+Another drifter came alongside and took in the sixth net.
+
+"Come on! here's the seventh--the last."
+
+"Can't take no more."
+
+"Ther's on'y thees yer outside net. Casn' thee take thic?"
+
+"Can't du it. We'm leaking now. Here's your headrope. Good-night."
+
+Tony gave a gesture of despair. "What shall us du? Us can't take in
+much more.
+
+"Hould yer row, an' haul!"
+
+The last net was fuller than ever. We hauled in half of it. A punt came
+near. "Can 'ee take one net?" yelled Tony.
+
+"Us got 'en half in now," said John.
+
+"Iss, but the wind's gone round--north-easterly--dead against us. An'
+luke at the circle round the mune. Ther's wind in thic sky, I tell 'ee.
+Us got so much now as we can carry home on a calm sea, let 'lone
+choppy."
+
+We cut the net.
+
+"Hurry up! Hoist sail and get in out o'it 'fore the wind rises. Come
+on!"
+
+With two oars out to windward we started beating home. We made a tack
+out to sea. There the waves skatted in over the bows, for the
+deeply-laden boat was down by the head because the heavy pile of net
+and fish prevented the water from running aft where we could have
+bailed it out. If we had had to tack much farther to sea.... We should
+have lost the catch, and perhaps ourselves.
+
+We put the boat round towards Seacombe. "Luff her up all yu can," said
+John. "Luff her up, I tell thee, or we'm never going to fetch. The
+sea's rising an' us an't got nort to spare."
+
+By keeping the luff of the sail in a flutter, sometimes too much into
+the wind, I just fetched. Then we rowed into smoother water.
+
+"'Tis fifteen thousand if 'tis one," said John.
+
+"'Tis more'n that," said Tony with a note of respect in his voice.
+
+[Sidenote: _PACKING THE FISH_]
+
+"Better wait till they sends some boats out. Us can't baych the boat
+wi' thees weight in her."
+
+We yelled, anchored, then waited; swore, yelled and waited. Someone
+came at last. The great heavy mast was sent ashore. Two boatloads of
+net and fish followed, and finally the drifter herself was beached.
+
+The crowd that had gathered on the shingle worked at the winch and
+ropes. We walked about among them answering questions, but for the
+moment doing nothing. We felt we had a right to watch the landlubbers
+work in return for the herrings we threw out to them. We had been to
+sea; had caught the catch of the season.
+
+I came in house and fried some herrings for supper. Tony and John went
+back to the boat. All night long they worked under the moon, drawing
+out the net and picking the fish from it, standing knee-deep in fish,
+spotted with scales like sequins. Far into Sunday they worked, counting
+and packing the fish while the Sunday folk in their best clothes
+strolled along the sea-wall and sniffed.
+
+Twenty-two long-thousand herrings--squashed, dirty and
+bloodstained--were carted away in the barrels. Twenty-eight hours Tony
+and John had worked. Then they washed, picked herring scales off
+themselves, and rested. The skin was drawn tightly over their faces
+and, as it were, away from their eyes. I saw, as I glanced at them,
+what they will look like when they are old men: the skull and
+crossbones half peeped out. And I said to myself: "When we feed on
+herrings we feed on fishermen's strength. Though we don't cook human
+meat, we are cannibals yet. We eat each other's lives."
+
+Rightly considered, that's not a nasty thought. Nor a new one either.
+
+
+7
+
+New Year's Eve last night.... Tony did not go to sea. He announced that
+he would turn over a new leaf, and be a gen'leman, and not do no work
+no more. "Summut'll turn up," he said when I asked him how he was going
+to feed his family. "Al'ays have done an' al'ays will, I s'pose. Thees
+yer ol' fule 'll go on till he's clean worked out. Thee casn' die but
+once, an' thee casn' help o'it nuther.
+
+"Shut thee chatter an' bring in some wude," said Mrs Widger. "Now then
+yu children, off yu goes! Up over, else my hand'll be 'longside o'ee!"
+
+"Gude-night!" say the children in chorus. "Gude-night! Gude-night! See
+yu t'morrow morning. Du us hae presents on New Year's Day, Mam?"
+
+"Yu'll see. P'raps a cracker...."
+
+"Coo'h...."
+
+"Up over!"
+
+"What 'tis tu be a family man," said Tony.
+
+"Whu's fault's that?" Mam Widger retorted.
+
+"There, me ol' stocking, don't thee worry a man! Gie us a kiss...."
+
+"G'out!"
+
+[Sidenote: _DREE-HA'P'ORTH_]
+
+The Christmas decorations and the little spangled toys from the
+children's crackers were still hanging from clothes-lines across the
+kitchen. We piled wood on the fire; it had barnacle shells on it; with
+the wreckage of good ships we warmed ourselves. Mam Widger laid the
+supper. The steam from the kettles puffed merrily into the room.
+Herrings were cooking in the oven. A faint odour--they were being
+stewed in vinegar--stole out into the room to give us appetite and for
+the moment a sense of plenty. Mrs Widger took a penny-ha'penny from the
+household purse and handed it, together with a jug to Tony.
+"Dree-ha'p'orth o' ale an' stout. Go on."
+
+Tony returned with tupence-ha'p'orth. He had added a penny out of his
+own pocket because he is ashamed to ask for less than a pint. Grannie
+Pinn came in at the same time. "I got the t'other pen'orth for me
+mither-in-law," said Tony.
+
+"Chake again!" Grannie Pinn cried. "I wants more'n a pen'orth, I du."
+
+Tony slipped off his boots just in time. It was I who had to fetch an
+extra dree-ha'p'orth.
+
+We supped with the uproariousness that Grannie Pinn always brings here.
+Some other people dropped in to see how we were doing. Not staying to
+clear the supper, we sang. The songs, as such, were indifferently good,
+but we meant them and enjoyed them. For a while Grannie Pinn contented
+herself with humming and nodding to the chorus. She started singing:
+swore at us for laughing at her. "I cude sing a song wi' anybody once,"
+she said; and therewith she struck up a fine, very Rabelaisian old song
+in many verses. She lifted up her face to the ceiling, blushed (I am
+sure the Tough Old Stick blushed), and in a high cracked voice that
+gradually gathered tone and force, she trolled her verses out. With an
+infectious abandonment, we took up the chorus. After all, 'twas a song
+of things that happen every day--one of those pieces of folk-humour
+which makes life's seriousness bearable by carrying us frankly back to
+the animal that is in us, that has been cursed for centuries and still
+remains our strength.
+
+Grannie Pinn's song was the event of the evening. Excited by her
+efforts to the point of hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry, she
+told us we were 'a pack o' gert fules,' and went. The other visitors
+followed after.
+
+"Don' know what yu feels like," said Tony when they were all gone. "I
+feels more-ish. 'N hour agone I wer fit for bed, now I feels 's if I
+cude sing for hours on end...."
+
+[Sidenote: _THE NEW YEAR_]
+
+"May as well welcome in the New Year now 'tis so late as 'tis," said
+Mrs Widger, taking from one of her store-places a bottle of green
+ginger-wine and another of fearful and wonderful 'Invalid Port' which,
+as she remarked, 'ain't so strengthening as the port what gentry has.'
+Tony added hot water to his ginger-wine, lay back in the courting
+chair, plumped his feet on Mrs Widger's lap, and sang some more of
+those sea songs that have such melancholy windy tunes and yet most
+curiously stimulate one to action. I think it must be because they echo
+that particular sub-emotional desperation which causes men to do their
+reckless best--the desperation that the treacherous sea itself
+engenders.
+
+At a minute or two before twelve by the clock, the three of us went out
+to the back door. When the cats had scuttled away, the narrow walled-in
+garden was very still. By the light of the stars, shining like points
+in the deep winter heavens, I could see the beansticks, the balks of
+wood and the old masts and oars. I could also smell the drain. Tony, in
+his stockinged feet, leant on his wife's shoulder while he raised first
+one foot from the cold stones, and then the other. We were a little
+hushed, with more than expectancy. So we waited; to hear the church
+clock strike and to welcome in the New Year.
+
+And we waited until Tony said that his feet were too cold to stay there
+any longer. The church clock struck--_ting-tang, ting-tang_--in the
+frosty air.... A quarter past! The New Year had been with us all the
+while. It was our German-made kitchen clock had stopped.
+
+We laughed aloud because the strain was relaxed; then bolted the door
+and began putting away the supper things.
+
+"If anybody wants to make me a New Year's Gift," said Tony, "they can
+gie me a thousand a year."
+
+"And then yu'd be done for," I said. "Yu cuden' stand a life o' nort to
+du. Nor cude I. We'm both in the same box, Tony. We've both got only
+our strength and skill and health, and if that fails, then we'm done.
+We'm our own stock-in-trade, and if we fail ourselves, then we've both
+got only the workhouse or the road."
+
+"Iss," said Mam Widger, "an' I don' know but what yu'm worse off than
+Tony. He _cude_ get somebody to work his boats--for a time. An' I cude
+work. But afore yu comes to the workhouse yu jest walk along thees way,
+an' if us got ort to eat yu shall hae some o'it."
+
+"Be damn'd if yu shan't!" said Tony. (I was putting away the pepper-pot
+at the moment). "Us 'ouldn't never let thee starve, not if us had it
+ourselves for to give 'ee."
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+So there 'tis. I'd wish to do the same for him, that he knows. How much
+the spirit of such an offer can mean, only those who have been without
+a home can understand fully. This New Year's Day has been happier than
+most. Life has made me a New Year's Gift so good that I cannot free
+myself from a suspicion of its being too good.
+
+It has given me home.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+POSTSCRIPT
+
+
+                                                          SEACOMBE.
+
+I am often asked why I have forsaken the society of educated people,
+and have made my home among 'rough uneducated' people, in a poor man's
+house. The briefest answer is, that it is good to live among those who,
+on the whole, are one's superiors.
+
+It is pointed out with considerable care what ill effects such a life
+has, or is likely to have, upon a man. It is looked upon as a kind of
+relapse. But to settle down in a poor man's house is by no means to
+adopt a way of life that is less trouble. On the contrary, it is more
+trouble.
+
+It is true that most of what schoolmasters call one's accomplishments
+have to be dropped. One cannot keep up everything anywhere.
+
+It is true that one goes to the theatre less and reads less. Life,
+lived with a will, is play enough, and closer acquaintance with life's
+sterner realities renders one singularly impatient with the literature
+of life's frillings. I do not notice, however, that it makes one less
+susceptible to the really fine and strong things of literature and art.
+
+It is true that one drops into dialect when excited; that one's manners
+suffer in conventional correctness. I suppose I know how to behave
+fairly correctly; I was well taught at all events; but my manners never
+have been and never will be so good, so considerate as Tony's. 'Tisn't
+in me.
+
+It is true that one becomes much coarser. One acquires a habit of
+talking with scandalous freedom about vital matters which among the
+unscientific educated are kept hid in the dark--and go fusty there. But
+I do not think there is much vulgarity to be infected with here.
+Coarseness and vulgarity are incompatibles. It was well said in a book
+written not long ago, that "Coarseness reveals but vulgarity hides."
+Vulgarity is chiefly characteristic of the non-courageous who are
+everlastingly bent on climbing up the social stairs. Poor people are
+hardly ever vulgar, until they begin to 'rise' into the middle class.
+
+[Sidenote: _WISDOM_]
+
+It is true that, so far as knowledge goes, one is bound to be cock o'
+the walk among uneducated people--which, alone, is bad for a man. But
+knowledge is not everything, nor even the main thing. Wisdom is more
+than knowledge: it is _Knowledge applied to life, the ability to make
+use of the knowledge well_. In that respect I often have here to eat a
+slice of humble-pie. For all my elaborate education and painfully
+gained stock of knowledge, I find myself silenced time after time by
+the direct wisdom of these so-called ignorant people. They have
+preserved better, between knowledge and experience, that balance which
+makes for wisdom. They have less knowledge (less mental dyspepsy too)
+and use it to better purpose. It occurs to one finally that, according
+to our current standards, the great wise men whom we honour--Christ,
+Plato, Shakespeare, to name no more--were very ignorant fellows.
+Possibly the standards are wrong.
+
+[Sidenote: _DIFFERENTIAL EVOLUTION_]
+
+To live with the poor is to feel oneself in contact with a greater
+continuity of tradition and to share in a greater stability of life.
+The nerves are more annoyed, the thinking self less. Perhaps the
+difference between the two kinds of life may be tentatively
+expressed--not necessarily accounted for--in terms of Differential
+Evolution,[23] somewhat thus:
+
+    (1) The first, the least speculative, evolutionary criterion of an
+    animal is its degree of adaptation to its environment.
+
+    (2) Man exhibits a less degree of adaptation to environment than
+    any other animal; principally because (_a_) he consists, roughly
+    speaking, incomparably more than any other animal, of three
+    interdependent parts--body, thinking brain, and that higher mental
+    function that we call spirit--the development of any one of which,
+    beyond a certain stage, is found to be detrimental to the other
+    two; and because (_b_) he is able possibly to control directly his
+    own evolution, and certainly to modify it indirectly by modifying
+    the environment in which he evolves. He is able to make mistakes in
+    his own evolution.
+
+    (3) The typical poor man is better adapted to his environment, such
+    as it is, than the typical man of any other class; for he has been
+    kept in closer contact with the primary realities--birth, death,
+    risk, starvation;--in closer contact, that is to say, with those
+    sections of human environment which are not of human making and
+    which are common to all classes. He has fewer mistakes to go back
+    upon.
+
+          [23] Evolution is at present the last refuge of unscientific
+          minds which think they have explained a process when they
+          have given it a new name, just as chemists used to call an
+          obscure chemical action _catalytic_ and then assume that its
+          nature was plain. _Evolution_ means an _unfolding_. In that
+          sense it is an observed fact, though exactly how the
+          unfolding is brought about is still conjectural. But it does
+          not matter for the purposes of my argument whether human
+          beings evolve by the transmission to offspring of acquired
+          characteristics, or by bequeathing to them as birthright an
+          environment that their fathers had to make. The material for
+          constructing any theory of mental, or joint mental and
+          physical evolution, is so hazy that one cannot do more than
+          speculate. It may be noted, however, that acquired mental
+          characteristics appear to be more transmissible, and less
+          stable, than acquired physical characteristics; and that
+          mental evolution (in the broad sense again) proceeds faster
+          and collapses more readily than physical evolution.
+
+    It might be said, of course, that mal-adaptation at any given
+    moment is more than counterbalanced by greater evolutional
+    potentialities, or by greater inducement to evolve; and that the
+    above chain of reasoning simply goes to prove that the poor man is
+    more of an animal--less evolved. On the other hand, from an
+    evolutionary standpoint, the animal faculties are the most basic of
+    all. A sound stomach is more necessary than a highly developed
+    brain, and good reproductive faculties are essential; because the
+    first demand of evolution is plenty of material. It does not follow
+    that our typical poor man is more of an animal, is less evolved, or
+    has a smaller potentiality to evolve, because he has preserved
+    better the animal faculties which lie at the basis of evolution.
+
+Furthermore:
+
+    (4) There is a reasonable probability that an interior balance,
+    between body, brain, and spirit, is more needful for realising the
+    potentialities of evolution than rapidity of development in any
+    single respect. _Mens sana in corpore sano--animaque integra_
+    is an ideal as sound as it is unachieved. More haste less speed, is
+    probably true of human evolution. A healthy baby is more hopeful
+    than a mad adult.
+
+    (5) The typical poor man does, now, exhibit a better balance
+    between these three components of him. Less evolved in some ways,
+    he is on the whole, and for that reason, more forward. His
+    evolution is proceeding with greater solidity. It is more stable,
+    and more likely to realise its potentialities.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+That is a speculation among probabilities and possibilities; an attempt
+to go in a bee-line across fields that are mainly hidden ditches; a
+first spying out of a country that wants mapping; a course over a sea
+that can never perhaps be buoyed, where bearings must be taken afresh
+from the sun for each voyage that is made. In any case, my belief grows
+stronger that the poor have kept essentially what a schoolboy calls the
+better end of the stick; not because their circumstances are
+better--materially their lives are often terrible enough--but because
+they know better how to make the most of what material circumstances
+they have. If they could improve their material circumstances and
+continue making the most of them.... That is the problem.
+
+Good Luck to us all!
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POOR MAN'S HOUSE***
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+<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Poor Man's House, by Stephen Sydney Reynolds</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: A Poor Man's House</p>
+<p>Author: Stephen Sydney Reynolds</p>
+<p>Release Date: July 25, 2008  [eBook #26126]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POOR MAN'S HOUSE***</p>
+<br><br><center><h3 class="pg">E-text prepared by Malcolm Farmer<br>
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br>
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3></center><br><br>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>
+<i>A POOR MAN'S HOUSE</i>
+</h1>
+
+<br>
+
+<h3>
+<i>By</i>
+</h3>
+
+<h2>
+<i>STEPHEN REYNOLDS</i>
+</h2>
+
+
+<br>
+<p class="narrow">
+&#34;<i>We understand the artificial better
+than the natural. More soul, but less
+talent, is contained in the simple than
+in the complex.</i>&#34;&#8212;<span class="sc">Novalis.</span>
+</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<br>
+
+<h4>
+<i>LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD<br>
+NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPY. MCMIX</i>
+</h4>
+
+<h4>
+<i>All rights reserved</i>
+</h4>
+
+<h4>
+TURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH
+</h4>
+<br>
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p class="ctr">
+TO
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+BOB
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+<small>AND TO</small>
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+EDWARD GARNETT
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+<br>
+
+<p>
+A few chapters, chosen from the completed work, have appeared in the
+<i>Albany Review</i>, the <i>Daily News</i> and <i>Country Life</i>. To
+the editors of those periodicals the author's acknowledgments are due.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="med">
+
+
+
+<h3>
+<i>PREFACE</i>
+</h3>
+
+
+<p>
+The substance of &#34;A Poor Man's House&#34; was first recorded in a journal,
+kept for purposes of fiction, and in letters to one of the friends to
+whom the book is dedicated. Fiction, however, showed itself an
+inappropriate medium. I was unwilling to cut about the material, to
+modify the characters, in order to meet the exigencies of plot, form,
+and so on. I felt that the life and the people were so much better than
+anything I could invent. Besides which, I found myself in possession of
+conclusions, hot for expression, which could not be incorporated at all
+into fiction. &#34;A Poor Man's House&#34; consists then of the journal and
+letters, subjected to such slight re-arrangement as should enable me to
+draw the truest picture I could within the limits of one volume.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Primarily the book aims at presenting a picture of a typical poor man's
+house and life. Incidentally, certain conclusions are expressed
+which&#8212;needless to say&#8212;are very tentative and are founded not alone on
+<i>this</i> poor man's house. Of the book as a picture, it is not the
+author's place to speak. But its opinions, and the manner of arriving
+at them, do require some explanation; the right to hold such opinions
+some substantiation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Educated people usually deal with the poor man's life deductively; they
+reason from the general to the particular; and, starting with a theory,
+religious, philanthropic, political, or what not, they seek, and too
+easily find, among the millions of poor, specimens&#8212;very frequently
+abnormal&#8212;to illustrate their theories. With anything but human beings,
+that is an excellent method. Human beings, unfortunately, have
+individualities. They do what, theoretically, they ought not to do, and
+leave undone those things they ought to do. They are even said to
+possess souls&#8212;untrustworthy things beyond the reach of sociologists.
+The inductive method&#8212;reasoning from the particular to the
+general&#8212;though it lead to a fine crop of errors, should at least help
+to counterbalance the psychological superficiality of the deductive
+method; to counterbalance, for example, the nonsense of those
+well-meaning persons who go routing about among the poor in search of
+evil, and suppose that they can chain it up with little laws. Chained
+dogs bite worst.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For myself, I can only claim&#8212;I only want to claim&#8212;that I have lived
+among poor people without preconceived notions or <i>parti pris</i>;
+neither as parson, philanthropist, politician, inspector, sociologist
+nor statistician; but simply because I found there a home and more
+beauty of life and more happiness than I had met with elsewhere. So far
+as is possible to a man of middle-class breeding, I have lived their
+life, have shared their interests, and have found among them some of my
+closest and wisest friends. Perhaps I may reasonably anticipate one
+type of criticism by adding that I have felt something of the pinch and
+hardship of the life, as well as enjoyed its picturesqueness. Since the
+book was first written, it has fallen to me, on an occasion of illness,
+to take over for some days all the housekeeping and cooking; and I have
+worked on the boats sometimes fifteen hours a day, not as an amateur,
+but for hard and&#8212;what is more to the point&#8212;badly-needed coin. It took
+the gilt off the gingerbread, but it didn't spoil the gingerbread!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Would it were possible to check by ever so little the class-conceit of
+those people who think that they can manage the poor man's life better
+than he can himself; who would take advantage of their education to
+play ducks and drakes with his personal affairs. For it is my firm
+belief that in the present phase of national evolution, and as regards
+the things that really matter, the educated man has more to learn of
+the poor man than to teach him. Even Nietzsche, the philosopher of
+aristocracy, went so far as to say that <i>in the so-called cultured
+classes, the believers in 'modern ideas,' nothing is perhaps so
+repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy insolence of eye and hand
+with which they touch, taste, and finger everything; and it is possible
+that even yet there is more</i> relative <i>nobility of taste, and more
+tact for reverence among the people, among the lower classes of the
+people, especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading</i>
+demi-monde <i>of intellect, the cultured class</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sig">
+S. R.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="sc">Seacombe</span>, 1908.
+</p>
+
+
+<hr class="long">
+<br>
+<h2>
+<i>A POOR MAN'S HOUSE</i>
+</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="chapter">
+I
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="sc">Egremont Villas</span>,<br>
+<span class="sc">Seacombe</span>, <i>April</i>.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+1
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sea is merely grinding against the shingle. The <i>Moondaisy</i>
+lies above the sea-wall, in the gutter, with her bottom-boards out and
+a puddle of greenish water covering her garboard strake. Her
+hunchbacked Little Commodore is dead. The other two of her old crew,
+George Widger and Looby Smith are nowhere to be seen: they must be
+nearly grown up by now. The fishermen themselves appear less
+picturesque and salty than they used to do. It is slack time after a
+bad herring season. They are dispirited and lazy, and very likely
+hungry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These old lodgings of mine, with their smug curtains, aspidestria
+plant, china vases and wobbly tables and chairs....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But I can hear the sea-gulls screaming, even here.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+2
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn">
+<i>GEORGE GONE TO SEA</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yesterday morning I met young George Widger, now grown very lanky but
+still cat-like in his movements. He was parading the town with a couple
+of his mates, attired in a creased blue suit with a wonderful yellow
+scarf around his neck, instead of the faded guernsey and ragged
+sea-soaked trousers in which he used to come to sea. What was up? I
+asked his father, and Tony had a long rigmarole to tell me. George had
+got a sweetheart. Therefore George had begun to look about him for a
+sure livelihood. George was not satisfied with a fisherman's prospects.
+&#34;Yu works and drives and slaves, and don't never get no forarder.&#34; So
+George had gone to the chief officer of coastguards without saying a
+word to his father and had been found fit. George had joined the Navy.
+He was going off to Plymouth that very day at dinner-time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is like a knight of romance being equipped by his lady for the wars.
+But what must be the difficulty to a young fisherman of earning his
+bread and cheese, when all he can do for his sweetheart is to leave her
+forthwith! There's a fine desperation in it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony seemed rather proud. &#34;They 'ouldn't think as I had a son old
+enough for the Navy, wude they, sir? I married George's mother, her
+that's dead, when I wer hardly olden'n he is. I should ha' joined the
+Navy meself if it hadn' been for the rheumatic fever what bent me like.
+I am. 'Tis a sure thing, you see&#8212;once yu'm in it an' behaves
+yourself&#8212;wi' a pension at the end o'it. But I'm so strong an'
+capable-like for fishing as them that's bolt upright, on'y I 'ouldn't
+ha' done for the Navy. Aye! the boy's right. Fishing ain't no job for a
+man nowadays; not like what it used to be. They'll make a man of him in
+the Navy.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the evening, after dark, I saw Tony again. He was standing outside a
+brilliantly lighted grocer's shop, his cap awry as usual, and a reefer
+thrown over his guernsey. Something in the despondency of his attitude
+haled me across the road. &#34;Well, Tony? George is there by now?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss ... I-I-I w-wonder what the boy's thinking o'it now....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man was crying his heart out. &#34;I come'd hereto 'cause it don' seem
+'s if I can stay in house. Went in for some supper a while ago, but I
+cuden' eat nort. 'Tisn' 's if he'd ever been away from home before, yu
+know.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Come along down to the Shore Road, Tony.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It seemed wrong, hardly decent, to let his grief spend itself in the
+lighted-up street. The Front was deserted and dark, for there was rain
+in the wind, and the sound of the surf had a quick savage chop in it.
+Away, over the sea, was a great misty blackness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we walked up and down, Tony talked between tears and anger&#8212;tears
+for himself and George, anger at the cussedness of things. He looked
+straight before him, to where the row of lamps divided the lesser from
+the greater darkness, the town noises from the chafing surf; it is the
+only time I have ever seen a fisherman walk along shore without a
+constant eye on the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;He's taken and gone away jest as he was beginning to be o' some use
+wi' the boats, an' I thought he wer settling down. <i>I</i> didn' know
+what wer going on, not till he came an' told me he wer off. But 'tisn'
+that, though I bain't so strong as I was to du all the work be meself;
+'tis what he's a-thinking now he've a-lef' home an' 'tis tu late to
+come back if he wants tu. He's ther, sure 'nuff, an' that's all about
+it.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the presence of grief, we are all thrown back on the fine old
+platitudes we affect to despise. &#34;You mustn't get down over it, Tony,&#34;
+I said. &#34;That won't make it a bit the better. If he's steady&#8212;woman,
+wine and the rest&#8212;he'll get on right enough. He's got his wits about
+him; knows how to sail a boat and splice a rope. That's the sort they
+want in the Navy, I suppose. <i>He</i>'ll make his way, never fear.
+Think how you'll trot him out when he comes home on leave. Why, they
+say a Devon man's proper place is the Navy.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss, they du. <i>I</i> should ha' been there meself if it hadn' been
+for the rheumatics&#8212;jest about coming out on a pension now, or in the
+coastguards. I <i>be</i> in the Royal Naval Reserve, but I ain't smart
+enough, like, for the Navy. The boy....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;He's as smart and strong as they make 'em.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Aye! he's smart, or cude be, but he'll hae to mind what he's a-doin'
+there. <i>They</i> won't put up wi' no airs like he've a-give'd me.
+Yu've got to du what yu'm told, sharp, an' yu mustn't luke [look] what
+yu thinks, let 'lone say it, or else yu'll find yourself in chokey
+[cells] 'fore yu knows where yu are. 'Tis like walking on a six-inch
+plank, in the Navy, full o' rules an' regylations; an' he won't get fed
+like he was at home nuther, when us had it.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn">
+<i>GROG AS A SLEEPING DRAUGHT</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Why don't you go to bed and sleep, Tony?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;How can I sleep wi' me head full o' what the boy's thinking o'it all!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+More walking and he calmed down a little.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Come and have some hot grog for a sleeping draught, Tony, and then go
+home to bed.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Had us better tu?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Come along, man; then if you go straight to bed you'll sleep.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I on'y wish I cude. The boy must be turned in by this time. 'Tis like
+as if I got a picture of him in my mind, where he is, an' he ain't
+happy&#8212;<i>I</i> knows.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Tony went down the narrow roadway, homewards, he had had just the
+amount of grog to make him sleep: no more, no less. That father's
+grief&#8212;the boy gone to sea, the father left stranded ashore&#8212;it was bad
+to listen to. While going up town, I wondered with how much sorrow the
+Navy is recruited. We look on our sailors rather less fondly than on
+the expensive pieces of machinery we send them to sea in. I don't think
+I shall ever again be able to regard the Navy newspaper-fashion. It
+seems as if someone of mine belongs to it....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lucky George! to be so much missed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This morning, when I saw Tony on the Front, he was more than a little
+awkward; looked shyly at me, from under his peaked cap, as if to read
+in my face what I thought of him. He had slept after all, and spoke of
+the hot grog as a powerful, strange invention, new to him as a sleeping
+draught. When, in talking, I said that I have only a back bedroom and a
+fripperied sitting room, and that my old lodgings do not please me as
+they used to, he clapped me on the shoulder with a jollity intended, I
+think, to put last night out of my mind. &#34;What a pity yu hadn't let we
+know yu cuden't find lodgings to your liking. Us got a little room in
+house where they sends people sometimes from the Alexandra Hotel when
+they'm full up. My missis 'ould du anything to make 'ee comfor'able. Yu
+an't never see'd her, have 'ee? Nice little wife, I got. Yu let us know
+when yu be coming thees way again; that is, if yu don' mind coming wi'
+the likes o' us. We won't disturb 'ee.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A NOISY PLACE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Good fellow! It was his thanks. However I shall be going home
+to-morrow. Tony Widger lives, I believe, somewhere down the Gut, in
+Under Town, a place they call the Seacombe slum. You can see a horde of
+children pouring in and out of the Gut all day long, and in the evening
+the wives stand at the seaward end of it, to gossip and await their
+husbands. Noisy place....
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="chapter">
+II
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="sc">Salisbury</span>,<br>
+<i>July</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A card from Tony Widger:
+</p>
+<div class="blockquote">
+<p>
+Dear Sir in reply to your letter I have let to the hotel which is full
+for the 28th july until the 6<sup>th</sup> Aus, but I have one little
+room to the back but you did not say about the time it would take you
+to walk down also John to Saltmeadow have let so you can have that room
+if you can manage or you can see when you come down their are a lot of
+People in Seacombe or you write and let me know and I will see if I can
+get rooms for you if you tell me about the time you will be hear from
+yours Truly Anthony Widger.
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>
+Risky; but never mind. There is always the sea. It is something to have
+the certainty of a bed at the end of a long day's tramp. Besides, I
+want to see Tony, and George too, if by chance he is at home. And there
+may be a little fishing. And&#8212;
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>And stepping westward seems to be</p>
+<p>A kind of <i>heavenly</i> destiny.</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+That's the real feeling at the back of my mind. <i>I want</i> to go
+west, towards the sunset; over Dartmoor, towards Land's End, where the
+departing ships go down into the sea.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="chapter">
+III
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="sc">Seacombe</span>,<br>
+<i>July-August</i>.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+1
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After a hundred miles of dusty road, it is good to snuff the delicately
+salted air. The bight of the Exe, where we crossed it by steam launch,
+was only a make-believe for the sea. How wonderfully the slight
+rippling murmur of a calm sea flows into, and takes possession of one's
+mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stood by the shore and watched the boats, and was very peaceful. Then
+I went down the Gut to the house that I guessed was Anthony Widger's.
+Many children watched me with their eyes opened wide at my knapsack. A
+pleasant looking old woman&#8212;short, stout, charwoman-shaped&#8212;came out of
+the passage just as I raised my hand to knock the open door. &#34;Are you
+Mrs Widger?&#34; said I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Lor' bless 'ee! I ben't Mrs Widger. Here, Annie! Here's a gen'leman to
+see 'ee.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger, the afternoon Mrs Widger, is a quite slim woman
+who&#8212;strangely enough for a working man's wife&#8212;looks a good deal
+younger than she is. She has rather beautiful light brown hair and
+dresses tastefully. I am afraid she will not feel complimented if the
+old woman tells her of my mistake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her manner of receiving me indicated plainly a suspended judgment,
+inclined perhaps towards the favourable. I was shown my room, a little
+long back room, with ragged wall-paper, and almost filled up by a huge,
+very flat, squashy bed. After a wash-over (I did not ask for a bath for
+fear of exposing the lack of one) I went down to tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bread, jam and cream were put before me, together with fairly good hot
+tea from a blue, smoky, enamelled tin teapot which holds any quantity
+up to a couple of quarts. Mrs Widger turned two guernseys, a hat,
+several odd socks, and a boot out of a great chintz-covered chair which
+lacked one of its arms. To my <i>made</i> conversation she replied
+shortly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Dear me!&#34; &#34;My!&#34; &#34;Did you ever....&#34; She was taking stock of me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently she went to a cupboard, which is also the coal-hole, and
+brought out an immense frying-pan, black both inside and out. She
+heated it till the fat ran; wiped out it with a newspaper; then placed
+in it three split mackerel. &#34;For Tony's tea,&#34; she explained. &#34;He's to
+sea now with two gen'lemen, but I 'spect he'll be in house sune.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Voices from the passage: &#34;Mam! Tay! Mam, I wants my tay!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>TEA-TIME</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A deeper voice: &#34;Missis, wer's my tay? Got ort nice to eat?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Tony himself, accompanied by a small boy and a slightly larger
+small girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Hullo, sir! Yu'm come then. Do 'ee think you can put up wi' our little
+shanty? Missis ought to ha' laid for 'ee in the front room. Us got a
+little parlour, you know.&#8212;I be so wet as a drownded corpse, Missis!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two children stood on the other side of the table, staring at me as
+if I were a wild beast behind bars which they scarcely trusted. &#34;'Tis a
+gen'leman!&#34; exclaimed the girl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Coo'h!&#34; the boy ejaculated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony turned on them with make-believe anger: &#34;Why don' 'ee git yer tay?
+Don' 'ee know 'tis rude to stare?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Now then, you children,&#34; Mrs Widger continued in a strident voice,
+buttering two hunks of bread with astonishing rapidity. &#34;Take off thic
+hat, Mabel. <i>Sit</i> down, Jimmy.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Coo'h! Jam!&#34; said Jimmy. &#34;Jam zide plaate, like the gen'leman, please,
+Mam Widger.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;When you've eat that.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I never saw children munch so fast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony took off his boots and stockings, and wrung out the ends of his
+trousers upon the hearth-rug. He pattered to the oven; opened the door;
+sniffed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Her's got summat for my tay, I can see. What is it, Missis? Fetch it
+out&#8212;&#8212;quick, sharp! Mackerel! Won' 'ee hae one, sir? Ther's plenty
+here.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whilst Mrs Widger was helping him to the rest of his food, he ate the
+mackerel with his fingers. Finally, he soaked up the vinegar with
+bread, licked his finger-tips and turned towards me. &#34;Yu'm in the
+courting chair, sir. That's where me an' Missis used to sit when we was
+courting, en' it, Annie? Du 'ee see how we've a-broke the arm? When yu
+gets a young lady, us'll lend 'ee thic chair. Didn' know as I'd got a
+little wife like thees yer, did 'ee? Ay, Annie!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned round and chucked her under the chin.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out, you dirty cat!&#34; cried Mrs Widger, flinging herself back in the
+chair&#8212;yet not displeased.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a pretty playful sight, although Mrs Widger's voice is rather
+like a newspaper boy's when she raises it.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+2
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This morning, when I arrived downstairs, the kitchen was all of a
+caddle. Children were bolting their breakfast, seated and afoot; were
+washing themselves and being washed; were getting ready and being got
+ready for school. Mrs Widger looked up from stitching the seat of a
+small boy's breeches <i>in situ</i>. &#34;I've a-laid your breakfast in the
+front room.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thither I went with a book and no uncertain feeling of disappointment.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>BREAKFAST IN THE PARLOUR</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The front room looks out upon Alexandra Square. It is, at once,
+parlour, lumber room, sail and rope store, portrait gallery of
+relatives and ships, and larder. It is a veritable museum of the
+household treasures not in constant use, and represents pretty
+accurately, I imagine, the extent to which Mrs Widger's house-pride is
+able to indulge itself. But I have had enough at Salisbury of eating my
+meals among best furniture and in the (printed) company of great minds.
+The noise in the kitchen sounded jolly. Now or never, I thought. So
+after breakfast, I returned to the kitchen and asked for what bad
+behaviour I was banished to the front room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Lor'! If yu don't mind this. On'y 'tis all up an' down here....&#34;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+3
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went yesterday to see my old landlady at Egremont Villas. She asked
+me where I was lodging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;At Tony Widger's, in Alexandra Square.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Why, that's in Under Town.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yes, in Under Town.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Oh, law! I can't think how you can live in such a horrid place!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On my assuring her that it was not so very horrid, she rearranged her
+silken skirts on the chair (a chair too ornamentally slight for her
+weight) and tilted up her nose. &#34;I must get and lay the table,&#34; she
+said, &#34;for a lady and gentleman that's staying with me. <i>Very</i>
+nice people.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>ALEXANDRA SQUARE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Under Town has, in fact, an indifferent reputation among the elect. Not
+that it is badly behaved; far from it. The shallow-pated resent its not
+having drawn into line with their cheap notions of progress. If Under
+Town had put plate-glass windows into antique buildings.... Visitors to
+Seacombe, not being told, hardly so much as suspect the existence of
+its huddled old houses and thatched cottages. The shingle-paved Gut
+runs down unevenly from the Shore Road between a row of tall lodging
+houses and the Alexandra Hotel, then opens out suddenly into a little
+square which contains an incredible number of recesses and sub-corners,
+so to speak, with many more doors in them than one can discover houses
+belonging to the doors. Two cottages, I am told, have no ground floors
+at all. Cats sun themselves on walls or squat about gnawing fish bones.
+A houdan cockerel with bedraggled speckly plumage and a ragged crest
+hanging over one eye struts from doorstep to doorstep. The children,
+when any one strange walks through the Square, run like rabbits in a
+warren to their respective doors; stand there, and stare. Tony Widger's
+house is the largest. Once, when Under Town was Seacombe, a lawyer
+lived here&#8212;hence the front passage. It has a cat-trodden front garden,
+in which only wall-flowers and some box edging have survived. Over the
+front door is a broken trellis-work porch. Masts and spars lean against
+the wall. The house is built of red brick, straight up and down like an
+overgrown doll's house, but the whole of the wall is weathered and
+toned by the southerly gales which blow down the Gut from the open sea.
+Those same winds see to it that Alexandra Square does not smell
+squalid, however it may look. At its worst it is not so depressing as a
+row of discreet semi-detached villas. It is, I should imagine, a pretty
+accurate mirror of the lives that are lived in it&#8212;poor men's lives
+that scarcely anybody fathoms. If one looks for a moment at a house
+where people have starved, or are starving.... What a gift of hope they
+must possess&#8212;and what a sinking in their poor insides!
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+4
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This morning they told me how my little hunchbacked Commodore died. He
+had been ailing, they said; had come to look paler and more pinched in
+his small sharp face. Then (it was a fisherman who told me this): &#34;He
+was in to house one morning, an' I thought as 'e were sleepin', an' I
+said, 'Harry, will 'ee hae a cup o' tay; yu been sleeping an't 'ee?'
+An' 'e says, 'No, I an't; but I been sort o' dreaming.' An' 'e said as
+he'd see'd a green valley wi' a stream o' water, like, running down the
+middle o' it, an' 'e thought as 'e see'd Granfer there (that us losted
+jest before 'en) walking by the stream. A'terwards 'e sat on 's
+mother's lap, like 's if 'e wer a child again, though 'e wer nearly
+nineteen all but in size; an' 'e jest took an' died there, suddent an'
+quiet like; went away wi'out a word; an' us buried 'en last January up
+to the cementry on land.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the <i>Moondaisy</i>'s luckiest fisherman packed up and went.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+5
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is astonishing how hungry and merry these children are, especially
+the boys. They rush into the kitchen at meal times and immediately make
+grabs at whatever they most fancy on the table.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>MAN AND GEN'LEMAN</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yu little cat!&#34; says their mother, always as if she had never
+witnessed such behaviour before. &#34;Yu daring rascal! Put down! I'll gie
+thee such a one in a minute. Go an' sit down to once.&#34; Then they climb
+into chairs, wave their grubby hands over the plates, in a pretence of
+grabbing something more, and spite of the whacks which sometimes fall,
+they gobble their food to the accompaniment of incessant tricks and
+roars of shrill laughter. Never were such disorderly, hilarious meals!
+If Tony is here they simply laugh at his threats of weird punishment,
+and if he comes in late from sea, they return again with him and make a
+second meal as big as the first. Sometimes, unless the food is cleared
+away quickly, they will clamour for a third meal, and clamour
+successfully. What digestions they must have to gobble so much and so
+fast!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To judge by their way of talking, they divide the world into folk and
+gentlefolk. &#34;Who gie'd thee thic ha'penny?&#34; Mrs Widger asked Jimmy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;A man, to beach.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out!&#34; said Mabel. &#34;Twas a gen'leman.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well, that ain't a <i>man</i>!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Usually, at breakfast time, the voices of Tony's small nieces may be
+heard coming down the passage: &#34;Aun-tieAnn-ie! Aunt-ieAnn-ie!&#34; Their
+tousled, tow-coloured little heads peep round the doorway. If we have
+not yet finished eating, they are promptly ordered to 'get 'long home
+to mother.' Otherwise, they come right in and remain standing in the
+middle of the room, apparently to view me. Unable to remember which is
+Dora and which Dolly, I have nicknamed them according to their hair,
+Straighty and Curley. What they think of things, there is no knowing;
+for they blush at direct questions and turn their heads away. So also,
+when I have been going in and out of the Square, they have stopped
+their play to gaze at me, but have merely smiled shyly, if at all, in
+answer to my greetings. Yesterday, however, they had a skipping rope. I
+jumped over it. Instantly there was a chorus of laughter and chatter.
+The ice was broken. This morning, after a moment or two's consideration
+behind her veil of unbrushed hair, Straighty came and clambered upon
+the arm of the courting chair&#8212;dabbed a clammy little hand down my
+neck, whilst Curley plumped her fist on my knee and stayed looking into
+my face with very wondering smiling blue eyes. By the simple act of
+jumping a rope, I had gained their confidence; had proved I was really
+a fellow creature, I suppose. Now, when I pass through the Square, some
+small boy is sure to call out, &#34;Where yu going?&#34; And my name is
+brandished about among the children as if I were a pet animal. They
+have appropriated me. They have tamed that mysterious wild beast, 'the
+gen'leman.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One boy, Jimmy&#8212;a very fair-headed, blue-eyed, chubby little chap,
+seven years old&#8212;Tony's eldest boy at home&#8212;seems to have taken a
+particular fancy to me. Whether it began with bananas, or with my
+giving him a pick-a-back to the top of the cliffs, I hardly know. At
+all events he has decided that I am a desirable friend. He has shown me
+his small properties&#8212;his pencil, and his boats that he makes out of a
+piece of wood with wing-feathers for sails and a piece of tin, stuck
+into the bottom, for centre-keel;&#8212;has told me what standard he is in
+at school; and one of the first things I hear whenever he comes into
+the house, is: &#34;Mam! Wher's Mister Ronals?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>JIMMY OUT TO TEA</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To-day, on my way to the Tuckers' to tea, I passed Jimmy's school. The
+boys were just let loose. Jimmy left a yelling group of them to come
+along with me. Nearby the Tuckers' gate, I told him where I was going,
+and said <i>Good-bye</i>. Jimmy fell behind. But whilst we were at tea,
+I repeatedly saw a white head sneaking round the laurels outside the
+window, and blue eyes peeping. Miss Tucker had him in; whereupon,
+rather shyly, with hands horribly grubby from the school slates, Jimmy
+ate much bread and butter and many cakelets, and ended up by tucking
+three apples into his blouse. He came home very pleased indeed with
+himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony was almost angry. &#34;However come'd 'ee, Missis, to let 'em go out
+to a gen'leman's to tay in thic mess?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Stupid! How cude I help o'it?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What did 'ee think o'it, Jimmy?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;The lady gie'd I dree apples!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony, though shocked, was also pleased; Jimmy delighted. Every now and
+then he draws himself up with a &#34;Coo'h! I been out to tay wi' Mister
+Ronals!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They have a strange way, these children, of placing their hands on one,
+smiling up into one's face, and saying nothing. It has the effect of
+making one feel their separate, distinct personalities, and,
+additionally, of making one feel rather proud of the approbation of
+those small personages who think so much and divulge so little.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+6
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There has been no fishing. Either the sea has been too rough to ride to
+a slingstone<a href="#note1" name="noteref1"><sup>1</sup></a> for blinn and conger, or else too calm, so that the
+mackerel hookers<a href="#note2" name="noteref2"><sup>2</sup></a> could not sail out and therefore no fresh bait was
+to be had. It is quite useless to fish for conger with stale bait. Tony
+tells me that I ought to be here in a month's time, when he will have
+fewer pleasure parties to attend to, and will go out for mackerel,
+rowing if he cannot sail. He says there will <i>have</i> to be a good
+September hooking season, because, though the summer has been fair, the
+fisherfolk have not succeeded in putting by enough money to last out
+the winter, should the herrings fail to come into the bay, as they have
+failed the last few years. I should like to <i>work</i> at the mackerel
+hooking with him. Indeed, although I am looking forward to a glorious
+tramp across Dartmoor, yet I am more than half sorry that I have a room
+bespoken at Prince Town for the day after to-morrow.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>AN INOPPORTUNE REMARK</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Putting aside one or two things that are unpleasant&#8212;a few
+disagreeables resolutely faced&#8212;it is wonderful how rapidly one feels
+at home here. The welcome, the goodfellowship, is so satisfying. This
+morning, the visitor from the hotel, who has Mrs Widger's front room,
+so far presumed on the fact that we were educated men among
+uneducated&#8212;both gen'lemen, Tony would say&#8212;as to remark flippantly
+though not ungenially, &#34;The Widgers are not bad sorts, are they? I say,
+what a mouth Mrs Widger's got!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger has a noticeably wide mouth; I know that perfectly well; but
+I can hardly say how indignant I felt at his light remark; how
+insulted; as if he had spoken slightingly of someone belonging to me.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="chapter">
+IV
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="right"><span class="sc">Prince Town</span>,<br>
+<i>August</i>.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+1
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I took leave of the Widgers, there was the question of payment for
+my board and lodging. We were just finishing breakfast; the children
+had been driven out, Mrs Widger was resting awhile, and the table, the
+whole kitchen, was in extreme disorder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I asked Mrs Widger what I owed, and, as I had expected, she replied
+only: &#34;What you'm minded to pay.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Three and six a day,&#34; I suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Not so much as that,&#34; said Mrs Widger. &#34;'Tisn't like as if us could du
+for 'ee like a proper lodging house.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Don' 'ee think, Missis,&#34; said Tony, &#34;as we might ask 'en jest to make
+hisself welcome.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was out of the question, of course. The mackerel season has been so
+bad. Mrs Widger shot at Tony a look he failed to see. Otherwise, she
+did not let herself appear to have heard him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The discussion hung.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Say three shillings, then,&#34; I suggested again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;That 'll du,&#34; returned Mrs Widger, allowing nothing of the last few
+minutes' brain-work to show itself in her voice.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>HOTEL LIFE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger knows what it is to have to keep house and feed several
+hungry children on earnings which vary from fairly large sums (sums
+whose very largeness calls for immediate spending) to nothing at all
+for weeks together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I was setting out, Jimmy said to his mother: &#34;Don' 'ee let Mister
+Ronals go, Mam 'Idger.&#34; He followed me to the end of the Gut; would
+have come farther had I not sent him back. That, and Tony's desire to
+make me welcome, brightened the bright South Devon sunshine. I kept
+within sight of the sea as long as possible. The little sailing boats
+on it looked so nimble. I have a leaning to go back, a sort of
+hunger....
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+2
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>DAWDLING v. WALKING</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I don't think I can remain here. To-morrow I shall move on, and tramp
+around the county back to Seacombe. The Moor is as splendid as ever,
+but this hotel life, following so soon on the life of Under Town....
+Though the good, well-cooked food, neither so greasy nor so starchy as
+Mrs Widger's, is an agreeable change, I sit at the table d'h&#244;te and
+rage within. I am compelled to hear a conversation that irritates me
+almost beyond amusement at it. These people here are on holiday. Most
+of them, by their talk, were never on anything else. They chirp in
+lively or bored fashion, as the case may be, of the things that don't
+matter, of the ornamentations, the superfluities and the relaxations of
+life. At Tony Widger's they discuss&#8212;and much more merrily&#8212;the things
+that do matter; the means of life itself. Here, they say: &#34;Is the table
+d'h&#244;te as good as it might be? Is the society what it might be? Is it
+not a pity that there is no char-&#224;-banc or a motor service to Cranmere
+Pool and Yes Tor?&#34; There, the equivalent question is: &#34;Shall us hae
+money to go through the winter? Shall us hae bread and scrape to eat?&#34;
+Here, a man wonders if in the strong moorland air some slight
+non-incapacitating ailment will leave him: illness is inconvenient and
+disappointing, but not ruinous. There, Tony wonders if the exposure and
+continual boat-hauling are not taking too much out of him; if he is not
+ageing before his time; if he will not be past earning before the
+younger children are off his hands. Here, they laugh at trifles,
+keeping what is serious behind a veil of conventional manners, lest,
+appearing in broad daylight, it should damp their spirits. There, they
+laugh too, and at countless trifles; but also courageously, in the face
+of fate itself. By daring Nemesis, they partially disarm her. With a
+laugh and a jest&#8212;no matter if it be a raucous laugh and a coarse
+jest&#8212;they assert: &#34;What will be, will be; us can't but du our best,
+for 'tis the way o'it.&#34; Here, they skate over a Dead Sea upon the ice
+of convention; but there, they swim in the salted waters, swallow great
+gulps, and nevertheless strike out manfully, knowing no more than
+anyone else exactly where the shore lies, yet possessing, I think, an
+instinct of direction. Here, comfort is at stake: there, existence.
+Coming here is like passing from a birth and death chamber into a
+theatre, where, if the actors have lives of their own, apart from
+mummery, it is their business not to show them. It is like watching a
+game from the grand stand, instead of playing it; betting on a race
+instead of running it. The transition hither is hard to make. Retired
+athletes, we know, suffer from fatty degeneration of the heart; retired
+men of affairs decay. I have walked lately at five miles an hour with
+the Widgers, and I do not relish dawdling at the rate of two with these
+people here. Better risk hell for heaven than lounge about paradise for
+ever.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="chapter">
+V
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="sc">Under Town, Seacombe</span>,<br>
+<i>September</i>.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+1
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A fine tramp from Totnes&#8212;and such a welcome back! Jimmy met me
+three-quarters of a mile up the road, very much farther than he usually
+strays from the beach. &#34;I thought as yu was coming this way 'bout now,
+Mister Ronals. Dad's been out hooking an' catched five dozen mackerel
+before breakfast. Mam's sick. I be coming out wiv yu t'morrow morning.
+Dad couldn't go out after breakfast, 'cause it come'd on to blow. I've
+'schanged my pencil, what yu give'd me, for a knife wi' two blades.&#34; So
+anxious was he to take me in house that he scarcely allowed me time to
+go down to the Front and look at the sea and at the boats lying among a
+litter of nets and gear the length of the sunny beach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger hastened to bring out the familiar big enamelled teapot,
+flung the cloth over the table and began to cut bread and butter.
+&#34;Coo'h! tay!&#34; exclaimed Jimmy. &#34;That's early, 'cause yu be come, Mister
+Ronals.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Be yu glad Mr Ronals 's come back?&#34; his mother asked.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE CHILDREN</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What for?&#34; I asked jocularly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Cause yu gives us bananas&#8212;an' pennies sometimes.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Sthat all yu'm glad for?&#34; said Mrs Widger. &#34;Pennies an' bananas?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No vear!&#34; said Jimmy; and he meant it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the while, Tommy (Jimmy's younger brother, about five years old)
+was sitting up to table, looking at the jam-jar with one eye and at me
+with the other. He squints most comically, and is a more self-contained
+young person than Jimmy. Four of the children are at home; Bessie,
+Mabel, Jimmy and Tommy; George and the eldest girl are away. Bessie and
+Mabel, too, are out the greater part of the day, either at school, or
+else helping their aunts, or minding babies (poor little devils!), or
+running errands for the many relatives who live hereabout. Both of them
+are more featureless, show less of the family likeness, than the boys.
+One cannot so easily forecast their grown-up appearance. At times,
+during the day, they come in house with a rush, but say little, except
+to blurt out some (usually inaccurate) piece of news, or to tell their
+step-mother that: &#34;Thic Jimmy's out to baych&#8212;I see'd 'en&#8212;playin' wi'
+some boys, an' he's got his boots an' stockings so wet as....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Jest let 'en show his face in here! <i>He</i> shan't hae no tea! He
+shall go straight to bed!&#34; shouts Mrs Widger, confident that hunger
+will eventually drive Jimmy into her clutches.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two girls, in fact, do not seem to enter so fully as the boys into
+the life of the household, though they are always very ready to take up
+the responsibility of keeping the boys in order.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Jimmy! Tommy&#8212;there! Mother, look at thic Jimmy! Mother, Tommy's
+fingering they caakes!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I'll gie thee such a one in a minute! Let 'lone.... Ther thee a't,
+Mabel, doin' jest the same, 's if a gert maid like yu didn't ought to
+know better.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Did 'ee ever hear the like o'it?&#34; asks Tony. &#34;Such a buzz! Shut up,
+will 'ee, or <i>I'll</i> gie thee summut to buzz for! Wher's thic
+stick?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The children merely laugh at him.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+2
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>TONY'S WEDDING</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At supper to-night, Tony was talking about his second wedding and about
+his children, who, dead and alive, number twelve. &#34;Iss, 'tis a round
+dozen, though I'd never ha' thought it,&#34; he said reckoning them up on
+his fingers. &#34;Ther be six living an' four up to the cementry, an' two
+missing, like, what nobody didn' know nort about, did they, Annie?
+Janie&#8212;that's my first wife, afore this one,&#8212;her losted three boys
+when they was two year an' ten months old, an' one year an' seven
+months, an' nine months old. An' her died herself when Mabel here was
+six months old, didn' 'er, Annie? An' yu've a-losted Rosie, an' the
+ones what never appeared in public. Our last baby, after Tommy, wer two
+boys, twinses. One wer like George an' one like Tommy most; one wer my
+child an' t'other wer yours, Annie. Six on 'em dead! Aye, Tony've a
+see'd some trouble, I can tell 'ee, an' he ain't so old as what some on
+'em be for their age, now, thru it all. But it du make a man's head
+turn like.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger's gaze at him while he talked about the dead children was
+wonderful to see&#8212;wide-eyed, soft, unflinching&#8212;wifely and motherly at
+once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;John,&#34; Tony continued, speaking of his youngest brother who has only
+two children, &#34;John du say as a man what's got seven or eight childern
+be better off than a man what's got on'y two, like he, 'cause he don't
+spend so much on 'em. 'Tis rot, I say! Certainly, he du spend so much
+on each o' his as us du on two o' ours p'raps; but I reckon a hundred
+pounds has to be wrenched an' hauled out o' these yer ol' rheumaticy
+arms o' mine for each child as us rears up.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yes&#8212;'t has&#8212;gude that,&#34; said Mrs Widger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Tisn' that I don' du it willingly. I be willing enough. But it du
+maake a man du more'n he'd hae to du otherwise, an' it wears 'en out
+afore his time. Tony's an ol' man now, almost, after the rate, though
+he bain't but forty or thereabout, an' s'pose us has six or a dozen
+more come along, Annie....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Gude Lord! 'Twon't be so bad as that, for sure. An' if 'tis, can't be
+helped. Us must make shift wi' 'em.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then they went on to talk about their wedding. Best remembered,
+apparently, are the <i>hot</i> wedding breakfast (an innovation then in
+these parts), the Honiton lace that Mrs Widger's mother made her, and
+the late arrival home from the village where they were married&#8212;a trick
+which procured them quietness, whilst depriving the people in the
+Square of an excitement they had stayed up half the night to witness.
+&#34;When us come'd home, 'twas all so dark and quiet as a dead plaace, an'
+the chil'ern asleep upstairs, an' all,&#34; said Tony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yes, 'twer,&#34; Mrs Widger broke in, her eyes brightening at the
+recollection of the successful trick. &#34;But 'twer queer, like, wi' the
+childern asleep upstairs what wer to be mine, an' wasn't. I did wonder
+to meself what I wer starting on. Howsbe-ever I wer fair maazed all
+thic day. <i>I</i> wasn' ready when Tony drove out to where us lived,
+not I.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No-o-o! Her had her sleeves tucked up like 's if her 'adn't finished
+her housework. Her wern't dressed nor nothin' to ree-ceive me.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I didn' know what I wer doing all thic day.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>LOVE-PLAY</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;An' the parson, <i>I</i> had to pay for he, an' he give'd the money
+back to she 'cause her wer a nice li'I thing&#8212;bit skinny though. 'Twer
+a maazed muddle like. <i>I</i> ought to ha' had thic money be rights.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out! But I did the ol' parson up here. Us didn' hae no banns put up
+to Seacombe. I told the clergyman to our home that Tony'd been livin'
+there dree days, or dree weeks, or whatever 'twas, an' <i>he</i> didn'
+know no better. 'Twon't be the first lie I've told, says I to meself
+n'eet [nor yet] the last. I saved thee thic money, Tony.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Ah, yu'm a saving dear, ben' 'ee. Spends all my money.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well for yu! I should like to know what yu'd do wi' it if yu hadn't
+had me to lay it out for 'ee.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony did not wish to question that. The recollection of the wedding had
+put him in high spirits. He got up from his second supper (so long as
+food remains on the table he takes successive meals with intervals for
+conversation between them), and pirouetted round the table singing,
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>&#34;Sweet Ev-eli-na, sweet Ev-eli-na!</p>
+<p>My lo-ove for yu-u</p>
+<p>Shall nev-ver, never die....&#34;</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+He dragged Mrs Widger out of her chair, whisked her across the room.
+&#34;There!&#34; he said, setting her down flop. &#34;'En't her a perty li'I dear!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once again, after another little supper, he got up and held Mrs Widger
+firmly by the chin, she kicking out at his shins the while. &#34;Did 'ee
+ever see the like o'it? Eh? Fancy ol' Tony marryin' thic! Wouldn' 'ee
+like a kiss o'it? I du dearly. Don' I, Missis?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out!&#34; says Mrs Widger, speaking furiously, but smiling affectionately.
+&#34;G'out, you fule! Yu'm mazed!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony returned to his third supper quite seriously, only remarking: &#34;I
+daresay yu thinks Tony a funny ol' fule, don' 'ee?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>BIRTH IN THE SQUARE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That, I did not. Indeed, I begin to think them peculiarly wise. There
+is the spontaneity of animals about their play, and a good deal of the
+unembarassed movements of animals&#8212;with something very human
+superadded. One reads often enough about the love-light in the eyes of
+lovers, and sometimes one catches sight of it. Either frank ridicule,
+or else great reverence, is the mood for witnessing so delicate and
+strong, so racial a thing. Yet this love-light, seen in the eyes of a
+man and wife who have been married ten years, and have settled down
+long ago to the humdrum of married life, seems to me a far finer
+manifestation of the hither mysteries, a far greater triumph. What
+freshness, what perpetual rejuvenation they must possess! The more one
+regards such a thing, the more magnificent and far-reaching it appears.
+No philosophical bulwark against trouble can compare with it. Such love
+ceases to be a matter for novels and selected moments and certain lusty
+ages; ceases to be exceptional. It is the greatest of those very great
+things, the commonplaces. Tony tells me that when he comes in at night,
+cold from fishing, Mrs Widger always turns over to the other side of
+the bed, leaving him a warm place to creep into. Mrs Widger says that
+no matter what time Tony comes in or gets up, he never fails to make,
+and take her up, a cup o' tay. So does their love direct the prosaic
+details of living in one house together. I do not think I am wrong in
+fancying that it percolates right down through the household, and even
+contributes to the restfulness I feel here, spite of unorderly children
+and the strident voices. &#34;Yu dang'd ol' fule!&#34; can mean so much. Here
+it appears to be an expression of almost limitless confidence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger has put me this time into the front bedroom, which overlooks
+the Square and has, through the Gut, a narrow view of the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony's sister, who lives almost next door, is giving birth to a child
+this evening. I can see the light in her window&#8212;a brighter light than
+usual,&#8212;and the shadows passing across the yellow blind. Many other
+eyes are turned towards the window. There is a subdued chatter in the
+Square.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+3
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little did I foresee what sleeping in the front bedroom means. Tony's
+sister gave birth to a boy about ten o'clock. On hearing that
+everything was as it should be, I went to bed, but, alack! not to
+sleep. For the subdued chatter grew into an uproar which continued till
+fully midnight. All the women in the neighbourhood seemed to have come
+this way; and they meg-megged, and they laughed, and when their
+children awoke they shouted up at the windows from outside. I heard
+snatches of childbearing adventures, astonishing yarns, interspersed
+with hard commonsense, not to say cynicism&#8212;the cynicism of people who
+cannot afford to embroider much the bare facts of existence or to turn
+their attention far from the necessities of life. &#34;Her'll be weak,&#34; one
+woman said, &#34;an' for a long time&#8212;never so strong as her was before.
+'Tis always worse after each one you has, 'cepting the first, which is
+worst of all, I say. But there, her must take it as it comes....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sundry other bits of good practical philosophy I perforce listened to;
+and at last, when everybody had turned in (I imagined their pleasant
+lightheadedness as they snuggled under the bedclothes in the stuffy
+cottage rooms&#8212;the witticisms and echoes of laughter that were running
+through their heads); when, I say, everybody had turned in, an offended
+dog in the hotel yard began to howl.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If it were not that the window of the back bedroom is over the
+scullery, the ash-heap and the main drain, I would ask to move back
+there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Under Town a birth makes the stir that is due to such a stupendous
+event.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+4
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE KITCHEN</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Widger's kitchen is an extraordinary room&#8212;fit shrine for that
+household symbol, the big enamelled tin teapot. At the NW. corner is
+the door to the scullery and to the small walled-in garden which
+contains&#8212;in order of importance&#8212;flotsam and jetsam for firewood, old
+masts, spars and rudders, and some weedy, grub-eaten vegetables. At the
+top of the garden is a tumble-down cat-haunted linhay, crammed to its
+leaky roof with fishing gear. No doubt it is the presence everywhere of
+boat and fishing gear which gives such a singular unity to the whole
+place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The kitchen is not a very light room: its low small-paned window is in
+the N. wall. Then, going round the room, the courting chair stands in
+the NE. corner, below some shelves laden with fancy china and
+souvenirs&#8212;and tackle. The kitchener, which opens out into quite a
+comforting fireplace, is let into the E. wall, and close beside it is
+the provision cupboard, so situated that the cockroaches, having ample
+food and warmth, shall wax fat and multiply. Next, behind a low dirty
+door in the S. wall, is the coalhole, then the high dresser, and then
+the door to the narrow front passage, beneath the ceiling of which are
+lodged masts, spars and sails. The W. wall of the kitchen is decorated
+with Tony's Oddfellow 'cistificate,' with old almanacs and with a
+number of small pictures, all more or less askew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is an abundance of chairs, most of them with an old cushion on
+the seat, all of them more or less broken by the children's racket.
+Over the pictures on the warm W. wall&#8212;against which, on the other
+side, the neighbour's kitchener stands&#8212;is a line of clean
+underclothing, hung there to air. The dresser is littered with fishing
+lines as well as with dry provisions and its proper complement of odd
+pieces of china. Beneath the table and each of the larger chairs are
+boots and slippers in various stages of polish or decay. Every jug not
+in daily use, every pot and vase, and half the many drawers, contain
+lines, copper nails, sail-thimbles and needles, spare blocks and
+pulleys, rope ends and twine. But most characteristic of the kitchen
+(the household teapot excepted) are the navy-blue garments and jerseys,
+drying along the line and flung over chairs, together with innumerable
+photographs of Tony and all his kin, the greater number of them in
+seafaring rig.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Specially do I like the bluejacket photographs; magnificent men, some
+of them, though one strong fellow looks more than comical, seated amid
+the photographer's rustic properties with a wreath of artificial fern
+leaves around him and a broadly smiling Jolly-Jack-Tar face protruding
+from the foliage. Some battleships, pitching and tossing in fearful
+photographers' gales<a href="#note3" name="noteref3"><sup>3</sup></a> and one or two framed memorial cards complete
+the kitchen picture gallery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a place of many smells which, however, form a not disagreeable
+blend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An untidy room&#8212;yes. An undignified room&#8212;no. Kitchen; scullery (the
+scullery proper is cramped and its damp floor bad for the feet); eating
+room; sitting room; reception room; storeroom; treasure-house; and at
+times a wash-house,&#8212;it is an epitome of the household's activities and
+a reflexion of the family's world-wide seafaring. Devonshire is the sea
+county&#8212;at every port the Devonian dialect. It is probably the pictures
+and reminders of the broad world which, by contrast, make Mrs Tony's
+kitchen so very homely.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+5
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A DUTCH AUCTION</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Almost every evening, just now, Mrs Widger goes off to a Dutch auction
+of hardware and trinkets at the Market House. She usually brings home
+some small purchase, worth about half the money she has paid; but if
+she were to go to an entertainment at the Seacombe Hall she would be
+not nearly so well amused as by the auctioneer and the other
+housewives, and at the end of the evening she would have nothing
+whatever to show for her money. Besides, the children would never go
+off to bed quietly if they imagined that she was going to a real
+entertainment. As she did not return very early last night, Tony and I
+got our own supper&#8212;bread, cheese, a great deal of Worcester sauce, and
+a pint of mother-in-law [stout and bitter] from the Alexandra. Then we
+drew up to the fire and smoked. John, healthy and powerful fellow, had
+been arguing in the daytime on the beach, that if a youth cannot do a
+man's work at seventeen, he never will. Tony disagreed. Twenty-five to
+thirty-five, he says, is a man's prime for strength and endurance
+together. Nevertheless, he is sure that he often did more than a man's
+work long before he was seventeen, which led him to talk about his
+boyhood, when Granfer and Gran Widger had frequently not enough food in
+the house for their many children to eat. &#34;Us had to rough it when I
+wer a boy, I can tell 'ee,&#34; says Tony. &#34;'Twer often bread an' a scraape
+o' fat an' <i>Get 'long out o'it</i>!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>TONY'S DUTIES</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At nine years old, Tony was put with old Cloade, the grocer, now dead;
+and by the time he was twelve, he was earning four shillings a week,
+not a penny of which he ever saw or had as 'spending money'; for his
+mother used to go to the shop every Saturday night and lay out all poor
+Tony's wages in groceries. The only pocket-money he ever received was a
+copper or two 'thrown back' from what he could earn by going to sea for
+mackerel early enough to return to work by half-past six in the
+morning. Besides running errands, he had to clean boots and knives and
+to scrub out and tidy up the bar, which in those days was attached to
+every Devon grocery. Then he could go home to breakfast. And if old
+Cloade was going up on land, shooting, Tony had to get up and wake him
+at half-past three and to cork bottles or something of that sort before
+the master started out for his day's sport. And again, if Tony had
+fallen foul of any of the shop assistants during the day, had cheeked
+them perhaps, or stayed overlong at meals, then, waiting till closing
+time at eight or nine in the evening, they would send him a couple of
+miles inland, to the top of the hills, with a late parcel of groceries.
+His possible working day was from 3.30 a.m. to 10.0 p.m.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The chief part of his work, when he was not cleaning up or running
+errands, was the sorting of fruit and the cracking of sugar. Every nail
+of his fingers has come off more than once on account of the damage
+done them by the sugar-cracker. Better than any national event, he
+recollects the introduction of cube sugar. &#34;When they tubs o'
+ready-cracked sugar fust come'd down to Seacombe, 'twer thought a gert
+thing&#8212;an' so 'twas.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nearly every year an attack of (sub-acute?) rheumatic fever gave him a
+painful holiday, during which he crawled about the crowded cottage at
+home on his hands and knees. The one advantage of his irregularly long
+hours was that, if work were slack, he could linger over his meals. It
+was the assistants who kept a sharp eye on his movements. Them he
+hated&#8212;and cheeked. &#34;The more I done, the worse they treated me. An' as
+I grow'd up an' did often enough more'n a man's work, so I got to know
+it. One day I stayed home more'n an hour to breakfast, an' one on 'em
+asted me wer I'd a-been, an' I said as I'd had me half-hour to
+breakfast, an' he said as I'd had an hour an' a half, an' I told 'en
+'twern't no business o' his an' dared 'en to so much as touch me or I'd
+knock his head in, which I could easily ha' done&#8212;an' there wer the
+master standin' by! 'Fore I knowed, he gie'd me one under one yer wi'
+one hand, an' one under t'other yer wi' t'other hand; knocked me half
+silly; an' said if he had any more o' my chake he'd send me going
+thereupon. 'Iss, I said, 'an I <i>will</i> go, an' if I can't pick up a
+livin' on the baych wi' fishin' (I 'adn't no boats then, n'eet for
+years a'ter), an' if I couldn't pick up a livin' wi' fishin', I'd go to
+sea. An' I took an' lef the shop, an' went wi'out me pay due nor nort
+further about it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well, I should think as I stayed away two or dree days, saying as, if
+I couldn' live <i>by</i> the sea, I'd go off <i>tu</i> sea. By'm-by,
+ol' Mr Cloade&#8212;I could al'ys get on all right wi' he hisself&#8212;'twer
+they assistants.... Mr Cloade come'd down to baych an' said as he'd
+rise me wages be two shillings, from four shillings to six a week. So I
+went back. But 'twern't for long, for I wer turned seventeen then, an'
+strong, an' I knowed that six shillin's a week, every penny o' which
+mother laid out in groceries&#8212;p'raps givin' me dreepence for meself
+latterly&#8212;that wern't no wage for me doing more'n a man's work, early
+an' laate, at everybody's beck an' call. 'Twern't vitty.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>BRUISED ORANGES AND BRUISES</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;It come'd soon a'ter.... I wer sorting oranges, an' one o' the
+assistants called like they al'ays did: 'Widger, Widger! <i>Widger!</i>
+Yer, Widger!' 'Twer al'ays, 'Widger! Widger!' in thic show&#8212;blarsted
+row! 'I wants 'ee to take thees yer parcel to Mr Brindley-Botton's
+(what used to live to Southview House) in time for lunch. Hurry up!'&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony, in short, put a couple of the bruised oranges into his pocket,
+ran off, and delivered his parcel at Southview House. On the way back,
+he ate one of the oranges and, boyishly, threw the peel about outside
+Mr Brindley-Botton's side gate. He heard someone shouting to him
+and&#8212;but without turning his head&#8212;he shouted &#34;Hell about it!&#34; airily
+back. Then, as it was the dinner hour, he loitered on the Green Patch
+to play marbles with some other lads, and to share the second bruised
+orange. On returning to Cloade's:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Whu did I see but Mr Brindley-Botton's coachman wi' a little packet in
+white paper. 'Twas thic orange peel, all neatly done up, an' a li'I
+note saying as I'd a-been cheeky to him, which I hadn't, not knowingly.
+Mr Cloade, he called me into his little office, asted me what I'd been
+doing, where I went, an' where I got the oranges.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Bought 'em,' says I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Twas a lie, an' I hadn't no need for to tell it, seeing I was al'ays
+free to take a bruised orange or two when I wer sorting of 'em. On'y I
+wer frightened. 'Where did you get them?' he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Up to Mrs Ashford's for a penny,' says I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Did you?'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Yes, sir,' says I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Are you telling me a lie? I can find out, mind.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'No, sir,' I said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Be you sure you ain't telling of a lie?'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Then I broked down, an' I said they was bruised ones what I'd a-took.
+Father, he wer working to Mr Cloade's then, fishing being bad, an' the
+master called he. <i>He</i> walloped me&#8212;walloped me with a rope's end.
+An' I swore as I'd never go back no more, an' I didn't. Every time
+Father tried to make me, I up an' said as I'd go to sea.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>OUT DRIFTING ALL NIGHT</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Ay! for all I'm a man now, I 'ouldn't like to work like I did
+then&#8212;more'n a man's work an' less'n a boy's pay, an' hardly a penny
+for meself. I tells John <i>he</i> don't know what 'tis to work like I
+did then. <i>I</i>'ouldn't du it no more.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, with his father's boat, Tony did work far harder&#8212;hooking mackerel
+at dawn, in with a catch and out to sea again, or up on land hawking
+them round; out drifting all night; crabbing, lobster-potting,
+shrimping,<a href="#note4" name="noteref4"><sup>4</sup></a> wrinkling,<a href="#note5" name="noteref5"><sup>5</sup></a> or taking out frights,<a href="#note6" name="noteref6"><sup>6</sup></a> wet and dry,
+rough and calm, day and night. &#34;Aye, an' I be suffering from it now.
+Thees yer bellyache what thins me every summer an' wears a fellow out,
+don't come from nothing but tearing about then. I wer al'ays on the
+tear, day an' night, in from sea to meals an' out again 'fore I'd had
+time to bolt down two mouthfuls. Often I wer so tired that Father'd hae
+to call me a dozen times afore I cude wake up, an' then I'd cry,
+<i>cry</i>, if I wer ten minutes laate to work&#8212;when I had summut to du
+on land, that was. Half the day I wer more asleep than awake, wi' bein'
+out fishing all night. But I didn' let 'em see it. Not I! Rather'n
+that, I'd go up to the closet an' catch off there for five minutes,
+before they shude see I wern't fit to du me work. An' I never had nort
+o' me own for years, for all I done. Whether I earned two pound, or
+thirty shillings, or nothing at all, I never had so much as a penny for
+pocket-money, to call me own. I had to take it all in house&#8212;aye! an'
+tips too, when I got 'em. Father, he wern't doing much then, an' ther
+were seven younger'n me. That's where my earnings went. An' me, as did
+the work, was wearing Mother's boots an' Father's jacket.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Tony was indisputably grown up, one half of what he earned went,
+according to custom, to the boat-owner, in this case his father,
+frequently had be thu to pay for repairs and new gear. That went on for
+years after he was married&#8212;'hauling an' rowing an' slaving an' pulling
+me guts out wi't!'&#8212;until, in fact, the present Mrs Widger insisted on
+his buying boats of his own.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE DEAD NOT WHOLLY SO</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Our talk shifted to Tony's first wife, who died (and Tony almost died
+too) as the result of the landlord's taking up the drains, and leaving
+them open, in the height of a hot summer. Tony told me about her people
+and her native place, a fishing village along the coast. He showed me
+photographs of her, and a framed, pathetically ugly, imitation cameo
+memorial, which is getting very dirty now. I knew he loved her very
+much. He nearly went out of his mind when she died, leaving him with
+four young children. The untidy little kitchen, with its bright fire,
+its deep shadows and its white clothes hung along the line; Tony's
+drooping figure, bent over the hearth in an old blue guernsey: the
+contrasting redness of his face, and the beam of light from a cracked
+lamp-shade falling across his wet, memory-stuck blue eyes.... The
+kitchen seemed full of the presence of the long-dead woman whom Tony
+was still grieving for in some underpart of his mind. &#34;Iss, her was a
+nice woman,&#34; he said, &#34;a gude wife to me; a gude wife: I hadn't no
+complaint to make against she.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The one shabby sentence hit into me all his sorrow, that which remains
+and that which has sunk into time.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+The Mrs Widger that is, returned from the Dutch auction with an
+elaborate badly-plated cruet. &#34;Al'ays using up my saxpinces what I has
+to slave for,&#34; said Tony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out! 'Tis jest what us wants.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;You won't never use it.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;We'll hae it out on thy birthday&#8212;there! Will that zatisfy thee?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Not afore then? I wer born at the end o' the year, an' that's why I
+al'ays gets lef' behind.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Not a day before thy birthday! What'll yu be saying if I buys sauces
+to put in all they bottles?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Cut glass, is it?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No! What d'yu think?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What a woman 'tis! Gie yer Tony a kiss then.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out yu fule!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wise fool took a kiss. We had a second supper and hot grog. We were
+merry. But when I said <i>Good night</i>, I saw in Tony's eyes a
+recognition that I had understood (so he felt, I think) some part of
+what he seldom, if ever, brings up now to talk about.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only a yarn about a man's first wife.... If so, why did I go to bed
+feeling I had been privileged beyond the ordinary? Wives die every day;
+worn out, most of them. There came into my mind's eye with these
+thoughts a picture of the open sea; yet hardly a picture, for I was
+there in the midst of it. On the waves and low-lying clouds, and
+through the murk, was the glimmer of a light which, I felt, would make
+everything plain, did it but increase. For a moment it flickered
+up&#8212;and there, over the stormy sea, I saw death as a kindly illusion. I
+do not understand the wherefore of my little vision, nor why it made my
+heart give one curious great thump....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A cats' courtship beneath my window broke it off.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+6
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE &#34;MOONDAISY&#34;</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five or six years ago, when I was ill and left Seacombe, as I thought,
+for good, I did not relish selling the <i>Moondaisy</i>. I was too fond
+of her. So I gave her to the two men who had asked for the first and
+second refusals of her, and neither of whom possessed a small sailing
+boat. But I reckoned without those superficial beach jealousies which
+overlie the essential solidarity of the fishermen. Neither man used her
+much. Neither man looked after her. She was a bone of contention that
+each feared to gnaw. While the poor little craft lay on the beach, or
+in the gutter above the sea-wall, the mice ate holes into her old sail
+and her gear was distributed half-way over Under Town.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Granfer, however, had in his cottage an old dinghy sail that fits the
+<i>Moondaisy</i>. Her yard and boom were in his linhay, the sheet and
+downhaul in Tony's. One oar, the tholepins, and the ballast bags have
+not yet been found. I bent on the sail, spliced the sheet to the boom;
+borrowed tholepins from Uncle Jake,<a href="#note7" name="noteref7"><sup>7</sup></a> ballast bags and a mackerel line
+with a very rusty hook from Tony, an oar from John&#8212;and, at last, put
+to sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wind&#8212;westerly, off land&#8212;was too puffy for making the sheet fast.
+I held it with one hand and tried to fish with the other. In order not
+to stop the way of the boat and risk losing the lead on the sea-bottom,
+I wore her round to lew'ard, instead of tacking to wind'ard. A squall
+came down, the sail gybed quickly, and the boom slewed over with a
+jerk, just grazing the top of my head. Had that boom been a couple of
+inches lower, or my head an inch or two higher.... I should have been
+prevented from sailing the <i>Moondaisy</i> home, pending recovery from
+a bashed skull. Everything aboard that was loose, myself included,
+scuttled down to lew'ard with a horrid rattle. A malicious little gush
+of clear green water, just flecked with foam, spurted in over the gun'l
+amidships. I wondered whether I could have swum far with a cracked
+skull: the <i>Moondaisy</i>'s iron drop-keel would have sunk her, of
+course. Why I was fool enough to wear the boat round so carelessly, I
+don't know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Anyhow, I wound up the mackerel line; my catch, nil. Such an occurrence
+makes one very respectful towards the fisherman who singlehanded can
+sail his boat and manage five mackerel lines at once&#8212;one on the thwart
+to lew'ard and one to wind'ard; a bobber on the mizzen halyard and two
+bobbers on poles projecting from the boat. He must keep his hands on
+five lines, the tiller and the sheet; his eyes on the boat's course,
+the sea, the weather and the luff of the sail. Probably I know rather
+more of the theory of sailing than he does; but, when a squall blackens
+the sea to wind'ard, whilst I am thinking whether to run into the wind
+or ease off the sheet; whilst by doing neither or both, I very nearly
+capsize, or else stop the boat's way and lose my mackerel leads on the
+bottom&#8212;he, almost without thinking, does precisely what is needful,
+and another mackerel is hooked long before I should have brought the
+boat up into the wind again.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>FISHERMEN'S SKILL</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The greatest charm of sailing lies in this: that it is the art of
+making a boat move by dodging, by taking advantage of, a score of
+possible dangers. Except when running before the wind, it is the
+capsizing-power of the wind which propels the boat. The fisherman is an
+artist none the less because his skill seems partly inborn; because he
+sails his boat airily and carelessly, yet grimly&#8212;for life and the
+bread and cheese of it. The 'poor fisherman' for whom appeals to
+charity are made, as if he were a hardworking, chance-fed, picturesque
+but ignorant and helpless creature, is more than a trader, more than a
+skilled labourer in a factory. To a peculiar extent he sells himself as
+well as his skill and his goods. He lives contingently on his own life.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+7
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All that day the wind out in the Channel was blowing fresh from the
+sou'west, as we could see by the blackness of the horizon and the
+saw-edged sea-line beyond the outer headlands. During the afternoon, a
+ground-sea crept into the bay, silently rolling in like an unbidden
+unannounced guest who will not name his business. And when, at the turn
+of the tide, the breeze in-shore also backed to the sou'west, a busy
+lop was superposed on the long heaving swell.<a href="#note8" name="noteref8"><sup>8</sup></a> About half-past seven,
+the Widgers were gathered together near their boats.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What time be it high tide?&#34; asked Granfer. &#34;'Bout ten, en' it?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Had us better haul the boats up over?&#34; said Tony. &#34;Tides be dead, en't
+they?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No-o-o,&#34; replied Uncle Jake. &#34;They 'en making.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Tis goin' to blow, I tell 'ee,&#34; said Granfer. &#34;See how brassy the
+sun's going down. Swell coming in too. Boats up be boats safe.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Hould yer bloody row,&#34; said John. &#34;What be talking 'bout? Plenty o'
+time to haul up if the sea makes.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;All very well for yu,&#34; Tony protested, &#34;living right up to Saltmeadow.
+If the sea urns up to the boats in the night yu won't be down to lend a
+hand, no, not wi' yer own boats. 'Tis us as lives to the beach what has
+to strain ourselves to bits hauling your boats up over so well as our
+own.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Let 'em bide, then!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Looks dirty, I say,&#34; said Granfer. &#34;Might jest so well haul up as bide
+here talking about it. <i>I</i> shan't sleep till I knows the boats be
+all right.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Thee't better lie awake then. An't got no patience wi' making such a
+buzz afore you wants tu.&#34; With that, John shouldered his coat and
+strode homewards.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>JOHN WIDGER</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rest of us pulled the boats up, John's included, till their stems
+touched the sea-wall, and we placed the two sailing boats, John's and
+Tony's, close beside the steps, handy for hauling up over if need
+should be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony and Granfer went in house. Uncle Jake watched them go with an
+ironical smile on his wrinkled old face. &#34;Don't like the looks o' this
+yer lop on a ground-swell,&#34; he said. &#34;There! Did 'ee see how thic sea
+licked the baych? Let one o' they lift yer boat.... My zenses! 'Tis all
+up wi' it, an' I should pick it up in bits, up 'long, for
+firewood.&#8212;Well, John's gone home along....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+John is the youngest, handsomest and most powerfully built of the
+Widgers; the most independent, most brutal-tongued and most logical,
+though not, I fancy, the most perceptive. The inborn toughness, the
+family tendency to health and strength, which made fine men of the
+elder Widgers in spite of their youthful exposure and privations, has,
+in the case of John who underwent fewer hardships, resulted in the
+development, unimpeded, of a wonderful physique. &#34;Never heard o' John
+being tired,&#34; says Uncle Jake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Premature toil did not bend him; what he is the others had it in them
+to be, and by their labour helped to make him. Because his spirit has
+never been so buffeted, let alone broken, by hard times, he is also the
+most self-reliant. And like the majority of lucky men, he takes fate's
+forbearance as his due and adds it to his own credit. Fair-haired,
+blue-eyed, his clean-shaven face deeply and clearly coloured; a
+combination of the Saxon bulldog type with the seafaring man's
+alertness; his heavy yet lissome frame admirably half-revealed by the
+simplicity of navy-blue guernsey and trousers,&#8212;it is one of the sights
+of Seacombe to see him walk the length of the Front with his two small
+boys. He lacks, however, the gift of expressing himself, except when he
+is angry&#8212;and then in a torrent of thrashing words. He communicates his
+good-will by smiling all over his face with a tinge of mockery in his
+eyes and the bend of his long neck; whether mockery at oneself or at
+things in general is not evident. (It is mainly, I think, by smiling at
+one another that we remain the very good friends we are.) In any
+discussion, his &#34;Do as yu'm minded then!&#34; is his signal for making
+others do as <i>he</i> is minded. The advantages possessed by
+him&#8212;health, strength, clear-headedness, and good looks&#8212;he knows how
+to use, and that without scruple. He is never hustled by man or
+circumstance; seldom gives himself away; and seldom acknowledges an
+obligation. What one might reasonably expect him to do in return for
+help or even payment, he carelessly, deliberately, leaves undone, and
+performs instead some particularly nice action when it is least of all
+anticipated. His opinion is respected less because it is known, than
+because it isn't known, and by playing in the outer world with a crack
+football team he adds to his prestige here. &#34;What du John say?&#34; is
+often asked when it doesn't matter even what John thinks. Without
+gratitude for it, unconsciously perhaps, he exacts from others a sort
+of homage, which is certainly not rendered without protest. &#34;There's
+more'n one real lady as John could ha' married if he'd a-been liked,&#34; I
+heard Granfer say over his beer one day. &#34;The way they used to get he
+to take 'em out bathing in a boat.... Put 'en under the starn-sheets, I
+s'pose&#8212;he-he-he-he-he! But they real ladies du tire o' gen'lemen
+sometimes. Some on 'em had rather have a strong fellow like John. He
+married out o' the likes o' us, as 'twas. Her what he married used to
+eat wi' the gen'leman's family what her come'd yer with; sort o'
+companion-nurse her was.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A NICE DISTINCTION</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once, when the <i>Moondaisy</i> was mine, John charged me sixpence for
+putting me ashore from the steamer, after he had been earning money
+with my boat that very same day. There is no meanness in his face, and
+I wondered who had taught him so to distinguish between the borrowing
+of a private boat and the use of a craft that was on the beach for
+hire&#8212;a perfectly sound distinction. Probably it was some
+commercial-minded lodger or beach-chatterer, from whom he picked up the
+opinion that nowadays, to get on, you must run with the hare and hunt
+with the hounds&#8212;a precept which he quotes with cynical gusto but
+carries out only so far as suits his feelings. He aims at being
+businesslike, but the businesslike side of his character is the more
+superficial. Pride will not allow him to boggle over bargains. &#34;Take
+it, or leave it,&#34; is his way. Most up-to-date in what he does do, he is
+no pioneer, and follows a lead grudgingly when innovations are in
+question. Most progressive outwardly, he is the most conservative at
+heart. A reader of his daily paper, he speaks the broadest Devon of
+them all; scrupulously groomed after the modern way, and a smoker of
+cigarettes (he was laughed out of a pipe I've heard say), he still
+wears the old-fashioned seaman's high-heeled shoes. Tobacco is his
+obvious, his humane, weakness. What his other weaknesses are, I don't
+know. He strikes one as master of his fate, never yet wrecked, nor
+contemplating it. Did such a misfortune occur ... who knows what would
+happen? He is now, in his youth, so full of strength.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+About ten o'clock, Tony, who was snoozing in the courting chair (Mrs
+Widger had gone on to bed) woke up with a &#34;How about they boats?&#34; I
+went out to look.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE HIGH TIDE WAVES</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sea was covered with that pallid darkness which comes over it when
+the moon is hidden behind low rain-clouds. Out of the darkness, the
+waves seemed to spring suddenly, without warning at one's very feet.
+Every now and then, when a swell and a lop came in together, their
+combined steady force and quick energy swept right up the beach,
+rattling the pebbles round the sterns of the boats. For the better part
+of an hour I waited. Then, after a sea had thrown some shingle right
+into a boat, I called Tony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Tis past high water, en' it?&#34; he said sleepily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Thee't better come out an' see for thyself!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He dragged himself up and out. &#34;'Tis al'ys like thees yer wi' the likes
+o' us. 'Tis a life o'it!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Aye,&#34; he said, &#34;the say's goin' down now sure 'nuff. Better git in
+house again. Raining is it?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;God! Look out!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sea lifted Tony's and John's sailing boats; was sweeping them down
+the beach. We rushed, one to each boat, and hung on. Another sea swept
+the pebbles from under our feet&#8212;it felt as if the solid earth were
+giving way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Those was the high tide waves,&#34; said Tony. &#34;If us hadn' a-come out
+both they boats 'ould ha' been losted. Yu've a-saved John his&#8212;all by
+chance. Aye! that's like 'tis wi' us, I tell thee. Yu never knows.&#8212;Be
+'ee going to bed now?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I stayed out a little while longer: the loss of boats means so much to
+men whose only capital they are. Just after Tony had gone in, the
+clouds parted and the moonlight burst with a sudden glory over the sea.
+In the moonglade, which reached from my feet to the far horizon, the
+waters heaved and curled, most silvery, as if they were alive. That was
+the wistful gentle sea from which, but a moment or two before, we had
+wrested back our property&#8212;that sea of little strivings within a large
+peace. I thought at the time that there was surely a God, and that as
+surely He was there. For which reason, I was glad, when I came in
+house, that Tony had gone on to bed.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+This morning John asked me: &#34;Whu's been moving my boat?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;The sea, last night.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Oh....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I'm going to make a salvage claim on your insurance company.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;H'm?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Happened to be out here and hung on, or else she'd have been swept
+down the beach.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Did you?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;That's it&#8212;while yu were snug.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Have 'ee got a cigarette on yu?&#8212;Match?&#8212;Thank yu.&#34;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+8
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>MRS PINN</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I came into the kitchen early last evening, there was an old woman
+sitting bolt upright in the courting chair. At least, I came to the
+conclusion that she really was old after a moment or two's
+watchfulness. Her flowered hat, her shape&#8212;though a little angular and
+stiff,&#8212;her gestures and her bright lively damson-coloured eyes were
+all youthful enough. But one could see that her inquiet hands, which
+were folded on her lap, had been worn by many a washing-day. Her skin,
+though wrinkled, was taut over the outstanding facial bones, as if the
+wrinkles might have opened out and have equalized the strain, had age
+not hardened them to brown cracks&#8212;and the tan of her complexion had
+old age's lack of clearness. As so often happens when the teeth remain
+good in spite of receding gums, her mouth was tightly stretched
+semicircular-wise around them, and the lips had become a long, very
+long, expressionless line, shaded into prominence, as in a drawing, by
+a multitude of lines up and down, from chin and nose;&#8212;a Simian jaw,
+remindful of the Descent of Man. All the accumulated hand-to-mouth
+wisdom of generations of peasantry seemed to lurk behind the old
+woman's quick eyes; to be defying one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was introduced to her&#8212;Mrs Pinn, Mrs Widger's mother. She was bound
+to shake my proffered hand; she did it, half rising, with a comic
+mixture of respect and defiance; then sat back in the courting chair as
+if to intimate, 'I knows how to keep meself to meself, I du!'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I went outdoors, leaving them to talk; helped Tony haul up the beach
+his lumpy fourteen-foot sailing boat, the <i>Cock Robin</i>, and
+returned with him to supper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Hullo, Gran Pinn!&#34; he roared. &#34;Yu here! Didn' know I'd got a new mate
+for hauling up, did 'ee? Have her got 'ee yer drop o' stout eet? Us
+two'll take 'ee home if yu drinks tu much.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Oh yu....&#34; screeched Mrs Pinn with facetious rage followed by a swift
+collapse into company manners again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Thees yer be my mother-in-law, sir.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Mr Whats-his-name knaws that, an' I knaws yu got he staying with
+'ee&#8212;there!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well then, gie us some supper then.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Pinn&#8212;'twas to be felt in the air&#8212;had been hearing all about me.
+Beside her glass of stout and ale, she looked a little less prim and
+defiant. But she was still on company manners. She sat delicately, on
+the extreme edge of a chair, by the side of, not facing, her plate of
+bread, cheese and pickles; approached them; mopped up, so to speak, a
+mouthful and a gulp; then receded into mere nodding propinquity. Her
+supper was a series of moppings-up. Me she kept much in her eye, and to
+my remarks ejaculated &#34;Aw, my dear soul!&#34; or &#34;Did yu ever?&#34; I said with
+feeble wit, in order to grease the conversation, that stout and bitter,
+being called <i>mother-in-law</i>, was just the thing for Mrs Pinn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Aw, my dear life!&#34; she exclaimed, taking a mouthy sip. &#34;What chake to
+be sure!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Mrs Widger who, with a glint of amusement in her eyes, came
+tactfully to my rescue.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>MY NIGHTCAP</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About ten o'clock, Mrs Widger took down two glasses and the sugar
+basin, and set the conical broad-bottomed kettle further over the fire.
+Mrs Pinn glanced at the top shelf of the dresser where my whiskey
+bottle stands. Her bright eyes kept on returning to that spot. I should
+have liked to ask Mrs Pinn to take a glass, but knew I could not afford
+to let it be noised abroad that 'there's a young gen'leman to Tony
+Widger's very free with his whiskey.' I dared not make a precedent I
+should have to break; the breaking of which would give more
+disappointment than its non-creation. Equally well, I knew that it was
+no use going to bed without something to make me sleep.... I told Tony
+I would go out and look at the weather.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yu must 'scuse me 'companying of 'ee 'cause I got me butes off. My
+veet <i>du</i> ache!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On my return, the bright eyes were still travelling to and fro, from
+bottle to glasses. I yawned, Tony yawned noisily, Mrs Widger
+capaciously. Mrs Pinn was herself infected. &#34;'Tis time I was home....
+Oh, Lor'!&#34; she yawned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went; and when I asked Tony to share my customary nightcap, it was
+with ill-hidden glee that he replied as usual: &#34;Had us better tu?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His native politeness prevented him from saying anything, however, and
+Mrs Widger showed not a sign of having observed the little victory, so
+meanly necessary, so galling in every stage to the victor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony declares that he will really and truly start mackerel hooking
+to-morrow morning&#8212;&#34;if 'tis vitty,&#34; and &#34;if the drifters an't catched
+nort,&#34; and &#34;if 'tis wuth it,&#34; and &#34;if he du.&#34;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+9
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A creaking and shaking in the timbers of the old house, very early this
+morning, must have half awakened me; then there was a muffled rap on my
+door. &#34;Be 'ee goin' to git up?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yes.... 'Course.... What time is it?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The only answer was a <i>pad-pad-pad</i> down the stairs. I looked out
+over the bedclothes. The window, a grey patch barred with darker grey,
+was like a dim chilly ghost gazing at me from the opposite wall. By the
+saltiness of the damp air which blew across the room and by the grind
+of the shingle outside, I could tell that the wind was off sea. The sea
+itself was almost invisible&#8212;a swaying mistiness through which the
+white-horses rose and peeped at one, as if to say, &#34;Come and share our
+frolic. Come and ride us.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>MACKEREL LINES</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony, sleepy and sheepish in the eyes, was pattering about the kitchen
+in his stockings (odd ones), his pants and his light check shirt. The
+fire was contrary. We scraped out ashes; poked in more wood and paper.
+Soon a gush of comfortable steam made the lid of the kettle dance. The
+big blue tin teapot was washed out, filled and set on the hob. The
+cupboards and front room were searched for cake. Tony went upstairs
+with a cup o' tay for the ol' doman and came down with a roll of
+biscuits. (Mrs Widger takes the biscuits to bed with her as maiden
+ladies take the plate basket, and for much the same reason.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Faint light was showing through the north window of the kitchen. &#34;Coom
+on!&#34; said Tony. &#34;Time we was to sea.&#34; He refilled the kettle, hunted
+out an old pair of trousers, rammed himself into a faded guernsey and
+picked up three mackerel lines<a href="#note9" name="noteref9"><sup>9</sup></a> from the dresser. He took some salted
+lasks from the brine-pot, blew out the lamp&#8212;and forth we went. After
+collecting together mast, sails and oars from where they were lying,
+strewn haphazard on the beach, we pushed and pulled the <i>Cock
+Robin</i> down to the water's edge, and filled up the ballast-bags with
+our hands, like irritable, hasty children playing at shingle-pies. &#34;A
+li'l bit farther down. Look out! Jump in. Get hold the oars,&#34; commanded
+Tony. With a cussword or two (the oars had a horrid disposition to jump
+the thole-pins) we shoved and rowed off, shipping not more than a
+couple of buckets of water over the stern.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>DAWN AT SEA</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony scrambled aboard over the starboard bow, his trousers and boots
+dripping. &#34;'Tis al'ays like that, putting off from thees yer damn'd ol'
+baych. No won'er us gits the rhuematics.&#34; He hung the rudder, loosed
+the mizzen. I stepped the mast, hoisted the jib and lug, and made fast
+halyards and sheets. Our undignified bobbing, our impatient wallowing
+on the water stopped short. The wind's life entered into the craft. She
+bowed graciously to the waves. With a motion compounded of air and
+water, wings and a heaving, as if she were airily suspended over the
+sea, the <i>Cock Robin</i> settled to her course. Spray skatted
+gleefully over her bows and the wavelets made a gurgling music along
+the clinker-built strakes of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony put out the lines: tangled two of them, got in a tear, as he calls
+it, snapped the sid, bit the rusty hook off, spat out a shred of old
+bait, brought the boat's head too far into the wind, cursed the
+flapping sail and cursed the tiller, grubbed in his pockets for a new
+hook, and made tiny knots with clumsy great fingers and his teeth.
+&#34;An't never got no gear like I used tu,&#34; he complained, and then,
+standing upright, with the tiller between his legs and a line in each
+outstretched hand, he unbuttoned his face and broke into the merriest
+of smiles. &#34;What du 'ee think o' Tony then, getting in a tear fust
+start out? Do 'ee think he's maazed&#8212;or obsolete? But we'll catch 'em
+if they'm yer. Yu ought to go 'long wi' Uncle Jake. He'd tell 'ee
+summut&#8212;and the fish tu if they wasn't biting proper!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By the time the lines were out, the dun sou'westerly clouds all around
+had raised themselves like a vast down-hanging fringe, a tremendous
+curtain, ragged with inconceivable delicacy at the foot, between which,
+and the water-line, the peep o' day stared blankly. The whitish light,
+which made the sea look deathly cold, was changed to a silvery sheen
+where the hidden cliffs stood. From immaterial shadows, looming over
+the surf-line, the cliffs themselves brightened to an insubstantial
+fabric, an airy vision, ruddily flushed; till, finally, ever becoming
+more earthy, they upreared themselves, high-ribbed and red, bush-crowned
+and splashed with green&#8212;our familiar, friendly cliffs, for each and
+every part of whom we have a name. The sun slid out from a parting of
+clouds in the east, warming the dour waves into playfulness.
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+'Twas all a wonder and a wild delight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As I looked at Tony, while he glanced around with eyes that were at
+once curiously alert and dreamy, I saw that, in spite of use and habit,
+in spite of his taking no particular notice of what the sea and sky
+were like, except so far as they affected the sailing of the boat,&#8212;the
+dawn was creeping into him. Many such dawns have crept into him. They
+are a part of himself.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A TENDERHEART BY NATURE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Look to your lew'ard line!&#34; he cried, &#34;they'm up for it!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hauled a mackerel aboard, and, catching hold of the shank of the
+hook, flicked the fish into the bottom of the boat with one and the
+same motion that flung the sid overboard again; and after it the lead.
+Wedging the mackerel's head between his knees, he bent its body to a
+curve, scraped off the scales near its tail, and cut a fresh lask from
+the living fish. He is a tenderheart by nature, but now: &#34;That'll hae
+'em!&#34; he crowed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mackerel bit hotly at our new baits.<a href="#note10" name="noteref10"><sup>10</sup></a> Before the lines were
+properly out, in they had to come again. Flop-flop went the fish on the
+bottom-boards as we jerked them carelessly off the hooks. Every moment
+or two one of them would dance up and flip its tail wildly; beat on the
+bottom-boards a tattoo which spattered us with scales; then sink back
+among the glistening mass that was fast losing its beauty of colour,
+its opalescent pinks and steely blues, even as it died and stiffened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suddenly the fish stopped biting, perhaps because the risen sun was
+shining down into the water. The wind dropped without warning, as
+southerly winds will do in the early morning, if they don't come on to
+blow a good deal harder. The <i>Cock Robin</i> wallowed again on the
+water. &#34;We'm done!&#34; said Tony. &#34;Let's get in out o'it in time for the
+early market. There ain't no other boats out. Thees yer ought to fetch
+'leven-pence the dizzen. We've made thees day gude in case nort else
+don't turn up.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While I rowed ashore, he struck sail, and threw the ballast overboard.
+Most pleasantly does that shingle ballast plop-rattle into the water
+when there is a catch of fish aboard. We ran in high upon a sea.
+Willing hands hauled the <i>Cock Robin</i> up the beach: we had fish to
+give away for help. The mackerel made elevenpence a dozen to Jemima
+Caley, the old squat fishwoman who wears a decayed sailor hat with a
+sprig of heather in it. &#34;Yu don' mean to say yu've a-catched all they
+lovely fish!&#34; she said with a rheumy twinkle, in the hope of getting
+them for tenpence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Levenpence a dozen, Jemima!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Aw well then, yu must let I pay 'ee when I sold 'em. An't got it now.
+Could ha' gived 'ee tenpence down.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With a mackerel stuck by the gills on the tip of each finger, I came in
+house. The children were being got ready for school. When I returned
+downstairs with some of the fishiness washed off, Mrs Widger was
+distributing the school bank-cards and Monday morning pennies. (By the
+time the children leave school, they will have saved thus, penny by
+penny, enough to provide them with a new rig-out for service&#8212;or Sunday
+wear.) There was a frizzling in the topsy-turvy little kitchen.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A DARING RASCAL</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Mam! Vish!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Mam! I wants some vish. Mam 'Idger....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yu shall hae some fish another time.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No-o-o!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Go on!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well, jam zide plaate then.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jimmy's finger was in the jampot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yu daring rascal!&#34; shrieks Mam Widger. &#34;Get 'long to school with 'ee!
+Yu'll be late an' I shall hae the 'spector round. Get 'long&#8212;and see
+what I'll hae for 'ee when yu comes back.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Coo'h! Bulls' eyes! Ay, mam? Good bye, Dad. Good bye, Mam. Bye, Mister
+Ronals. Gimme a penny will 'ee?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;God damn the child&#8212;that ever I should say it&#8212;get 'long! <i>I'll</i>
+hae a bull's eye for 'ee. Now go on.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tramp of feet went out through the passage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger shovelled the crisp mackerel from the frying-pan into our
+plates. Tony soused his with vinegar from an old whiskey bottle. We
+lingered over our tea till he said: &#34;Must go out an' clean they ther
+boats&#8212;the popples what they damn visitors' children chucks in for to
+amuse theirselves, not troubling to think us got to pick every one on
+'em out be hand, an' looking daggers at 'ee when you trys to tell 'em
+o'it so polite as yu can. Ay, me&#8212;our work be never done.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No more ain't mine!&#34; snapped Mrs Widger, moving off to her washtub.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+10
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the last two or three days there has been a large flat brown-paper
+parcel standing against the wall on the far side of my bed. I have
+wondered what it was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This evening, after we had all finished tea, while Tony was puffing
+gingerly at a cigarette (he is nothing of a smoker) with his chair
+tilted back and a stockinged foot in Mrs Widger's lap, Jimmy said, as
+Jimmy usually says: &#34;Gie us another caake, Mam 'Idger.&#34; He laid a very
+grubby hand on the cakelets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yu li'l devil!&#34; shouted his mother. &#34;Take yer hands off or I'll gie
+'ee such a one.... Yu'd eat an eat till yu busted, I believe; an yu'm
+that cawdy [finical] over what yu has gie'd 'ee....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony took up the poker and made a feint at Jimmy, who jumped into the
+corner laughing loudly. With an amazing contrast in tone, Mrs Widger
+said quietly: &#34;Wait a minute an' see what I got to show 'ee, if yu'm
+gude.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>ROSIE'S PHOTOGRAPH</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went upstairs with that peculiar tread of hers&#8212;as if the feet were
+very tired but the rest of the body invincibly energetic,&#8212;and returned
+with the flat parcel. She undid the string, the children watching with
+greedy curiosity. She placed on the best-lighted chair an enlargement
+of a baby's photograph, in a cheap frame, all complete. &#34;There!&#34; she
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What is ut?&#34; asked Tony. &#34;Why, 'tis li'l Rosie!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Wer did 'ee get 'en?&#34; he continued more softly. &#34;Yu an't had 'en
+give'd 'ee?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Give'd me? No! Thic cheap-jack.... But 'tisn' bad, is it?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What cheap-jack?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Why, thic man to the market-house&#8212;wer I got the cruet.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;O-oh! I didn' never see he.... What did 'ee pay 'en for thic then?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Never yu mind. 'Twasn't none o' yours what I paid. What do 'ee think
+o'it?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Tisn' bad&#8212;very nice,&#34; remarked Tony, bending before the picture,
+examining it in all lights. &#34;Iss; 'tisn' bad by no means. Come yer,
+Jimmy an' Tommy. Do 'ee know who that ther is?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Rosie!&#34; whispered Jimmy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What was took up to cementry,&#34; added Tommy in a brighter voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss, 'tis our li'l Rosie to the life (mustn' touch), jest like her
+was.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A moment's tension; then, &#34;A surprise for 'ee, en' it?&#34; Mrs Widger
+enquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;My ol' geyser!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The children's riot began again. &#34;Our Rosie....&#34; they were saying. Mam
+'Idger, slipping out of Tony's grasp, carried the picture off to the
+front room. She was sometime gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Wordsworth's <i>We are Seven</i> came into my mind:
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>&#34;But they are dead; those two are dead!</p>
+<p>Their spirits are in heaven!&#34;</p>
+<p class="i2">'Twas throwing words away; for still</p>
+<p class="i2">The little maid would have her will,</p>
+<p>And said, &#34;Nay, we are seven!&#34;</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+I knew, of course, intellectually, that the poem records more than a
+child's mere fancy; but never before have I felt its truth, have I been
+caught up, so to speak, into the atmosphere of the wise, simple souls
+who are able to rob death of the worst of its sting by refusing to let
+the dead die altogether, even on earth. Rosie is dead and buried. I
+perceive also&#8212;I perceived, while Tony and the children stood round
+that picture&#8212;that Rosie is still here, in this house, hallowing it a
+little. The one statement is as much a fact as the other; but how much
+more delicately intangible, and perhaps how much truer, the second.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+11
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>ROSIE'S DEATH</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While we waited for Tony to come in to supper, Mrs Widger told me about
+Rosie's death. &#34;It must be awful,&#34; she said, &#34;to lose a child fo them
+as an't got nor more. I know how I felt it when Rosie was took. Nothing
+would please me for months after but to go up to the cementry, to her
+little grave. 'Most every evening I walked up after tea&#8212;didn' feel as
+if I could go to bed an' sleep wi'out. Tony had to fend for hisself if
+he wanted his supper early. Ther wasn't no reason, but it did ease me,
+like, to go up there, an' it heartened me a little for next day's work.
+'Twas a sort o' habit, p'raps. What broke me of it was my bad illness.
+[When the twins, 'what nobody didn' know nort about,' were born.] At
+first, I used to think o' Rosie, when I were lyin' alone upstairs, most
+'specially at night time if Tony wer out to sea an' it come'd on to
+blow a bit. I used to think, if ort happened to Tony.... Our room to
+the top o' the house, sways when it do blow. I don't trouble me head
+about Tony when he's to sea ordinary times&#8212;expects 'en when I sees
+'en&#8212;but then I wer weak, like, an' full o' fancies. An' after I got
+about again I wer much too weak to go to cementry: I used to faint
+every time I come'd downstairs. Howsbe-ever, I did come down again, an'
+Tony used to go out and get me quinine wine and three-and-sixpenny port
+an' all sorts o' messes, to put me on me legs wi'out fainting. 'Twas
+thic illness as broke me o' going up to Rosie's grave.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;You walk up now on Sunday evenings....&#34; I hazarded, recollecting that
+then the children run wild for a couple of hours and come in tired and
+dirty to cry for their mam.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yes....&#34; said Mrs Widger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw that I had trespassed into one of the little solitary tracts of
+her life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;One day,&#34; she continued, backing the conversation with an imperfectly
+hidden effort, &#34;when Dr Bayliss come to see me, Tony was asleep in the
+next bed, snoring under the clothes after a night to sea. Dr Bayliss
+didn' say nort, 'cept he said: 'Your husband's a fisherman, isn't he,
+Mrs Widger?' But I saw his shoulders a-shaking as he went out the door,
+an' that evening he sent me a bottle o' port wine out o' his own
+cellar, an' it did me a power o' gude. Tony&#8212;he was that ashamed o'
+hisself, though I told 'en 'twasn't nothing for a doctor to see
+'en....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>FRANKNESS AND SMUT</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At that moment Tony returned. He really was ashamed of the doctor
+finding him in bed, whether as a breach of manners or of propriety was
+not plain. Possibly the latter. He has an acute sense of decency,
+though its rules and regulations are not the same as those of the
+people he calls gentry. Our conversation here would hardly suit a
+drawing-room. Tony, if he comes in wet, thinks nothing of stripping
+down to his shirt. But, curiously enough, one of his chief complaints
+about the people who hire boats, is their occasionally unclean
+conversation. &#34;The likes o' us 'ould never think of saying what they
+du. Me, I didn' know nort about half the things they say till I wer
+grow'd up an' learnt it from listening to the likes o' they. Yu'd hear
+bad language wi' us an' plain speaking, but never what some o' they
+talks about when they got no one to hear 'em 'cept us they hires, an'
+they thinks us don't matter.&#34; Tony is right, I believe. Most of the
+impropriety I used to hear at school, university, and in the smoking
+room, though often little but a reaction against silly conventions, a
+tilt against whited sepulchres,&#8212;was well-named <i>smut</i>. It was
+furtive, a distortion of life's facts and inimical therefore to life.
+Impropriety here, on the other hand, is a recognition of life's facts,
+an expression of life, a playful ebullition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony, when he came in, enquired of Mam 'Idger what she had done with
+the picture. &#34;Did Rosie die in the summer?&#34; I asked, remembering how
+the children will run out to the milkman with a dirty can unless a
+sharp eye is kept upon them, and how also the larder is fixed up over
+the main drain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Her died late in the autumn with convulsions from teething,&#34; Mrs
+Widger replied. &#34;An' her didn't ought to ha' died then but for Dr
+Brown. When her was took ill, proper bad, I sent one of the maidens for
+Dr Bayliss, but he was out to the country for they didn' know how long.
+So off I sends the maid to Dr Brown, an' he sends back a message as he
+cuden' attend Dr Bayliss's patients wi'out Dr Bayliss asked him.
+Certainly 'twas late; but my blood jest boiled, an' I took Rosie into
+Grannie's an' goes up myself. Rosie didn' belong to no doctor. Her'd
+never had one. Howsbe-ever, Dr Brown says to me the same as he'd told
+the maid, that he cuden' come. An' then he says, 'My good woman, I
+<i>won't</i> come!' Jest like that! My flare was up; I wer jest about
+to let fly my mind at 'en&#8212;an' I remembered Rosie lying in convulsions
+to Grannie's, an' flew out o' his house like a mad thing. Rosie wer all
+but dead. Her was gone when Dr Bayliss come'd next morning.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Aye!&#34; added Tony. &#34;That wer it. Some doctors be kind, an' some don't
+trouble nort about the likes o' us when they got visitors to run a'ter.
+I don' say they treats the likes o' us worse'n other people; I don'
+know: oftentimes they'm so kind as can be; but when they don't behave
+like they ought to, other people has the means to make 'em sorry for
+it, an' us an't. They knows that. Us can't do nort an' that's the way
+o'it. Rosie didn' never ought to ha' died.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No-o-o!&#34; said Mrs Widger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One can see the tigress in most women, in every mother, if one waits
+long enough. I saw it in Mrs Widger then. If she ever has the whip-hand
+of Dr Brown....
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+12
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This mackerel hooking, which is a two-man job though Tony could and
+would do it by himself were I not here, has most fortunately raised me
+out of the position of a mere lodger, a household excrescence,
+tolerated only for the sake of certain shillings a week. It has
+provided me with a niche of my own, which I occupy&#8212;at sea the mate on
+a mackerel hooker, on shore a loafer 'ready to lend a hand,' and in the
+house a sort of male Cinderella. It is far pleasanter, I find, to be a
+small wheel in the machine than to remain seated on a mound of pounds,
+shillings and pence&#8212;beflunkeyed, as if in a soulless hotel!
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE EARLY CUP O' TAY</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony cannot fill his spare time by reading: it makes his long-sighted
+eyes smart. On account of that, and of nights at sea, with rest taken
+when and where possible, he has developed an amazing talent for
+'putting it away'; that is, for sleeping. He can turn out perfectly
+well at any hour, if need be, but at ordinary times he is most content
+to follow somebody else's first. I on my part, sleeping indifferently
+well, wake usually before dawn, and greatly dislike waiting for an
+early cup o' tay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About half-past four I jump out of bed, creep downstairs and chop wood.
+That warms me. Then with a barbaric glee, I scrape out the ashes,
+sending clouds of dust over the guernseys and boots that have been set
+near the fire to dry. No matter; being light and fire-dry, it will
+brush off the one and shake out of the other. People who never light
+fires at dawn can have no idea of the exhilaration to be obtained from
+a well-laid, crackling, flaming fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony appears at the door, half-dressed, yawning and stretching his arms
+on high. &#34;Yu an't been an' made tay, have 'ee?&#34; he says with delighted
+certainty. The cups are filled. He takes up Mam 'Idger's cup and
+returns with the paper roll of 'Family Biscuits.' We forage for
+tit-bits, feed standing, yawn again, and go out to 'see what to make
+o'it.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unless the sea is broken by the wind, there is about it just before
+dawn a peculiar creeping clamminess. It seems but half awake, like
+ourselves. It has no welcome for us. &#34;Can't you wait,&#34; it seems to say,
+&#34;till I begin to sparkle?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony looks out over. &#34;Had us better tu?&#34; he asks with a shiver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Why not?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Shove her down then. There's macker out there!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By the time the sun is rising (it never rises twice the same) south of
+the easternmost headland, Tony has worked himself into a tear over
+self-tangling lines, and has been laughed out of it again. We are
+perhaps a mile or two out, and if the mackerel are biting well, we are
+hauling them in, swiftly, silently, grimly; banging them off the hook;
+going <i>Tsch!</i> if they fall back into the sea; cutting baits from
+fish not dead. If, however, they are not on the feed, we sing blatant
+or romantic or sentimental songs (it is all one out there), and laugh
+with a hearty sea-loudness. And if the mackerel will not bite at all we
+invent a score of reasons and blame a dozen people and things. But
+there we are&#8212;ourselves, the sea, and the heavenly dawn&#8212;the sea
+heaving up to us, and ourselves ever heaving higher, up and over the
+lop. It exalts us with it. We hardly need to talk. A straight look in
+the face, a smile.... We are in the more immediate presence of one
+another. Did we lie to each other with our tongues, the greater part of
+our communications would yet be truth.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE PRICE OF FISH</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We sail or row home, turn the mackerel out on the beach, count them
+back into the box, wash the blood off them, and stoop low, turning them
+over and over, whilst we haggle for our price. The other day, with the
+exuberance of the sea still upon me, I slapped old Jemima Caley's rusty
+shoulder and lo! she rose her price one penny.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Damme!&#34; she said, &#34;I'll gie 'ee ninepence a dozen if I has to go wi'
+out me dinner for't! They <i>be</i> fine fish.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;<i>Sweet</i> fish, Jemima!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Lor' bless 'ee, yes!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she hawked them at twopence-halfpenny or threepence a pair
+according to the customer. And now, her wry sly smile, peeping from
+underneath her battered hat-brim, meets me at every back-street corner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soap and water, the buzz of the children, their mother's loud voice,
+and mackerel for breakfast.... It is all quite prosaic and perfectly
+commonplace, it is far from idyllic; yet it would need the touch of a
+poet to bring out the wonder, the mystery, of it all: to light up the
+door of the soul-house through which we pass to and fro, scarce
+knowing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony comes in early to dinner after a morning's frighting. His object
+is to get an hour or so for sleep before the visitors come out from
+their later lunch. Mam 'Idger says we are lazy; that she 'don't gie way
+to it, she don't!' (She did a couple of days ago.) When the
+after-dinner tea is finished, Tony makes a start for 'up over!' Mrs
+Widger enquires if I have some writing to do&#8212;and asks also if I would
+like to be awakened before tea-time!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Never does sleep at night come so graciously as that afternoon snooze,
+while the sound of the sea and the busy noises of the square float
+gently in at the windows; float higher and higher; float right away.
+About half-past two, Tony goes down to take somebody out for a sail or
+to paint his boats. I frequently do not hear him.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+13
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Is there not more than one signification to the words &#34;And I, if I be
+lifted up, will draw all men unto Me?&#34; There are times when the mind is
+lifted up by a master-emotion, arising one hardly knows how, nor
+whither leading; a feeling that takes charge of one, as a big wave is
+said to take charge of a boat when it destroys steerageway; an emotion
+so powerful that it does but batten on all which might be expected to
+clash with it. These are the periods when day and night are enveloped
+in one large state of mind, and life ceases to be a collection of
+discrete, semi-related moods. These are the dawns of the soul, the
+spring seasons of the spirit. The world is created afresh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything, and nothing, is prosaic. 'Tis <i>all according</i>. But it
+is startling indeed how suddenly sometimes the earth takes on a new
+wonderfulness, and Saint Prosaic a new halo. What, to put it in the
+plainest manner possible, am I doing here? Merely fishing and sailing
+on the cheap (not so very cheaply); roughing it&#8212;pigging it, as one
+would say&#8212;with people who are not my people and do not live as I have
+been accustomed to do. Yet, as I know well <i>all</i> the time, this
+change from one prosaic life to another has brought about a revelation
+which, like great music, sanctifies things, makes one thankful, and in
+a sense very humble; incapable of fitting speech, incapable of silence.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+14
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>UNDER TOWN</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Astonishment at, and zest in, these Under Town lives; the discovery of
+so much beauty hitherto unsuspected and, indeed, not to be caught sight
+of without exceptional opportunity, sets one watching and waiting in
+order to find out the real difference of their minds from the minds of
+us who have been through the educational mill; also to find out where
+and how they have the advantage of us. For I can feel rather than see,
+here, the presence of a wisdom that I know nothing about, not even by
+hearsay, and that I suspect to be largely the traditional wisdom of the
+folk, gained from contact with hard fact, slowly accumulated and handed
+on through centuries&#8212;the wisdom from which education cuts us off,
+which education teaches us to pooh-pooh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such wisdom is difficult to grasp; very shy. My chance of observing it
+lies precisely in this: that I am neither a sky-pilot, nor a district
+visitor, nor a reformer, nor a philanthropist, nor any sort of
+'worker,' useful or impertinent; but simply a sponge to absorb and, so
+far as can be, an understander to sympathize. It is hard entirely to
+share another people's life, to give oneself up to it, to be received
+into it. They know intuitively (their intuitions are extraordinarily
+acute) that one is thinking more than one gives voice to; putting two
+and two together; which keeps alive a lingering involuntary distrust
+and a certain amount, however little, of ill-grounded respectfulness.
+(Respectfulness is less a tribute to real or fancied superiority, than
+an armour to defend the poor man's private life.) Besides which, these
+people are necessary to, or at least their intimacy is greatly desired
+by, myself, whereas their own life is complete and rounded without me.
+I am tangential merely. They owe me nothing; I owe them much. It is I
+who am the client, they the patrons.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>CLASS DISTINCTIONS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We are told often enough nowadays that capital fattens on labour,
+naturally, instinctively, without much sense of wrong-doing, and has so
+fattened since the days when Laban tried to overreach Jacob. What we
+are not so often told is that the poor man not less instinctively looks
+upon the gen'leman as legitimate sport. 'An 'orrible lie' between two
+poor people is fair play from a poor man to a wealthier, just as, for
+instance, the wealthy man considers himself at liberty to make speeches
+full of hypocritical untruth when he is seeking the suffrage of the
+free and independent electors or is trying to teach the poor man how to
+make himself more profitable to his employer. It is stupid, at present,
+to ignore the existence of class distinctions; though they do not
+perhaps operate over so large a segment of life as formerly, they still
+exist in ancient strength, notwithstanding the fashionable
+cant&#8212;lip-service only to democratic ideals&#8212;about the whole world kin.
+There is not one high wall, but two high walls between the classes and
+the masses, so-called, and that erected in self-defence by the
+exploited is the higher and more difficult to climb. On the one side is
+a disciplined, fortified Gibraltar, held by the gentry; then comes a
+singularly barren and unstable neutral zone; and on the other side is
+the vast chaotic mass. In Under Town, I notice, a gentleman is always
+<i>gen'leman</i>, a workman or tramp is <i>man</i>, but the fringers,
+the inhabitants of the neutral zone, are called <i>persons</i>. For
+example: &#34;That <i>man</i> what used to work for the council is driving
+about the <i>gen'leman</i> as stays with Mrs Smith&#8212;the <i>person</i>
+what used to keep the greengrocery shop to the top of High Street afore
+her took the lodging house on East Cliff.&#34; It is, in fact, strange how
+undemocratic the poor man is. (Not so strange when one realises that
+far from having everything to gain and nothing to lose by a levelling
+process, he has a deal to lose and his gains are problematical.) I am
+not sure that he doesn't prefer to regard the gen'leman as another
+species of animal. Jimmy and Tommy have a name of their own for the
+little rock-cakes their mother cooks. They call them
+<i>gentry-cakes</i> because such morsels are fitted for the&#8212;as Jimmy
+and Tommy imagine&#8212;smaller mouths of ladies and gentlemen. The other
+afternoon Mabel told me that a boat she had found belonged not to a boy
+but to a <i>gentry-boy</i>. Some time ago I begged Tony not to
+<i>sir</i> me; threatened to punch his head if he did. It discomforted
+me to be belaboured with a title of respect which I could not
+reasonably claim from him. Rather I should <i>sir</i> him, for he is
+older and at least my equal in character; he has begotten healthy
+children for his country and he works hard 'to raise 'em vitty.'
+Against my book-knowledge he can set a whole stock of information and
+experience more directly derived from and bearing upon life. I don't
+consider myself unfit to survive, but he is fitter, and up to the
+present has done more to justify his survival&#8212;which after all is the
+ultimate test of a man's position in the race. At all events, he did
+cease <i>sir-ing</i> me except on ceremonial occasions. At ordinary
+times the detested word is unheard, but it is still: &#34;Gude morning,
+sir!&#34; &#34;Gude night, sir!&#34; And sometimes: &#34;Your health, sir!&#34; At that the
+matter must rest, I suppose, though the <i>sir</i> is a symbol of class
+difference, and to do away with the symbol is to weaken the difference.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE WORD &#34;LIKE&#34;</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But at the same time, I am lucky enough to possess certain advantages.
+I have, for instance, managed to preserve the ability to speak dialect
+in spite of all the efforts of my pastors and masters to make me talk
+the stereotyped, comparatively inexpressive compromise which goes by
+the name of King's English. Tony is hard of hearing, catches the
+meaning of dialect far quicker than that of standard English, and I
+notice that the damn'd spot <i>sir</i> seldom blots our conversation
+when it is carried on in dialect. Finally there is the great problem of
+self-expression. There, at any rate, I am well to windward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cause of the uneducated man's use of the word <i>like</i> is
+interesting. He makes a statement, uses an adjective, and&#8212;especially
+if the statement relates to his own feelings or to something
+unfamiliar&#8212;he tacks on the word <i>like</i>, spoken in a peculiarly
+explanatory tone of voice. What does the word mean there? Is it merely
+a habit, a 'gyte,' as Tony would say? And why the word <i>like</i>?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When a poet wishes to utter thoughts that are too unformulated, that
+lie too deep, for words&#8212;
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Break, break, break,</p>
+<p class="i2">On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!</p>
+<p>And I would that my tongue could utter</p>
+<p class="i2">The thoughts that arise in me&#8212;</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+he has recourse to simile and metaphor. Take, for example, the
+transience of human life, a subject on which at times we most of us
+have keen vague thoughts that, we imagine, would be so profound could
+our tongues but utter them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Blake's Thel is a symbol of the transience of life.
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>O life of this our Spring! why fades the lotus of the water?</p>
+<p>Why fade these children of the Spring, born but to smile and fall?</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Thel, the transient maiden, is.... What is Thel?&#34; says Blake, in
+effect. Thel cannot be described straightforwardly. &#34;What then is Thel
+<i>like</i>?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Ah! Thel is like a watery bow, and like a parting cloud,</p>
+<p>Like a reflection in a glass, like shadows on the water,</p>
+<p>Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infant's face,</p>
+<p>Like the dove's voice, like transient day, like music in the air.</p></div></div>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>DIALECT</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Shakespeare, in a corresponding difficulty, uses one convincing simile:
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore</p>
+<p>So do our minutes hasten to their end;</p>
+<p>Each changing place with that which goes before,</p>
+<p>In sequent toil all forwards do contend.</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+Drummond of Hawthornden exclaims:
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>This Life, which seems so fair,.</p>
+<p>Is like a bubble blown up in the air.</p>
+<p>By sporting children's breath....</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+Bacon speaks more boldly and concisely. He forsakes simile for
+metaphor, leaving the word <i>like</i> to be understood.
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man.</p>
+<p>Less than a span....</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+Were Tony to try and express himself by the same means, he would say:
+&#34;The world's a bubble, like, and the life of man less than a span,
+like.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Like</i>, in fact, with the poor man as with the poet, connotes
+simile and metaphor. The poor man's vocabulary, like the poet's, is
+quite inadequate to express his thoughts. Both, in their several ways,
+are driven to the use of unhackneyed words and simile and metaphor;
+both use a language of great flexibility;<a href="#note11" name="noteref11"><sup>11</sup></a> for which reason we find
+that after the poet himself, the poor man speaks most poetically.
+Witness the beautiful description: &#34;All to once the nor'easter springed
+out from the land, an' afore us could down-haul the mainsail, the sea
+wer feather-white an' skatting in over the bows.&#34; New words are eagerly
+seized; hence the malapropisms and solecisms so frequently made fun of,
+without appreciation of their cause. <i>Obsolete</i> has come hereto
+from the Navy, through sons who are bluejackets. Now, when Tony wishes
+to sum up in one word the two facts that he is older and also less
+vigorous than formerly, he says: &#34;Tony's getting obsolete, like.&#34; A
+soulless word, borrowed from official papers, has acquired for us a
+poetic wealth of meaning in which the pathos of the old ship, of
+declining years, and of Tony's own ageing, are all present with one
+knows not what other suggestions besides. And when <i>obsolete</i> is
+fully domesticated here, the <i>like</i> will be struck off.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THOUGHTS AND MIND PICTURES</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In short, every time Tony uses <i>like</i>, he is admitting, and
+explaining, that he has expressed himself as best he could, but
+inadequately notwithstanding. He has felt something more delicately,
+thought upon something more accurately, than he can possibly say. He is
+always pathetically eager to make himself plain, to be understood. One
+knows well that touching look in the eyes of a dog when, as we say, it
+all but speaks. Often have I seen that same look, still more intense,
+in Tony's eyes, when he has become mazed with efforts to express
+himself, and I have wished that as with the dog, a pat, a small caress,
+could change the look into a joyfulness. But it is just because I am
+fond of him that I am able to feel with him and to a certain extent to
+divine his half-uttered thoughts; to take them up and return them to
+him clothed in more or less current English which, he knows, would
+convey them to a stranger, and which shows him more clearly than before
+what he really was thinking. That seems to be one of my chief functions
+here&#8212;thought-publisher. Evidently grateful, he talks and talks,
+usually while the remains of a meal lie scattered on the table. &#34;Aye!&#34;
+he says, at the end of a debauch of <i>likes</i>. &#34;I don' know what I
+du know. Tony's a silly ol' fule!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He does not believe it; nor do I; for I am often struck with wonder at
+the thoughts and mind-pictures which we so curiously arrive at
+together.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+15
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old feudal class-distinctions are fast breaking down. But are we
+arriving any nearer the democratic ideal of <i>Libert&#233;</i>,
+<i>&#201;galit&#233;</i>, <i>Fraternit&#233;</i>? In place of the old distinctions,
+are we not setting up new distinctions, still more powerful to divide?
+There is to-day a greater social gulf fixed between the man who takes
+his morning tub and him who does not, than between the man of wealth or
+family and him who has neither. New-made and pink, the 'gentleman'
+arises daily from his circle of splashes, a masculine Venus from a foam
+of soap-suds. (About womenfolk we are neither so enquiring nor so
+particular.) For the cults of religion and pedigree we have substituted
+the cult of soap and water, and 'the prominent physician of Harley
+Street' is its high priest. Are you a reputed atheist? Poor man!
+doubtless God will enlighten you in His good time. Are you wicked?
+Well, well.... Have you made a fortune by forsaking the official
+Christian morality in favour of the commercial code? You can redeem all
+by endowing a hospital or university. But can they say of you that
+somehow or other you don't look quite clean? Then you are damn'd!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cottage where the heroine of the 'nice' book lives is always
+spotlessly clean. A foreigner who adopts the bath-habit, is said to be
+just like an Englishman. It is the highest praise he can earn, and will
+go further in English society than the best introductions.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>CLEANLINESS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cleanliness is our greatest class-symbol. In living with people who
+have been brought up to different ways of life, a consideration of
+cleanliness is forced upon one; for nothing else rouses so
+instantaneously and violently the latent snobbery that one would fain
+be rid of. Religiously, politically, we are men and brothers all. Yet
+still&#8212;there <i>are</i> men we simply cannot treat as brothers. By what
+term of contempt (in order to justify our unbrotherliness) can we call
+them? Not <i>poor men</i>; for we have <i>Poor but honest</i> too
+firmly fixed in our minds, and we would all like a colonial rich rough
+diamond of an uncle to appear suddenly in our family circle. Hardly
+<i>men of no family</i>; for men of no family are received at court.
+Not <i>workmen</i>; for behold the Carlylese and Smilesian dignity of
+labour! Not <i>the masses</i>; for the masses are supposed to be our
+rulers. What then can we call these people with whom we really cannot
+associate on equal terms? Why, call them <span class="sc">The Great Unwashed</span>. O
+felicitous phrase! O salve of the conscience! That is the unpardonable
+social sin. At the bottom of our social ladder is a dirty shirt; at the
+top is fixed not laurels, but a tub! The bathroom is the inmost, the
+strongest fortress of our English snobbery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cleanliness as a subject of discussion is, curiously enough, considered
+rather more improper than disease. Yet it has to be faced, and that
+resolutely, if we would approach, and approaching, understand, the
+majority of our fellow-creatures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chemically all dirt is clean. Just as the foods and drinks of a good
+dinner, if mixed up together on a dish, would produce a filthy mess, so
+conversely, if we could separate any form of dirt into the pure solid,
+liquid and volatile chemical compounds of which it is composed, into
+pretty crystals, liquids and gases, exhibited in the scientific manner
+on spotless watch-glasses and in thrice-washed test-tubes,&#8212;we might
+indeed say that some of these chemicals had an evil odour, but we could
+not pronounce them unclean. Prepared in a laboratory, the sulphuretted
+hydrogen gas which makes the addled egg our national political weapon,
+is a quite cleanly preparation. Dirt is merely an unhappy mixture of
+clean substances. The housewife is nearest a scientific view of the
+matter when she distinguishes between 'clean dirt' and 'dirty dirt,'
+and does not mind handling coal, for instance, because, being clean
+dirt, it will not harm her. Cleanliness is a process by which we keep
+noxious microbes and certain poisons outside our systems or in their
+proper places within. (It has been shown that we cannot live without
+microbes, and that there exist normally in some parts of the body
+substances which are powerfully poisonous to other parts.) Rational
+cleanliness makes for health, for survival. It is, ultimately, an
+expression of the Will to Live.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>DIRT</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Far, however, from being rational, our notions on cleanliness are in
+the highest degree superficial. We make a great fuss over a flea;
+hardly mention it in polite company; but we tolerate the dirty housefly
+on all our food. We eat high game which our cook's more natural taste
+calls muck. We are only just beginning to realise the indescribable
+filthiness of carious teeth, than which anything more unclean, a few
+diseases excepted, can scarcely be found in slums. Even in this great
+age of pseudo-scientific enlightenment, we do not have a carious tooth
+extracted until it aches, though we have a front tooth cleaned and
+stopped on the first appearance of decay. What the eye doth not see....
+Yet we presume to judge men by their deviation from our conventional
+standards of cleanliness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My lady goes to the doctor for her headaches and <i>crises de
+nerfs</i>. &#34;Dyspepsia and autotox&#230;mia,&#34; says the doctor. &#34;Try
+such-and-such a diet for a month, then go to Aix-les-Bains.&#34; But how
+would my lady be ashamed did he tell her plainly: &#34;Madam, though I
+observe that you bathe frequently, your cleanliness, like your beauty,
+is only skin-deep. You are fair without and foul within. Your
+alimentary canal is overloaded and your blood is so unclean that it has
+poisoned your nervous system. Eat less, take more exercise and drink
+plenty&#8212;of water. Try to be as clean as your gardener.&#34; It has been
+remarked that the labourer who sweats at his work is, in reality, far
+cleaner than the bathing sedentary man, for the labourer has a daily
+sweat-bath, whereas the other only washes the outside of him: the
+cleanliness of the latter is skin-deep, and of the former blood-deep.
+Once stated, the fact is obvious. Moreover, the labourer has the
+additional advantage of being self-cleansing, whereas the sedentary
+man, for his inferior kind of cleanliness, requires a bath and all
+sorts of apparatus. No doubt, in time we shall learn to value both
+kinds of cleanliness, each at its worth. The Martians of fiction, when
+in a fair way to conquer the earth, succumbed before earthly microbes
+to which they were unaccustomed, against which they had not acquired
+immunity. If by antiseptics they could have kept these microbes at bay,
+they would have done well, but if, like mankind, they had possessed
+self-resistance against them (that is, if they had been self-cleansing)
+it would have been still better. There is no paradox in saying that,
+practically, it is very difficult for a healthy person to be genuinely
+unclean; and that ideally, in the surgeon's eyes, we are, all, rich man
+and tramp, so unclean that there is little to choose between us, and
+every one of us requires a comprehensive scrubbing in an antiseptic
+tub.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>DISADVANTAGES</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But just as the habit of aiding nature by eating predigested food is
+bad, so too rigid a habit, too great a need of cleanliness is a
+positive disadvantage in the struggle for existence. Harry Stidston
+says fleas are loveable little creatures. I have had to learn to put up
+with one or two sometimes. Tommy makes his mother undress him in the
+middle of dinner to find one. In other words, Harry Stidston can do his
+work and live under conditions which would put me to flight, and I have
+a like advantage over Tommy. Again, Tony can do with an occasional bath
+and can eat his food with fishy hands, while I am a worm and no man
+without my daily bath, or at least a wash-over, and, except at sea,
+turn against the best of food if I can smell fish on my fingers. The
+advantage is Tony's. It is good to be clean, but it is better to be
+able to be dirty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The upshot is half-a-dozen&#8212;maybe unpleasant&#8212;truths, without
+recognition of which the latter-day citadel of snobbery cannot be
+stormed, nor the poor man and his house appreciated at their worth;
+namely:&#8212;
+</p>
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>
+1. <i>Ideally</i>: We are all so unclean that there is little to choose
+between us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+2. <i>Scientifically</i>: Cleanliness, as practised, is conventional
+and irrational.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+3. Blood-cleanliness is better than skin-cleanliness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+4. To be self-cleansing is better than to be cleansed by outside
+agents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+5. It is hard for a healthy, active person to be really unclean.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+6. <i>Practically</i>: The need of cleanliness is a weakness.
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>
+According to the orthodox standards, this house of Tony's is by no
+means so clean as the rose-embowered cottage of romance. It was not
+hygienically built. The children gain health by grubbing about outside,
+then come in house and demonstrate their healthy appetite by grabbing.
+I could wish at times that they were a little more conscious of their
+noses. We cannot, try how we will, get wholly rid of fleas, because
+fleas flourish in beaches, boats and nets. There are several things
+here to turn one's gorge, until prejudices are put aside and the matter
+regarded scientifically. For, as one may see, the effective cleanliness
+of this household strikes a subtle balance between more contending
+needs than can be fully traced out. If, for instance, Mrs Widger came
+down earlier and scrupulously swept the house, her temper would suffer
+later on in the day. If she did not sometimes 'let things rip,' and
+take leisure, her health, and with it the whole delicate organisation
+of the household, would go wrong. Of a morning, I observe she has
+neck-shadows. Horrid! Perhaps, but being a wise woman, pressed always
+for time, she postpones her proper wash until the dirty work is done.
+Were we to kill off the wauling cats which make such a mess of the
+garden, the neighbourhood would lose its best garbingers. Baked dinner
+is never so tasty as when the tin, hot from the oven, is placed upon a
+folded newspaper on the table. Tony and the children tear fish apart
+with their fingers. It does not look nice, but that is the reason why
+they never get bones in their throats, for, as a fish-eating
+instrument, sensitive fingers are much superior to cutlery and plate,
+and so on....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I used to think that I was pigging it here. Now I do not.<a href="#note12" name="noteref12"><sup>12</sup></a>
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+16
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>JIMMY COMES HOOKING</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The dawns are later now. We do not need to get up quite so early, and
+usually, just as we are drinking our cup o' tay, we hear a pattering of
+naked feet on the staircase. Jimmy, the Dustman still in his eyes,
+appears at the door. He has an air of being about to do something
+important. He picks out his stockings and old grey suit from the
+corners where they were left to dry. He does not ask to have his boots
+laced up nor complain of their stiffness. Then with his coat
+exceedingly askew on his shoulders, he demands: &#34;Tay! please.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What do <i>yu</i> want? Git up over to bed again.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I be comin' hooking wiv yu.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Be 'ee? Yu'll hae to hurry up then.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the sea is not too loppy nor the wind too cold, Jimmy goes with
+us. The soft-mouthed mackerel need hauling up clear of the gunwale with
+a long-armed swing, beyond Jimmy's power to give, and therefore as a
+rule he is not at first allowed to have a line; for fish represent
+money and mackerel caught now will be eaten as bread and dripping in
+the winter. Jimmy sits huddled up on the lee side for'ard. He becomes
+paler, looks plaintively, and sighs a big sigh or two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What's the matter, Jim-Jim? Do 'er feel leery?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Jimmy volunteers a remark, nothing is the matter. But if he merely
+answers &#34;No-o-o!&#34; he means <i>yes</i>, and in order to stave off
+sea-sickness he must be given a line.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>EDUCATION EVILS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then is Jimmy 'proper all right.' Then does he brighten up. &#34;How many
+have us catched?&#34; he asks. The sight of him fishing in the stern-sheets
+re-assures me as to his future, about which I am sometimes fearful,
+just as some men are depressed by a helpless baby because they foresee,
+imaginatively, the poor little creature's life and all possible
+troubles before it. When I watch Jimmy in house, rather naughty
+perhaps, or when I hear Bessie, fresh from the twaddle that they put
+into her head at school, saying, &#34;If Dad'd earn more money, mother, us
+could hae a shop an' he could buy me a pi-anno;&#34; or when, as I am out
+and about with the boats, a grubby small hand is suddenly slipped into
+mine and a joyful chirping voice says, &#34;What be yu 'bout?&#34;&#8212;then, and
+at a score of other times, I am fearful of what they may be led to do
+with Jimmy; fearful lest they may put the little chap to an inland
+trade where he is almost bound to become a lesser man than his father,
+be removed from the enlarging influence of the sea, and have it given
+him as the height of ambition to grow up a dram-drinking or
+psalm-smiting, Sunday-top-hatted tradesmen. Then I desire savagely to
+have the power of a God, not that I might direct his life&#8212;he can sail
+his own boat better than I,&#8212;but that I might keep the ring clear for
+him to fight in, and prevent foul play. What indeed would I not do to
+remove some of the guilt of us educated men and women who force our
+ideas on people without asking whether they need them, without caring
+how maimed, stultified and potent for evil the ideas become in process
+of transmission, without seeing that for the age-old wisdom of those
+whom we call the uneducated we are substituting a jerry-built
+knowledge&#8212;got from books&#8212;which we only half believe in ourselves? New
+lamps for old! The pity of it! The farce!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But when I watch Jimmy fishing, I grow confident that the sea has its
+grip on him; that it will drag him to itself as it dragged his father
+from the grocery store; that whatever happens, it will always be part
+of his life to keep trivialities, meannesses and education from quite
+closing in around him.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+17
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn">&#34;<i>THE FISHER FATHER AND CHILD</i>&#34;</span>
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p><i>The Fisher Father and Child</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>As I pulled the boat across a loppy sea&#8212;</p>
+<p>The bumping and splashing boat,</p>
+<p>With the sail flapping round my head,</p>
+<p>And the pile of mackerel amidships ever growing larger and lovelier
+in the light&#8212;</p>
+<p>And the sun rose behind the cliffs to eastward, and the sky became
+lemon-yellow</p>
+<p>(A graciously coloured veil twixt the earth and all mystery beyond),</p>
+<p>And the wavelets sparkled and darted like ten thousand fishes at play
+in the ambient dawn,&#8212;</p>
+<p>It seemed that the sky and the sea and the earth gathered themselves
+together,</p>
+<p>And became one vast kind eye, looking into the stern of the boat,</p>
+<p>At the father and boy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Navy-blue guernsey, and trousers stained by the sea, scarce hiding
+the ribbed muscles;</p>
+<p>Tan-red face, the fresh blood showing through;</p>
+<p>Blue eyes, all of a flash with fishing and the joy of hauling 'em in;
+now on the luff of the sail (out of habit, there being hardly a
+sail-full of air), now to wind'ard, and again smiling on the
+child;</p>
+<p>Big pendulous russet hands, white in the palms from salt water, and
+splashed with scales&#8212;</p>
+<p>Hands that seem implements rather, appearing strangely no part of the
+man, but something, like the child, that has grown away from
+him and has taken a life of its own&#8212;</p>
+<p>Strong for a sixteen-foot sweep, delicate to handle the silken snood of
+a line&#8212;</p>
+<p>A man that the winds and the spray have blown on, gnarled and bent to
+the sea's own liking,</p>
+<p>The Father!</p></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>And the boy&#8212;</p>
+<p>Like delicate dawn to the sunset was the child to his father&#8212;</p>
+<p>A sturdy slight little figure, as straight as the mast,</p>
+<p>A grey and more gently coloured figure, glancing round with the
+father's self-same gestures softened, and with childish
+trustful sea-blue eyes;</p>
+<p>Pattering with naked feet on the stern-sheets, and hauling the fish
+with a wary cat-like motion....</p>
+<p>O splendid and beautiful pair!</p>
+<p>O man of the sea! O child growing up to the sea!</p>
+<p>You have given yourselves to the waters, and the waters have given
+of their spirit to you,</p>
+<p>And I know when you speak that the sea is speaking through you,</p>
+<p>And I know when I look at the sea, 'tis the likeness of your souls,</p>
+<p>And I know that as I love you, I am loving also the sea&#8212;</p>
+<p>O splendid and beautiful portions of the sea!</p></div></div>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+18
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>MRS FINN'S PROFESSIONS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Pinn has put aside her respectful defiance, has ceased addressing
+me as <i>sir</i>, and turns out to be a most jolly old woman, possessed
+of any amount of laughing <i>camaraderie</i>. She frankly explains the
+change thus: &#34;I used to think yu was reeligious. Yu du look a bit like
+a passon [parson] sometimes. Do 'ee know 't?&#8212;No, not now; be blow'd if
+yu du! Yu'm so wicked as the rest of 'em, <i>I</i> believe, but yu
+ben't like they ol' passons. I'll 'llow yu'm better'n they.&#34; My own
+recollection, however, runs back to the evening when she brought her
+damped-down washing round, and I turned the mangle for her. It is
+hardish work. 'Tis a wonder how she, an old woman, can do it when, if
+births are scarce, she is reduced to taking in washing for a week or
+two. Tony calls her the Tough Old Stick. Excellent name! I can picture
+her in her cottage up on land, bringing up her long family with much
+shouting, much hard common sense, some swearing and a deal of useful
+prejudice. Now, in her second youth&#8212;not second childhood&#8212;she is
+mainly a lace-worker and midwife. One night, Tony and myself broke into
+her cottage, locked the door behind us and helped ourselves to what
+supper we could find&#8212;which was pickled beetroot and raw eggs. Grannie
+Pinn climbed in upon us through the little window, and afterwards, to
+gain breath, she sat down to her lace pillow. Her dexterity was
+marvellous. She <i>threw</i> the bobbins about. I could not follow them
+with my eyes. She makes stock patterns only; refuses to be taught fresh
+patterns at her time of life, and cannot read them up for herself
+because she has never learned to read. The butterfly is her
+masterpiece. Working from early morning till evening's gossip-time, she
+can earn no less than nine pennies a day. What the lace-selling shop
+makes out of her, the lace-selling shop does not state.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As a midwife, no doubt, she earns more. She must be full of tonic
+sayings. I am told that when her patients are dying, she takes away the
+pillow 'so that they can die more proper like,' and also in order that
+they may get the dying over quicker. What scenes the Tough Old Stick
+have must been present at! Yet she is spryer by far than those who keep
+clear of tragedy. When I ask her to tell me truly how many patients she
+has killed off in her professional career, her eyes glitter and she
+bursts out: &#34;Aw, yu! What chake yu got, to be sure!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She has her share of professional pride, but nevertheless I should like
+to know how many corpses she really has laid out for burial&#8212;and what
+she thought the while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Usually she comes in just before supper-time:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Ain't yu gone yet? I know; yu got some mark or other to Seacombe. Come
+on! which o' the young ladies is't? Out wi' it! Which on 'em is't?&#34;
+When I tell her that she is the best girl in Seacombe and that I won't
+give her the chuck until she finds me a mark as youthful as herself and
+a hundred times as rich, she says:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Then yu'm done! her won't hae nort still, 'cause I an't got nort, an'
+a hundred times nort be nothing&#8212;he-he-he! I knaws thiccy.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The jokes, 'tis true, are poor. But the Tough Old Stick's enjoyment
+franks them all. You may fling a stinging fact in her face; tell her,
+if you like, that she could find plenty of marks for herself because,
+being old, she will have to die soon and then the poor fellow would be
+free again. &#34;I know't!&#34; she says, and flings you back another stinging
+fact. Admirable Old Stick! She never flinches at a fact, howsoever
+grisly it be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Above all, she revels in a little mild blasphemy; hardly
+blasphemy&#8212;imaginary details, say, about hell, in the manner of Mark
+Twain. &#34;Aw, my dear soul!&#34; she exclaims. &#34;How yu du go on! Aw, my dear
+soul! Yu'm going to hell, sure 'nuff yu be!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>AGNOSTICISM</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But her horror is only a pretence. She does not take such matters
+seriously. Indeed, few things have surprised me so much as the
+thoroughgoing agnosticism that prevails here. Uncle Jake is the
+religious member of the Widger family. For the rest, religion is the
+business of the clergy who are paid for it and of those who take it up
+as a hobby, including the impertinent persons who thrust hell-fire
+tracts upon the fisherfolk. &#34;Us can't 'spect to know nort about it,&#34;
+says Tony. &#34;'Tain't no business o' ours. May be as they says; may be
+not. It don't matter, that I sees. 'Twill be all the same in a hunderd
+years' time when we'm a-grinning up at the daisy roots.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, he is not atheistical, nor even wholly fatalistic. When
+his first wife was lying dead, he saw her in a dream with one of her
+dead babies in her arms, and he is convinced that that meant something
+very spiritual, although what it meant he does not care to enquire. The
+agnosticism refers not so much to immortality or the existence of a
+God, as to the religions, the nature of the God, the divinity of
+Christ, and so on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Us don' know nort about that, n'eet does anybody else, I believe, an'
+all their education on'y muddles 'em when they comes to weigh up thic
+sort o' thing.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>SPARROWISM</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If the sparrows themselves had been acquainted with 'Are not two
+sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall to the
+ground without your Father,' their attitude towards religion might have
+resembled Tony's&#8212;a mixture of trust and <i>insouciance</i>, neither of
+them driven to any logical conclusion and both tempered by fatalism.
+&#34;When yu got to die, yu got tu,&#34; says Tony, and it makes little
+difference to him whether the event has been decreed since the
+beginning of time, or whether it is to be decreed at some future date
+by a being so remote as God. The thing is, to accept the decree
+courageously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The children go to Sunday School, of course; it is convenient to have
+them out of the way while Sunday's dinner is being cooked and the
+afternoon snooze being taken. Besides, though the Sunday School
+teaching is a fearful hotch-potch of heaven, hell and self-interest,
+the tea-fights concerts and picnics connected with it are well worth
+going to. But the household religion remains a pure <i>sparrowism</i>,
+and an excellent creed it is for those of sufficient faith and courage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of how the Sunday School teaching is translated by the children into
+terms of every day life, we had a fine example two or three weeks ago.
+Jimmy came home full of an idea that 'if you don' ast God to stop it,
+Satant 'll have 'ee,' and Mrs Widger asked him: &#34;What's the difference
+then between God an' Satant?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Ther ain't nort.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yes, there is. What does God du?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;God don't do nort unless yu asks Him.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;An' what does Satant du?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Oh&#8212;I know!&#8212;Satant gets into yer 'art, an' gives 'ee belly-ache an'
+toothache.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Not many days afterwards, Tommy was being sent to bed for getting his
+feet wet. &#34;Yu daring rascal! I'll knock yer head off if yu du it again.
+Yu'll die, yu will! An' what'll yu du then?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Go to heaven, o' course.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;An' what do you think they'll say to 'ee there? Eh?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tommy was puzzled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;You can ask 'em to send us better weather.&#34; I suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Tell 'ee what I'll do,&#34; said Tommy with a prodigiously wise squint.
+&#34;I'll take up a buckle-strap to thiccy ol' God, if 'er don't send
+better weather, an' then yu won't none on 'ee get sent to bed for wet
+feet!&#34;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+19
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At a corner near here, there is a very blank cottage wall, and in the
+centre of it a little window. Behind the closed window, all day and
+every day, sits an old woman at her lace pillow. Some
+portraits&#8212;Rembrandt's especially&#8212;give one the impression that a
+shutter has suddenly been drawn aside; that behind the shutter we are
+allowed to watch for a moment or two a face so full of meaning as to be
+almost more than human. The same impression is given me by the old
+lace-maker in the window when I pass to and fro, and catch sight of her
+face so still, her hands so active, her bobbins so swift and, because
+of the intervening glass, so silent. How nervously the hands speed with
+the bobbins, how very deliberately with the pins that make the pattern!
+How hardly human it is!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One evening, however, the window was open, children stood round in a
+group, and I heard the small click of the bobbins through the still
+air. The children were laughing, delighted with the old woman's
+swiftness. She that had been a picture, was become a living being.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No doubt, she is working at her lace pillow now. She has several mouths
+to feed. I wonder does she earn as much as Grannie Pinn?
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+20
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>CONGERING</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This long time I have wished to go congering all night, but have been
+unable to do so for want of a mate. It is more than one man's work to
+haul a boat up the beach in daytime, let alone the middle of the night
+or at early dawn. If the <i>Moondaisy</i>'s old crew was here....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Ah! those were days&#8212;when George and the Little Commodore and the Looby
+and myself used to row out with a swinging stroke at sundown to
+Elm-beech-tree<a href="#note13" name="noteref13"><sup>13</sup></a> and Conger Pool. The choosing of the mark; the
+careful heaving of the sling-stone; the blinn, skate, pollack,
+spider-crabs, and conger eels, we used to catch; the fights with the
+conger in the dark or by the light of matches or of an old lantern that
+blew out when it was most wanted; the absurd way the crew turned up
+their noses at my nice tomato sandwiches and gobbled down stringy
+corned beef; their quiet slumber round the stern seats and my solitary
+watch amidships over all the lines, and at the sea-fire trailing in the
+flood-tide; their crustiness when I awoke them to shift our mark and
+their jubilation when a whopper was to be gaffed; the utter
+peacefulness of the night after they had gone to sleep again; our merry
+row home and hearty beaching of the boat; the cup of hot tea.... It is
+all clean gone. George is in the Navy and the Little Commodore is under
+a glass box of waxen flowers up on land. Did I bring back a catch
+alone, perhaps the old boat would be stove in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony, however, has been saying that, on the rough ground a mile or so
+out, good-sized conger can be caught by day. On Saturday, therefore, I
+collected gear from the Widger linhays, borrowed a painter and anchor,
+and, the wind being easterly, I luffed the <i>Moondaisy</i> out a mile
+and a half south-east. There I dropped anchor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony had given me two mackerel for bait, one fresh and the other
+somewhat otherwise; that is to say it was merely fishmonger
+fresh&#8212;quite good enough for eating but hardly good enough for conger
+who, though they have a reputation for feeding on dead men, will only
+touch the freshest of bait. With the fresh mackerel I caught one large
+conger (it ripped in the sail a hole that took Mam Widger an hour to
+mend) and two dog-fish. Nothing at all would bite at the stale
+mackerel. The easterly sea was making a little and skatting in over the
+bows. Besides which, the <i>Moondaisy</i> began to drag her anchor. My
+hand to jaw-and-tail fight with the conger had made me a little
+unsteady; had made my muscles feel as if they might string up with
+cramp; which is not good for stepping a heavyish mast and sailing a
+boat. So I stepped the mast and set sail, to make sure, and ran
+homewards with the wind almost abeam.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We decided to save the conger for Sunday's dinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger made a most savoury stew of it, and when Tony came in as
+usual, asking, &#34;Be dinner ready, Missis?&#34; she placed the stew on the
+table.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony's face fell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Be this my dinner, Annie?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss, for sure.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;<i>Thees?</i>&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>HOT BAKE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What d'yu think then?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;<i>Thees!</i> Wer's yer baked spuds?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Do' ee gude to hae a change. Ther's some cold taties to the larder if
+you likes to get 'em.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;<i>Thees!</i> Why, I wish thees yer conger hadn't never been catched!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out!&#8212;Now then, you childern....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony picked over the fish, going <i>Tsch!</i> for every bone his
+fingers came across.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Thee't look so sulky as an ol' cow,&#34; said Mam Widger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well, what do 'ee think? Thees yer.... Did 'ee ever see the like
+o'it?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently it occurred to him to peep inside the oven. His face
+brightened. &#34;I know'd her 'ouldn't du me out o' me Sunday dinner. Bring
+it out, Missis. Sharp! Gie thiccy stuff to the cat. Baked spuds! What's
+Sunday wi'out baake? 'Tain't no day at all! I couldn' ha' put away an
+hour after thic.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the remainder of the meal, when Tony was not eating, he was
+singing; and several times he chucked Mam Widger under the chin, and
+she retorted: &#34;G'out, yu cupboard-loving cat!&#34;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+21
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This is the recipe for baked dinner:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Turn out the children and turn on the oven. Into the middle of a large
+baking tin place a saucer piled up with a mixture of herbs (mainly
+parsley), one sliced onion and breadcrumbs, the whole made sticky with
+a morsel of dripping. Round about the saucer put a layer of large
+peeled potatoes, and on top of all, the joint. Set the baking tin on
+the hob and into it pour just enough warm water to run over the rim of
+the saucer. Soon after the water boils, transfer the whole to a fairly
+quick oven. When the meat is brown outside, slow the oven down. Serve
+piping hot from the oven, placing the tin on a folded newspaper and the
+joint, if large, on a hot plate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To dish up hot bake in the ordinary way would be to let the nature out
+of it. The smell is a wonderful blend, most hunger-provoking. True, the
+joint, unless pork or veal, is apt to be a little tough, but the taties
+are a delicious shiny brown, their soft insides soaked through and
+through with gravy. Bake is a meal in itself. Pudding thereafter is a
+work of supererogation&#8212;almost an impertinence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger's cookery, though sometimes a little greasy for one who does
+no great amount of manual labour and undergoes no excessive exposure,
+is far from bad.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>FOOD</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Food reformers; patrons of cookery schools where they try, happily in
+vain, to teach the pupils to prepare dishes no working man would
+adventure on; physical degenerates who fear that unless the working man
+imitates them, he will become as degenerate as they are, and quite
+unfit to do the world's rough work&#8212;forget that whereas they have only
+one staple food, if that, namely bread, the poor man has several staple
+dishes which he likes so well that he is loth to touch any other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day we did have at my suggestion a rather fanciful supper. Tony
+tasted, ate, and cleared the dish. Then he asked: &#34;An't 'ee got nort to
+make a meal on, Missis? no cold meat nor spuds?&#34; He believes in the
+theory that good digestion waits on appetite rather than on digestible
+or pre-digested foods; that the meal which makes a man's mouth water is
+the best to eat; and that solid foods give solid strength. And if the
+same dish can make his mouth water nearly every day in the week, how
+much more fortunate is he than fickle gourmets!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I first came here, I used periodically to run after the
+flesh-pots. I used to sneak off to tea at a confectioner's. Now I
+seldom feed out of house&#8212;simply because I don't want to. We start the
+day about sunrise with biscuits and a cup of tea which I make and take
+up myself. (Mam Widger and Tony look so jolly in bed, her indoor
+complexion and white nightgown beside his blue-check shirt and
+magnificently tanned face, that I've dubbed them 'The Babes in the
+Wood.') For breakfast, we have fried mackerel or herrings, when they
+are in season; otherwise various mixtures of tough bacon and perhaps
+eggs (children half an egg each) and bubble and squeak.<a href="#note14" name="noteref14"><sup>14</sup></a> Sometimes
+the children prefer kettle-broth,<a href="#note15" name="noteref15"><sup>15</sup></a> but they never fail to clamour for
+'jam zide plaate.' Bake, hot or cold, and occasionally (mainly for me,
+I think) a plain pudding, or on highdays a pie, make up the dinner that
+is partaken of by all. But before the pudding is eaten, Tony and myself
+are already looking round to see that the kettle is on a hot part of
+the fire, and when the children are gone off to school, Mam Widger
+throws us out a cup o' tay each, with now and then a newly baked
+gentry-cake. Tony, who would like meat or a fry of fish for tea, has
+usually to content himself with bread and butter. The children go off
+to bed with a biscuit or a small chunk of cheese, and we may eat the
+same with pickles, or else fried or boiled fish if there is any in the
+house.... Supper, in fact, is the meal of many inventions, including
+all sorts of crabs, little lobsters, and such unsaleable fish as
+dun-cow [dog-fish], conger, skate or weever, together with
+dree-hap'orth, or a pint, of stout and bitter from the Alexandra. Just
+before turning in, Tony and myself have a glass of hot grog.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>DRINK</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From such a list of our fare, it would seem as if we over-ate ourselves
+as consistently as the <i>en pension</i> visitors at the hotels. (Mrs
+Widger, who has done a good deal of waiting, frequently tells us how
+manfully the visitors endeavour to eat their money's worth at the
+<i>tables d'h&#244;te</i>). Tony's appetite&#8212;his habit of pecking at the
+food after a meal is over and the way he, and the children too if they
+have the chance, mop up pickles and Worcester sauce&#8212;is a continual joy
+to me. We do not drink much alcohol. On the other hand, the children
+are curiously discouraged from drinking cold water. Skim milk, tea,
+stout, ale, or even very dilute spirit is considered better for them&#8212;a
+prejudice which dates probably from the days before a pure water
+supply. Since, however, I who am known to possess a contemptible
+digestion, have been seen to drink down several glasses of cold water
+daily, and to take no hurt, the ban on it has been more or less
+removed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The above-mentioned goodies are distributed, it is true, over a good
+many days in the year, and I fancy that my being here drives up the
+scale of living somewhat. At all events, we do not go short. Waste on
+the one side, mainly arising from small eyes being bigger than small
+stomachs, is more than counterbalanced by a wonderful ability to
+swallow down gristle, rinds and hard bits without apparent harm.
+Granfer, indeed, says that he 'wouldn't gie a penny a pound for tender
+meat that don't give 'ee summut to bite at.' The children clamour
+always for 'jam zide plaate.' Without that or the promise of it, they
+often refuse to eat anything. They do not believe me when I tell them
+that they have more food than ever I did at their age; that I had to
+eat a piece of bread and a potato for each slice of meat; that jam and
+butter together was not thought good for me except on birthdays and
+Sundays. &#34;G'out!&#34; they say. &#34;Ye lie!&#34; Sometimes their mother is
+irritated into calling them 'cawdy li'l devils.' It does seem almost a
+pity that they have not had any of the discipline of starvation. The
+Yarty children who go half the day, and only too often whole days, on
+empty stomachs, are certainly as happy as ours: they never cry because
+dinner is not so good as they expect, and if we give them half a pie
+their earth is straightway heavenly. Tony thinks now and then how hard
+it will go with his children if the money runs short, as it has done
+and may easily do again. &#34;I mind the time,&#34; he says, &#34;when I used to
+come in hungry and kneel down beside me mother wi' me head across her
+lap, crying! Her crying too; mother 'cause her hadn't got nort to eat
+in house, and me 'cause her didn't get nort, and 'cause her cuden't get
+nort, not even half an ounce o' tay, not havin' no money in house to
+get it with. An' then I used to go out an' try an' earn something,
+twopence maybe, just to stay us on.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And that it is which has helped to make Tony the man he is.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+22
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A SUDDEN STORM</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seldom does one catch the exact moment of an abrupt change in nature.
+Yesterday, however, I watched a wonderful thing&#8212;the oncoming of a
+sudden storm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Uncle Jake had been holding forth on the beach. &#34;Us ain't had no
+equinoctial gales thees year, not proper like us used to. This season's
+going to break up sudden and wi' thunder, an' when it du, look out! I'd
+rather be here now than out in the offing, for all the sea's so calm.
+Ah!&#34; pointing to a dinghy that was shoving off the beach, &#34;they bwoys
+'ould laugh in me faace if I was to go an' say, 'Don' go. 'Tisn't fit.'
+But <i>I</i> knows.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I left him gazing seaward over the stern of his drifter, and walked up
+to the Western Cliffs. The air, scarcely a breath from the north-east,
+was oppressive in the extreme; very warm, too, for autumn. The sea was
+almost unruffled; the sky to westward magnificently heaped up with what
+Uncle Jake calls wool-packs. A fog crept over all the southern horizon,
+dimming with its misty approach the eastern headlands and making the
+sea like a dulled mirror. I felt, rather than heard, distant thunder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fog lifted. It hung low in the sky, a sulky blue cloud. Beneath it,
+the sea, still unruffled, was of a dense blue that, so it seemed, would
+have been black altogether but for its transparency and the refracted
+light within it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Going on, I walked for some distance beneath a semi-arch of the
+wind-bowed lichenous thorns that grow upon the cliff-edge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without any warning&#8212;maybe there was a little hum in the air&#8212;a
+leafless bough, like a withered arm with its sinews ragged out, bent
+over across my path. The sea gulls screamed and screeched; they flocked
+out from the cliff-ledges, and with still wings they towered up into
+the sky. Every twig and leaf began to play a diabolic symphony. Where
+the hedge ended I was blown back upon my heels.&#8212;It was more than half
+a gale of wind from the south-east.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The horizon was become clear; jagged like a saw. Divergent strings,
+marvellously interlaced on the water, streamed in with the wind,
+broadened into ribands fluttering over green-grey patches. The whole
+sea trembled, as if life were being breathed into it. White spots,
+curling wavelets, dotted it; then broke abroad as white-horses in full
+mad landward career. The whistle in the grass rose louder and shriller;
+the boughs bent further and let fly their autumn foliage horizontally
+into the wind; the gulls screeched wildly and more wildly; the chafing
+of the surf below took possession of the air....
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>UNCLE JAKE ON FOOLS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I saw the dinghy put about and run for shore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I got back, Uncle Jake was still watching.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Ah!&#34; he said. &#34;Ah! Ah! I don't like they centre-keel boats wi' bumes
+[booms]. They'm all right for fine weather, but.... Ah! They'm goin' to
+gybe if they ain't careful. There! Did 'ee see? Why don't they ease
+their sheet off more? If the wind catches thic sail the wrong side....
+Did 'ee see that? Thic bume was all but coming over. Gybe, gybe, yu
+fules! Yu'm capsized if yu du, wi' thic heavy bume. Look'se! Have 'em
+got their drop-keel up, I wonder? Not they! They thinks that's the same
+as extra ballast. 'Twon't make no difference if a sea takes charge of
+'em. Ah! did 'ee see the leach o' the sail flutter? Nearly over! Let
+'em gybe, if they'm set on it. 'Twill upset they.&#8212;O-ho! They'm goin'
+to haul down an' row for it. Best thing the likes o' they can du. They
+calls me an ol' fule for joggin' along in my ol' craft while they has
+drop-keels and bumes, all the latest. I've a-know'd thees yer sea for
+fifty year an' more, an' I say, I tell thee, that two oars be better
+than two reefs any day. Le'but the seas take charge o' one o' they
+boats running afore the wind.... All up! They spins like a top, an'
+gybes.... 'Tis all up! Howsbe-ever, they'm saafe now, if they don't
+sheer broadside coming ashore. But <i>they</i> won't learn their
+lesson; not they. They maakes fun o' us as knows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;There! the wind be softening now. I've a-know'd they thunder-puffs
+come down on 'ee like a hurricane. If they lasted long.... 'Tis blowin'
+out in the Channel still. The horizon's black&#8212;see? 'Twill back, an'
+blow from the nor'east to-night, in here, but 'twill be east to
+south-east in the Channel, an' wi' thees flood tide runnin' up against
+it, yu'll see the say make!&#34;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+23
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It did blow during the night; it must have been rough out in the
+Channel; then the wind dropped to a light breeze. But before ever Tony
+and myself were out of doors we heard the heave and thump of the long
+easterly swell.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We hauled the <i>Cock Robin</i> down to the water's edge, put in five
+bags of ballast (&#34;Doesn't look 's if it's blow'd itself out,&#34; said
+Tony) and a spare oar&#8212;and stood and looked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Be it wuth it?&#34; he questioned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Not much wind now, is there?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Can the two o'us shove off in thees yer swell? Can ee see any o' the
+other boats shoving down?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;There won't be much frighting to-day, for sure. Must make the day gude
+if us can. Yer's a calm. Jump in quick. Shove! Shove, casn'! Row. Lemme
+take an oar. Keep her head on. <i>Pull</i>&#8212;thic west'ard oar!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>PLUCK&#8212;</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were fairly afloat outside the surf-line, both of us very red in the
+face. We upsailed&#8212;and away. After a few minutes' worry, deciding
+whether the mainsail and mizzen without the foresail would be enough,
+on a sea so much bigger than the wind, and looking for the <i>Cock
+Robin's</i> chronic leak, the bouncing, tumbling and splashing, the
+heave up and the mighty rushes down, put us both in high spirits. We
+decided to hoist the foresail after all. &#34;Let her bury her head if her
+wants to!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Accordingly, I went for'ard to hook the foresail's tack to the bumkin
+[short iron bowsprit]. The thimble was too small. As I sat on the bow
+and leaned out over, my hand all but dipped into the waves. A stream of
+water did once run up my sleeve. Looking round and seeing Tony smile, I
+yelled back aft: &#34;What be smiling 'bout, Tony?&#34; He replied: &#34;I was
+a-gloryin' in yer pluck.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Which was very pleasant to hear&#8212;for a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My position on the bow of the boat was absolutely safe, and I knew it.
+There was no risk at all, except of a bruise or a wetting. My toe was
+firmly hooked under the for'ard thwart, and short of my leg breaking, I
+could not have lost my hold. Besides, even had I fallen overboard, I
+could easily have swum round while Tony 'bouted the boat. Tony was
+deceived. There was no pluck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His words set me thinking, and I had to recognise, rather bitterly,
+that what I call pluck did not form a great part of my birthright. I
+find myself too apprehensive by nature; imagine horrid possibilities
+too keenly; and indeed would far rather hurt myself than think about
+doing so. I suppose I have a certain amount of courage, for I am
+usually successful in making myself do what I funk; but I like doing it
+none the better for that. And up to the present, I have not failed
+badly in tight corners. On the contrary, I find (like most nervy
+people) that actual danger, once arrived, is curiously exhilarating;
+that it makes one cooler and sharper, even happy. One has faced the
+worst in imagination, and the reality is play beside it.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>AND COURAGE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the dictionary, <i>courage</i> is defined as 'The quality which
+enables men to meet danger without fear.' <i>Pluck</i> is merely
+defined as courage. There is, or ought to be, an essential difference
+between the meaning of the two words. Courage is a premeditated matter,
+into which the will enters, whilst pluck is an unpremeditated
+expression of the personality, an innate quality which, so to speak,
+does not need to be set in operation by the will. Courage rises to the
+occasion; pluck is found ready for it. Would it not, therefore, be more
+correct to say that <i>pluck</i> is the quality which enables men to
+meet danger without fear: and that <i>courage</i> is the quality which
+enables men to meet danger with fear overcome? The greatest courage
+might go farther than the greatest pluck, but for occasions on which
+either can be used, pluck, the more spontaneous, is also the superior.
+Most of us are irregularly, erratically plucky; one man with horses,
+who funks the sea; another man at sea who is afraid of horses. One man
+who fears live fists may think nothing of watching by the dead. Another
+who stands up pluckily in a fight, refuses to go near a corpse. One of
+the pluckiest men I know 'don't like dogs.' Pluck runs in streaks, but
+courage, to whatever degree a man possesses it, runs through him from
+top to bottom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All the churches in the world may talk about sin and virtue, and make
+most admirable and subtle distinctions. We know very well in our hearts
+that pluck and courage are the great twin virtues, and that cowardice
+is the fundamental sin. The perfectly plucky and courageous man would
+never sin meanly; he would have no need to do so. He, and not the beefy
+brute or the intellectual paragon, would be Superman. The Christ, it
+often seems to me, keeps his hold on the world, and will keep it, not
+because he was God-man or man-God, not because he was born normally or
+abnormally, not because he redeemed mankind or didn't, not because he
+provided a refuge for souls on their beam-ends, but because, of all the
+great historic and legendary figures, he is the one who convinces us
+that he was never afraid. In him, as we picture him, courage and pluck
+were the same thing, and perfect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the present point is, or points are: How many men whose pluck and
+courage I have admired so much, have deceived me as I deceived Tony?
+And what combination of pluck and courage is it which enables these
+fishermen to follow their constantly dangerous occupation with equable
+mind; which, indeed, enables so many working men to follow their
+dangerous trades? For it is one thing to approach danger by way of
+sport, and another to work for a livelihood <i>in</i> danger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One's analytics fail. It is, however, stupid merely to say, &#34;Ah, they
+are inured to it. Familiarity has bred contempt.&#34; Seafaring men realise
+the dangers of the sea a good deal better than anyone else. Familiarity
+with the sea does not breed contempt; the older the seaman the more
+careful he is. I have met old seamen, heroes in their day, whom one
+would almost call nervous on the water. And in any case, what a state
+of mind it is&#8212;to be <i>inured</i> to danger! to be on familiar terms
+with the possibility of death! to be able to flout, to play with, to
+live on, that which all men fear!
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+24
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>LUSCOMBE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have been up the coast to have dinner and a chat with my old
+coastguard friend, Ned Luscombe, the man who taught me knots and
+splices during the night watches when I was a visitor here years ago.
+To go to his house now is very pleasant. For a long time after their
+first baby died on the day they entered a new house, before even the
+beds were up, it seemed as if Mrs Luscombe, a gentle, delicate woman,
+'with the deuce of a will of her own,' Luscombe says, was going to
+decline and die too. The new baby, which was to have killed her, has
+put new life into her instead. They are touchingly proud of it, and
+very happy altogether. I do like to see married couples happy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Luscombe himself is rather an extraordinary man; short, vivacious and
+solid; full of generous impulses, yet very well able to look after his
+own interests. It was he who dared the neighbourhood, and caused his
+wife to invite often to their house a crippled girl that had been raped
+by a scoundrel and then given the cold-shoulder by everyone else.
+Something of a sea-lawyer, he is one of the sharpest-brained&#8212;I don't
+say deepest-thinking&#8212;men I have ever come across. Hardly educated at
+all as a boy, he races through books (he read my Cary's <i>Dante</i> in
+a week), extracts the main gist of them, and is always learning some
+new thing, from shorthand to cooking, though he has no need to do much
+but behave himself for a pension. Almost harshly honest, he yet brings
+out with pride a large edition of Pope that he 'nicked' from the
+second-hand bookstall of a heathen Chinee at Singapore. That little
+episode will not make a very big blot, I imagine, on the Book of
+Judgment. If I remember aright, the British Navy was then occupied in
+protecting land or concessions that the nation itself had 'nicked' from
+the heathen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Luscombe's opinion on books, men and things, unless it has been
+borrowed from a newspaper, is always well worth hearing. His light of
+nature, by which he judges, is exceptionally powerful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While we were smoking in his front room&#8212;furnished with a curious
+mixture of cheap English things and beautiful Eastern curios&#8212;a steward
+from one of the great liners came in. He began talking about the
+behaviour in a gale of a rich snobbish Jew and the behaviour of Jews
+generally on shipboard, and was inclined to take up the high, superior,
+patriotic attitude that Jews, not being Englishmen, were necessarily a
+nuisance in a storm. &#34;Well,&#34; said Luscombe, &#34;all I know is, when a man
+tells me he's never been afraid of anything anywhere, I tells him to
+his face, 'You'm a damn'd liar!' One day, in a pub at Plymouth, there
+was a man&#8212;a bluejacket too&#8212;boasting he'd never known what fear was,
+and I up and asked him, 'Eh, chum? Did you say <i>Never</i>?'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Never!' he says. 'Never in me life!'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'You'm a liar then,' says I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'We'll see,' says he&#8212;goodish-sized chap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'You'm a bloody liar,' says I, 'and what's more, you ain't truthful.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;So we squared up there and then, and the bung and his men hyked us out
+into the street and we was having our scrap out when the police came
+up. He ran! 'Eh, Mr Liar!' I yelled after him. 'Did you say you was
+never afraid?'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;If I hadn't wasted time doing that, I shouldn't have got caught
+either. Very nearly landed me in chokey, that did. We was shipmates
+afterwards, me and that man, and very good friends. He's a warrant
+officer now.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>LOWER DECK TO QUARTER-DECK</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thence the conversation passed naturally to promotion from the ranks.
+&#34;I don't believe in it, not as a general rule,&#34; said Luscombe.
+&#34;Officers ought to be officers, and men ought to be men, and a ship's
+always more comfortable when both keep their places. Rankers as
+officers are apt to be bullies: that we all know jolly well. And
+besides that, the likes of us can't keep our kecker up the same as
+gen'lemen, and therefore I says we ain't fit for the quarter-deck, not
+yet awhile. Tisn't that the lower deck ain't so brave as the
+quarter-deck, because it is; only it can't keep it up so long; it gets
+discouraged like, when 'tis a long job, specially when 'tis one of
+those waiting-an-doing-nothing jobs. We ain't bred up to it, and our
+fathers wasn't, and there's no good to be got out of trying to pretend
+'tisn't so.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We argued on. Luscombe would not yield an inch of his position. I can't
+say offhand how far history bears him out, but I fancy that he is right
+to this extent: the lower deck has less flexibility of mind. It cannot
+view a depressing situation from so many sides at once. It is not, for
+instance, so quick to see the underlying humour of an emergency; not so
+ready to appreciate the so-called irony of fate. It cannot so easily
+turn round and laugh at itself and its predicament. So, though the
+lower deck's courage may be fully as great as, or greater than, that of
+the upper deck, it is applied more constantly, with less mental
+diversion, and therefore it tires sooner. Hence, it <i>may</i> not be
+so effective.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The argument undoubtedly has a true bearing on that sort of promotion
+which, in the prevailing educational cant, is called giving every poor
+boy (by free education, scholarships and other lures) his chance of
+climbing to the top of the ladder&#8212;as if success in life were one great
+tall ladder instead of many ladders of varying builds and heights. In
+attempting to justify modern educational policy, its victims are egged
+on too fast into a field of commercial, intellectual, or emotional
+stress for which they lack the fundamental grit, or rather for which
+the fundamental grit they do possess is not adapted, nor can be adapted
+in a generation. Their spirit, fine and valuable for the old purpose
+perhaps, is not suited to the new. Therefore, of good workmen <i>in
+posse</i> we make bad clerks and shopmen <i>in esse</i>; of good clerks
+detestable little bureaucrats or mean-minded commercial men, and so on.
+Possible wives and mothers we turn into female creatures. And Merrie
+England swarms with makeshift folk and breakdowns.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Happily nature, heredity, sometimes intervenes, and at adolescence the
+sharp boy, the pride of the examination room, develops into quite a
+nice commonplace young man, like the missionaries' nigger boy, and is
+saved, if he be not already committed to an unsuitable career.
+Otherwise, what mental deformity and slaughter! It was well said that
+education&#8212;what is called education&#8212;was the cruellest thing ever
+forced upon the poor. Mam Widger agrees. She knows her two boys are
+above the average in brains, but she says: &#34;I'd far rather for them to
+fend for themselves an' make gude fishermen like their father or gude
+sailors like their uncles, than for 'em to be forced on by somebody
+else to what they ain't fitted for. 'Tis God helps them as helps
+themselves, they du reckon, but I can't see as he helps them as is
+pushed.&#34;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+25
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Uncle Jake allows us fine weather for the Regatta. &#34;But when it du
+break up, after this yer logie [dull, hazy, calm] spell, look out!&#34; he
+says. &#34;Iss; look out!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>WINKLING</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The day before yesterday, we were having a yarn together on the Front.
+&#34;Must go t'morrow an' pick Jemima Cayley some wrinkles [periwinkles],&#34;
+he said. &#34;I got a lot o' work to do wi' my taties up to my plat
+[allotment], but I promised Jemima her should hae 'em for Regatta, an'
+her shall, if I lives to get 'em. Her says my wrinkles be twice so
+heavy as anybody else's what her has&#8212;an' so they be, proper gert
+gobbets! They t'other fellows don' know where to go for 'em, but I
+du&#8212;master wrinkles, waiting there for Jake to pick 'em. On'y I ain't
+goin' to tell they beer-barrels where 'em be. Not I!&#8212;Wude yu like to
+come? Nobody goes where I goes.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Where's that?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Ah! Down to Longo. Yu'll see, if yu comes.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Haven't yu got a mate for it then?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>UNCLE JAKE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;<i>Mate!</i> I'd rather go be myself than wi' some o' they
+bladder-headed friends o' brewers. <i>They</i> don' like wrinklin' wi'
+Jake; makes 'em blow too much when they has to carry a bushel o'
+wrinkles, like I've a-done often, over the rocks an' up the cliff, two
+or dree miles home. They Double-X Barrels can't du that. Lord! can't
+expect 'em to.&#8212;<i>We'll</i> go in the <i>Moondaisy</i> t'morrow, an'
+then if we can't sail home, we can row, an' if it comes on a fresh
+wind, we'll haul her up to Refuge Cove an' go'n look how my orchards be
+getting on.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is good to hear Uncle Jake talk about the work that nobody else will
+do. (The exposure alone would be too much for many of them.) His face
+wrinkles up within its grey picture-frame beard, his keen yet wistful
+eyes open wide, and he draws up that youthful body of his&#8212;clad in
+faded blue jumper and torn trousers&#8212;on which the head of a venerable
+old man seems so incongruously set. He is the owner of a big drifter
+which hardly pays her expenses; he feels that taking out pleasure
+parties is no work for a fisherman&#8212;'never wasn't used to be at the
+beck an' call o' they sort o' people when I wer young';&#8212;and therefore
+he picks up a living, laborious but very independent, between high and
+low tide mark for many miles east and west of Seacombe. Nobody learns
+exactly when or where he goes, nor what little valuables are in the old
+sack that he carries. He seldom sleeps for more than two hours on end;
+has breakfast at midnight, dinner in the early morning, and tea-supper
+only if it happens to be handy; and he feeds mainly on bread, cheese,
+sugar and much butter, with an occasional feast of half a dozen
+mackerel at once, or a skate or a small conger. Singularly
+straightforward in all his dealings, a little of the old West-country
+wrecking spirit yet survives in him, and he enjoys nothing better than
+smuggling jetsam past the coastguards. Social position saves no one
+from hearing what Uncle Jake thinks. His tongue is loaded with scorn
+and sarcasm, but his heart holds nothing but kindness. He will jeer and
+taunt a man off the Front, and give him money round the corner or food
+in house. His nicknames are terrible&#8212;they stick. Few would care to
+turn and fight such an old man, and if they did he would almost
+certainly knock them into the dust or throw them into the sea. He is
+childless; and, since her illness several years ago, his wife, an
+untidy woman with beautiful eyes, has been scatterbrained and more
+trouble than use, a spender of his savings. He nursed her himself for
+many months. He does most of the housework now. He may remark on his
+wife, if he knows you very well, but about the childlessness he never
+talks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At eight in the morning we made sail with the wind just north of east.
+The little <i>Moondaisy</i> was full of sacks, old boots and gear. Past
+Refuge Cove we sailed, past Dog Tooth Ledge, and across the out-ground
+of Landlock Bay, which holds the last long stretch of pebble beach for
+some miles down. Uncle Jake pointed to the western end of it. &#34;If ever
+yu'm catched down here by a sou'wester, yu can al'ays run ashore, just
+there&#8212;calm as a mill-pond no matter how 'tis blowing. Yu can beach
+there when yu can't beach to Seacombe for the roughness o' the sea.
+Aye, I've a-done it! But yu can't get out o' Landlock Bay, though I
+mind when you could climb up the cliff jest to the east'ard o' thic
+roozing [landslip]. Howsbe-ever, 'tis a heavy gale from the south-east
+on a long spring tide as'll drive 'ee out o' thic cave there where the
+beach urns up. Now yu knows that: 'tisn't all o'em does.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Similar bits of lore or reminiscence did he give me about every few
+yards of the coastline. Most merrily had the easterly wind and a
+following sea brought us down. Now we drew near the rocks, where at
+high tide the land drops sheer to the water. In the dry sunshine, such
+a sparkle was on the waves, such a shimmer on the high red cliffs, that
+it was hard to follow Uncle Jake when he said, as if he revered the
+place, &#34;<i>'Tis</i> an ironbound show! <i>'Tis</i> a shop! Poor devils,
+what gets throwed up here! But I know where ther's some fine copper
+bolts waiting for me. I'll hae 'em! I've had some on 'em, an' I'll hae
+the rest when they rots out o' the timbers. Year '63 that wreck
+was&#8212;lovely vessel, loaded wi' corn. I mind it well. <i>'Twas</i> a
+night!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>AN IRONBOUND SHOW</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We ran the <i>Moondaisy</i> ashore at Brandey-Keg Cove&#8212;a little beach
+running up into a deep gloomy cave where the smugglers used to store
+their cargoes and haul them up over the cliff. &#34;Us can walk down to
+Lobster Ledge an' west from there to Tatie Rock. I knows where they
+master gobbets be, if nobody an't had 'em&#8212;an' nobody an't. They don'
+like this iron-bound shop. They leaves it to Jake. But they wuden't, if
+they know'd what was here.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I ate some of my breakfast while Uncle Jake was changing his boots and
+shifting his outer clothing. He would accept only one of my small
+cheese sandwiches. &#34;I got some bread and butter here,&#34; he said, but I
+'took partic'lar notice,' as Tony puts it, that he ate none of the
+bread and butter. And he refused to take a second sip of my tea because
+his sensitive nose detected that there had been whiskey in the bottle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we walked along the rocks, he placed above high-tide mark what bits
+of wreckage he could find, and kept a sharp look-out for any rabbits
+which might have fallen over the cliff. The only two we found, however,
+had been partially eaten by sea-gulls and rats. &#34;Let 'em hae 'em an'
+welcome,&#34; said Uncle Jake. &#34;The winter's coming. I can't think how they
+poor gulls lives when all the sea round about is a hustle o' froth. I
+al'ays feeds 'em when I can. Don't yu think that <i>they</i> gets
+hungry tu?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Lobster Ledge&#8212;a jumble of peaked rocks with pools between&#8212;he left
+his sack conspicuously on the top of a high stone, and hopped&#8212;seemed
+to hop&#8212;down to a pool. &#34;They'm here!&#34; he cried. I heard them
+clatter-clatter into his old cake tin, and then a tin-full rattle into
+his sack. On those rocks, where few can step at all without great care,
+he raced about, bent down double, and jumped and glided as actively as
+an acrobat&#8212;a veritable rock-man. &#34;Come here!&#34; he called. &#34;Jest yu turn
+over thic stone. Ther's some there. My senses, what gobbets they be! If
+they ther fuddle-heads what goes nosing about Broken Rocks, on'y
+know'd....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Underneath the stone, clinging to it and lying on the bed of the pool,
+were so many large winkles that instead of picking them out, I found it
+quicker to sweep up handfuls of loose stuff and then to pick out the
+refuse from the winkles. When Uncle Jake came across an unusually good
+pocket he would call me to it and hop on somewhere else. There was an
+element of sport in catching the dull-looking gobbets so many together.
+I soon got to know the likely stones&#8212;heavy ones that wanted coaxing
+over,&#8212;and discovered also that the winkles hide themselves in a green,
+rather gelatinous weed, fuzzy like kale tops, from which they can be
+combed with the fingers. They love, too, a shadowed pool which is
+tainted a little, but not too much, by decaying vegetable matter. Uncle
+Jake likes the stones turned back and then replaced 'as you finds 'em.'
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>WHAT GOBBETS THEY BE!</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I emptied my baler, holding perhaps a quart, into the ballast-bag. How
+one's back ached! How old and rheumaticy had one's knees suddenly
+become! Uncle Jake feels nothing of that, for all his sixty-five years.
+He still skipped from pool to pool. He flung me a lobster. &#34;There! put
+that in your bag for tay. Tide's dead low. The wind's dying away: sun's
+burnt it up. Shuden' wonder if it don't come in sou'west, an' if it du
+we'll hae a fair wind home along.&#8212;Well, how du 'ee like it? Eh?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;All right.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Ah! yu ought to be down here in the winter, like I been, when you got
+to put your hands wet into your pockets to get 'em warm enough to feel
+the gobbets&#8212;aye, to hold 'em! Then carry 'em five mile home on your
+back to make 'ee warm again.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So we went on: grab, grab, grab! clatter-clatter! rattle! We talked
+less and worked harder, because we were tired. The tide crept up. The
+wind veered to south-east and strengthened. &#34;'Tis time to be off out of
+thees yer,&#34; said Uncle Jake. &#34;The lop'll rise when the flid tide makes.
+Yu may know everything there is to know about fishing, but,&#34; he added
+grimly, &#34;if yu don' know when to be off, 'twill all o'it be no gude to
+'ee some day. Blast thees wind! We'll hae to row home now, or ratch out
+a couple o' miles to fetch in.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We shouldered our sacks for the half-mile walk to the <i>Moondaisy</i>.
+Walk.... Scramble! Uncle Jake seemed to glide from rock to rock, but
+with two or three stone weight awkwardly perched on my shoulder, the
+wet running down my neck and an arm going numb, I slithered down the
+weed-covered slopes in a very breakneck fashion. I rather felt for the
+bladderheads who refuse to go wrinkling far from home.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>CAUGHT BY THE TIDE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Afloat again, we used the winkles for ballast in place of shingle. The
+lop <i>had</i> made, and was against us. We rowed up Landlock Bay to
+the western side of Dog Tooth Ledge. Uncle Jake made an exclamation and
+stood up. &#34;What's that? Whoever's that? There! down there to Lobster
+Ledge! A gen'leman an' lady, looks so. How did us come to miss they?
+Look! They'm sittin' down, the fules!&#8212;Hi, yu! Hi! Hi!&#8212;They'm catched.
+When yu see the water washing over the Dog's Tooth, yu can't get round
+the ledge wi'out swimming.&#8212;Hi, yu! Hi!&#8212;They'm in for a night o'it
+sure, till the tide falls, if we don' take 'em round to Refuge Cove.
+Ther's nowhere there where they be, to get upon land.&#8212;Hi! Hi!
+Yu!&#8212;They'm mazed. An' her an't got no stockings on nuther.&#8212;Hi! hi!
+Hurry up!&#8212;Can't bide here all day. The flid and the sea's making
+fast.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They came on at a leisurely pace. The Dog's Tooth was continuously
+awash. Spray broke on it. &#34;D'yu know,&#34; said Uncle Jake when they were
+near enough, &#34;that yu'm catched by the tide? Yu'm in for a night o'it
+on this yer beach, wi'out yu swims round the ledge or lets we row yu to
+the lane in Refuge Cove. Yu can't get up on land herefrom.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Oh....&#34; said the man. &#34;We'd better come on board your boat then.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It took Uncle Jake nearly half-an-hour to row the three-quarters of a
+mile across the tide-rip on the ledge and into Refuge Cove. I carefully
+refrained from doing anything to lead them to suppose that they were
+aboard other than a fishing boat. It was Uncle Jake's expedition: his
+the prospective reward. When I helped the man ashore, he put some
+coppers into my hand. &#34;There's threepence for the old man's tobacco,&#34;
+he said with an air of great benevolence. I was too surprised to speak:
+I pushed off and then burst into a laugh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What did 'er give 'ee?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Threepence. <i>Threepence!</i> For your tobacco!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Thank yu. I don't use tobacco. Yu'd better keep thic donation. They'd
+ha' catched their death o' cold there all night, an' there ain't no
+other boats down here along, nor won't be. That's what they reckons
+their bloody lives be worth, an' that's what the lives of the likes o'
+they <i>be</i> worth, tu! Dreepence! My senses....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We roared with laughter. It put heart into us for our stiff row home
+against wind, wave and tide. When I went for'ard to place the cut-rope
+ready, Uncle Jake had to call me aft again: spite of his strength the
+boat was being beaten to leeward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was nearly four o'clock when we had hauled up and were carrying the
+winkles on our backs down one of the untidy little roadways into Under
+Town. No dinner or high-tea was waiting for Uncle Jake. The house was
+unswept. How draggled the little bits of fern in the old china pots
+looked! The fire was out; the hearth piled up with ashes; and on the
+table stood a basin of potatoes in water, most of them unpeeled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Uncle Jake came to a standstill, acutely alive in the midst of a
+domestic deadness. He raised himself upright beneath his load of
+winkles. &#34;That's what I got to put up wi',&#34; he said. &#34;An't had a bite
+since breakfast at four by the clock this morning, 'cept thic sandwich
+o' yours. Tis a wonder how I du put up wi' it. I don' know for sure.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>MEASURING UP</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Thees is what I got to put up wi'!&#34; he repeated when Mrs Jake came in
+from a neighbour's.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I forgot,&#34; she said with a gay high-pitched little laugh which had in
+it a tang of acquiescent despair&#8212;the echo of a mind that has ceased
+fighting anything, even itself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Forgot! Yu forgets!&#34; Then in a softer tone: &#34;Gie us the quart cup.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He emptied my winkles out upon the stone floor, knelt down, and
+measured them back into the ballast-bag: &#34;one&#8212;two&#8212;three&#8212;four, that's
+one&#8212;five&#8212;six&#8212;seven&#8212;eight, that's two pecks&#8212;nine&#8212;ten&#8212;half a peck
+over; good for you, skipper!&#34; He had four pecks himself, together with
+several small lobsters which he threw out to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;But you'll eat those....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No, I shan't. Don't want 'em. Take 'em in home for yer tay.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he hunted out of an inside breast-pocket a screw of newspaper, and
+from it took a half-crown piece:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;That's your share.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;But....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Go on! If you hadn' a-come I should ha' been the poorer by more'n
+that, an' that's what one o' they beery bladderheads would ha' had if
+they'd a-come&#8212;on'y I won't hae 'em 'long wi' me. Better yu to hae it
+than one o' they, to gie to the brewer. I wishes 'ee to take it. Yu've
+earned it, an' thank yu for your help. <i>I</i> done all right out
+o'it.&#34;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+26
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Regatta has gone off well. The day was fine, the wind nor'west and
+not too squally. There was a brave show of bunting; very many people
+and several bands came down to the short Front; and there were races on
+the water, in the water, and, in the evening, on land. The sea
+sparkled. The place was all of a flutter. Uncle Jake, irritated by the
+invasion of his beach, became most scornful over the abundance of high
+starched collars, and the kid gloves of the shop-assistants. Some of
+the young Seacombe braves collected round to tease him and, if
+possible, to work him into one of his famous passions. But they dared
+not so much as nudge him; he is too earnest, too vigorous. He lashed
+them off with his tongue. And when a dinghy capsized through trying to
+sail off the wind in a squall, it was the old man who was quickest at
+the water's edge with a punt, and first on the spot, although a
+four-oared boat raced out to the rescue.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>REGATTA</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some of the Widgers won races, I believe. One takes no great note of
+prizes: they are too small. The Regatta is not primarily an affair of
+the fisherfolk; to take any great part in it would be to neglect their
+own work; and when they do race, they have a neat method of defeating
+the patronage of the townsfolk who provide prize-money in order that
+they and the visitors may enjoy the spectacle of fishermen (in fisher
+phrase) pulling their insides out for nort. The prize-money is pooled
+and divided among all the competitors. In consequence, the races are
+rowed and sailed with great dignity, and many of the visitors excite
+themselves halfway to delirium over the extreme&#8212;the make-believe
+closeness of the finishes. It is not very sporting perhaps, but
+indulgence in the sporting spirit is for those who can afford it. The
+Seacombe fisherfolk can't.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A confounding number of the Widger family and its connexions arrived by
+boat, road and rail. Two or three grand teas were provided one after
+the other. Mrs Widger&#8212;looking really very young, alert, and
+pretty&#8212;packed the children off to the beach with gentry-cakes in their
+hands. Well she did so, for every chair in the kitchen was occupied by
+some relative, and the display of best clothes was most alarming. Worst
+of all, one party had brought the family idiot&#8212;a simpering, lollopy
+creature, stiff in the wrong places, who could not feed himself
+properly. With a vigorous tapping of the forehead, he was pointed out
+to me. &#34;He's a little deeficient, you know, sir&#8212;something lacking.&#34;
+The idiot, finding himself the centre of attraction, fairly crowed with
+delight. &#34;Ou-ah!&#34; he went. &#34;Ou-ah! ou-ah!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the pretext that a boat wanted hauling up, I escaped, with a piece
+of bread and jam in my hand, like the children.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A man of slightly unsober dignity accosted me in the Gut, and asked if
+Jim somebody-or-other was within. &#34;Him and me don't speak, nor eet
+meet,&#34; he explained. &#34;I won't hae nort to do wi' he, nor enter the
+house where he is, for all we be related.&#8212;Come an' have a drink 'long
+wi' me, sir; now du; I asks 'ee.&#8212;'Tis safer, yu know, for us not to
+meet.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the second time I lied, and escaped.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE VETERANS' RACE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Uncle Jake ran up from the beach. &#34;Yer!&#34; he said, &#34;there's a race to
+Saltmeadow, a veteran's race, for men over fifty. Yu come wi' me, an'
+I'll go in for it&#8212;an' beat the lot, I will. I knows I can.&#34; Off we
+went, Uncle Jake in a high excitement. At the centre of the big oblong
+ring, two clean-built jumpers, men in the heyday of their strength,
+were making a local record for the high jump. Uncle Jake shouted out
+praise and sympathy to them. We found our way to where the veterans
+were grouped together, encouraging each other to enter with much foul
+language&#8212;which made them feel young again, no doubt. What a lot they
+were! some aged to thinness, others become fat and piggish. Only Uncle
+Jake appeared quite sound in wind and limb. He took off his boots and
+stockings, walked into the ring with a fine imitation of the athlete's
+swagger combined with a curious touch of shyness. &#34;Go it Uncle Jake!&#34;
+they shouted. At the end of the first lap, he found himself so far
+ahead that he threw his old round sailor's cap high into the air and
+caught it, and he skipped along to the winning-post like a young lamb.
+A great cheer was echoed from cliff to cliff. Uncle Jake has not spoken
+his mind all his life for nothing. Seacombe does not unanimously like
+him, but it has the sense to be rather proud of him. A veterans' race
+is usually a sad spectacle, a grotesque <i>memento mori</i>: for Uncle
+Jake 'twas a triumph.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next great sight of the evening was to watch the fishermen from
+other villages put off to their boats. Most of them were 'half seas
+over,' some nearly helpless. They were thrown aboard from the punts and
+had their sails hoisted for them; or, if they did it themselves, it was
+with most comic jerks. The gods, who undoubtedly have a tenderness for
+drunkards&#8212;why not?&#8212;must have looked after them, for no news has come
+of any accident.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On returning in house, I met Tony with several of his men relatives. He
+drew me aside. &#34;Maybe I'll come home drunk to-night, but I promise 'ee
+I won't disturb 'ee, an' if yu hears ort&#8212;well, yu'll know, won' 'ee?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For some reason not easily to be fathomed his kindly warning made me
+feel ashamed of my own sobriety, ashamed that I dared not 'go on the
+bust' with him. I firmly believe that it does a man good to 'go on the
+bust' occasionally. It develops fellow-feeling. And besides, who has
+the right to cast a stone at a man for snatching a little jollity when
+he may, be it alcoholic or not? The truth is, that Tony, who has no
+craving for drink, was prepared to plunge into the fastest current of
+the life around him, and to take his chance, whilst I, for niggardly,
+self-preservative, prudential reasons, was not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, he came home quite sober.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+27
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE SQUARE'S AWAKENING</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up-country, next week, I shall greatly miss my window overlooking
+Alexandra Square. I have lived (rebelliously) in suburban streets where
+only clattering feet, tradesmen's carts and pitiful street singers
+broke the monotony; in a Paris <i>chambre &#224; gar&#231;on, au sixi&#232;me</i>,
+where the view was roofs and the noise of the city was attenuated to a
+murmur; in country houses which looked out on sweeps of hill, down,
+vale and sea, so changeable and lovely that they were dreamlike and as
+a dream abide in the memory.... Here I have quick human life just below
+my window, and&#8212;up the Gut&#8212;a view of the sea unbroken hence to the
+horizon; a patch of water framed on three sides by straight walls and
+on the fourth by the sky-line; a miniature ocean across which the
+drifters sail to the western offing, and the little boats curvet to and
+fro, and
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>The stately ships go on</p>
+<p>To their haven under the hill.</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+There is always, here, a sound of the sea. When, at night, the Square
+is still, it seems to advance, to come nearer, to be claiming one for
+its own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the Square, though still at night compared with daytime, is never
+dead, never absolutely asleep. Fishermen returning from sea crunch on
+the gravel. Lights in the windows (most of the people seem to burn
+night lamps) give it a cosy appearance; the cats make one think that
+fiends are pouring out of hell, through a hole in the roadway. Peep o'
+day is the stillest time of all. The cats seat themselves on walls.
+Sparrows chirp sleepily. Some rooks and a hoary-headed jackdaw come
+down from the trees nearby, quarter the roadway for garbage, and fly
+away croaking. Busy starlings follow. If the weather is hard and fish
+offal scarce on the beach, the gulls will pay us a supercilious visit.
+About six o'clock the children begin singing in bed, and soon
+afterwards one hears the familiar conversation of families getting up.
+&#34;Edie! what for the Lord's sake be yu doing? Yu'll catch your death o'
+cold. Johnnie, if yu don't make haste, I'll knock your head off, I
+will!&#34; A child or two may cry, but on the whole their merriment does
+not seem greatly damped by their mothers' blood-curdling threats. I
+hear also, but not very often, the shrill wailing monotone, the weep
+dissolved in a shout, of a woman upbraiding her man for the previous
+night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The children being dressed, but not washed (it is useless to wash the
+average child very long before sending it off to school), they run out
+to the beach to see what there is to be seen and to inspect the
+ash-buckets for treasure. An ash-bucket is Eldorado to them. If nothing
+is happening, are they at a loss for something to do? By no means. They
+come in house, fetch out tin cans, and beat them in a procession round
+the Square.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The milkmen arrive, then several greengrocers. One would think that
+Under Town lived on vegetables. The explanation is that the
+greengrocers can come here, and, in tidying up their carts, can throw
+their refuse upon the roadway, as they would not be allowed to do in
+'higher class' streets. They swear genially at the housewives, and are
+forgiven.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the work and gossip of the day goes on, with a slight quieting down
+in the afternoon and an incredible amount of conversation after work,
+in the evening.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE ALEXANDRA BACK-DOOR</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On Sundays, the great fact of best clothes lends a different and, to my
+mind, a less pleasant&#8212;a harder&#8212;tone to the children's voices. But
+their merriment cannot wholly be suppressed. Did those who dislike the
+Salvation Army wish to illustrate its shortcomings, they could find a
+biting satire ready-made by the children of Under Town. A fat small boy
+comes round here, who has attentively studied the meetings; who can
+copy the canting, up-and-down, gentle-explosive, the <i>Behold I am
+saved, ye sinners</i>! tone to a nicety. He marches at the head of a
+band of serious infants who bear rags, tied to sticks and parasols, as
+banners. Every now and then he circles them to a standstill for an
+harangue about blood, fire and Jesus. (It is the gory part which
+delights him.) Then the procession re-forms, imitating brass
+instruments as unbroken voices can, and singing a Salvation hymn. They
+are earnest, the children; except Tommy Widger, whose irrepressible
+spirit causes him to march in the rear with a mocking dance and an
+infinitely grotesque squint. He is a pagan. He can turn the children's
+serious imitation into roaring Aristophanic farce. He represents the
+healthful laughing element of an age wherein rest from sorrow is too
+much sought in fever. He infects us all with jollity.
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+The back-door of the Alexandra, which opens on the Gut, is my home
+comedy. It is strangely fascinating; sad in a way, but very human; for
+nothing on earth, except one or two of the very great things of life,
+is so democratic as the back-door of a public house. Soon after
+breakfast, or even before, the tradesmen sneak round for their
+pick-me-ups. Then the housewives go for their jugs of ale and stout.
+Some people never enter the Alexandra except by the back way. They
+march down the Gut as if on important business; then, in the twinkling
+of an eye, they are gone within. One worn little woman, who wears a
+loose cape and a squalid sailor hat, walks up and down the Gut till it
+is completely clear, then jumps into the door, and closes it very
+quietly. When she comes out again it is as a rabbit comes from a
+bolt-hole when a ferret is just behind. She runs five yards, stands
+still, looks up and down, and tries very hard to walk home
+unconcernedly. Sunday evenings, she hangs about outside until the bar
+is opened. With the turn of the key, in she goes. Once a servant,
+gossiping with her sailorman, kept the little woman outside for fully
+ten minutes after the lock was shot back. Poor little woman, how great
+her craving must be!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Last week, I saw a policeman standing at the top of the Gut. Up he
+looked; down he looked; Seacombe was orderly. Stepping as if to arrest
+a malefactor, he marched down the Gut.... Where was the policeman? A
+battered billycock and a rakish pipe looked round the corner, then
+withdrew. The battered billycock knew where the policeman was. The
+price of a glass, and billycock would have been there too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was glad; for a few days before that the same policeman had arrested
+a man by flinging him halfway across the street into the mud. It was
+only a tramp. His witnesses, being poor people, dared not volunteer to
+give evidence on his behalf, and would not have been believed had they
+done so. He was sentenced to fourteen days: drunk and incapable,
+abusive moreover. A drunkard cannot legally be arrested unless he is
+also incapable or disorderly. It used to be a trick of the police to
+shadow a harmless <i>Weary Willie</i> until he happened to stumble, or
+even to butt him down themselves. He then becomes drunk and incapable
+within the meaning of the act, for, if the magistrate should doubt, is
+there not dirt on his clothes? Obviously, circumstantially, he was
+incapable. <i>He</i>, of course, must be a poor man. The trick is not
+safe with tradesmen. These things are commonplaces amongst the poor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But billycock hat will not forget!
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+28
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>MACKEREL DRIFTING</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yesterday morning early there was a great excitement along the beach.
+Drift-boats could be seen in the offing. &#34;I tell thee what 'tis,&#34; they
+said, &#34;the whiting be in an' us chaps an't been out to look for 'em. Us
+don't du nort nowadays like us used tu.&#34; Later on, however, we heard
+that the Plymouth drifters had been out after an autumn shoal of
+mackerel, had caught some thousands and had made good prices. The
+season for mackerel drifting here usually ends with July or August, but
+good October mackerel, mixed with herring, have occasionally been
+caught. Tony, John and myself decided to put to sea. When the other
+boats saw our fleet of nets being hauled aboard (in a furious hurry),
+they fitted out too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We shoved off just before dark. The wind was strongish WSW.&#8212;off land,
+that is&#8212;so that inshore the sea was almost calm, except for the swell
+running in from outside. What it was like outside the white horses and
+the wind-streaks showed. Hardly had we gone half a mile before we heard
+the queer clutching noise which meant that a strong puff of wind had
+compelled Tony to let the sheet fly. The squall past, he hauled it in
+again, put his legs across the stern and hung on. We sailed eight miles
+from land in ten minutes under the hour&#8212;speed, that, for a
+twenty-two-foot open boat with its mainsail reefed! Where we downhauled
+to shoot the nets, the sea, unsheltered by cliffs and headlands,
+was&#8212;as Tony beautifully put it&#8212;'rising all up in heaps.' Whilst I was
+trying to keep the boat before the wind, for net-shooting, a great
+comber plopped over the stern right upon my back. The sky was weird.
+Great wind-drifts of rain-cloud constantly spread out from the west,
+and wolves, higher up in the sky, were driving across the moon. We
+heated tea, but did not try to sleep. Tony and John kept up a curious
+dialogue. &#34;What do 'ee think o' it, then?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Tisn't vitty. I said so all along.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>HAULING INBOARD</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;If a skat o' rain comes&#8212;and 'tis raining on land, seems so&#8212;the
+wind'll back out to sou'west, an' us'll hae to rin for it. A perty
+lop'll get up tu, an' we'm more'n a mile from land.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Us'll haul in be 'leven. No gude hanging on out here. If the wind
+<i>du</i> back....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have never heard them talk so much about the weather. And all the
+while, the sky drove into splendid cloud-forms, all windy, nearly all
+rainy. We lost the Eddystone light, then lost the Seacombe light and
+recovered the former, as a storm drifted along shore. From time to time
+we thought the wind was backing a bit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Supper, for me, had to be crammed down on a rather queasy stomach.
+&#34;We'm all ways to once!&#34; Tony remarked. The wind did definitely back a
+point or two. &#34;Only let it once die away,&#34; said Tony in the tone of
+<i>I told you so</i>; &#34;then yu'll see how it can spring from the
+sou'west when 'tis a-minded.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One minute I wished myself home, safe in bed, and thought with
+grotesque grief of some unfinished work. Next minute, I knew that I
+would not have missed the night out there for any consideration. The
+grey, slightly sheeny boil of the sea around us; the sweeping savagery
+of the sky; the intimacy of the waters....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But we were all relieved when eleven o'clock came. The watchfulness was
+a strain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When one is steering instead of hauling, the getting-in of nine
+forty-fathom nets seems interminable. One net, two nets, three nets&#8212;a
+third of nine,&#8212;four, five&#8212;more than half the fleet,&#8212;six&#8212;two-thirds
+of nine,&#8212;seven, eight&#8212;nine all but one;&#8212;and so on, with an
+occasional wave coming inboard, until the very last square buoy comes
+bobbing towards the boat; hand over hand, buoy by buoy, net by net,
+holding fast when the pull of the tide is too strong, and pausing
+irritably to pick out the fish. We stepped the great mast, shifted all
+the ballast to wind'ard. John came aft to steer, and seated himself on
+the counter, a strangely powerful, statuesque figure in his wet
+oilskins. &#34;Have 'ee got the sheet in yer hand?&#34; Tony called out from
+the bows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+John did not trouble to reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Have 'ee got the sheet in yer hand, John?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No, I an't! What the hell do 'ee want the sheet for? Wind's abeam.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Might want it bad,&#34; said Tony.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A REMBRANDTESQUE PICTURE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We left it fast however; and with the same, an elemental passion took
+possession of my mind; ousted all else. I had been anxious about the
+sheet, had thought John foolhardy. Now I didn't care. I could have
+cried out aloud for joy as the brave old craft rose to the seas with a
+marvellous easy motion and the waves came skatting in over the bows.
+Before long, I was on my knees with the baler; John was getting every
+inch out of the wind, and Tony was standing abaft the nets with the
+sheet dangling through his hand. By the light of the riding-lamp on the
+mizzen mast (its glass patched with an old jam cover), they in their
+angular wet oil-skins&#8212;the rain was pelting&#8212;and the rich wet brown of
+the boat's varnish, made a wonderful Rembrandtesque picture. I hardly
+know how long we were sailing home; it slipped my mind to take the
+time. About two o'clock I was halfway down the beach with Tony cursing
+above me and John doing the same below. Someone had 'messed up' our
+capstan wire. While Tony was putting that right in the dark&#8212;and
+pinching his fingers severely&#8212;the boat washed broadside on and began
+to fill. We had only five dozen fish. They sold badly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In time, and with practice, I could, I believe, do most that these
+fishermen do except one thing: I doubt I could stand the racket of my
+own thoughts. Tony and John would go out to-night, to-morrow, every
+night. But I have slept so dead (not from bodily tiredness) that, the
+door being bolted against the children, they were unable to waken me
+for dinner, and in the end Tony told them to 'let the poor beast bide.'
+Of what nature was that passion, so exultant and so tiring? Are these
+fishermen so used to it that they 'don't take much note o'it'? For they
+feel it. I have seen it in their faces. One can always tell. The eyes
+widen and brighten; hasty movements become so desperately cool. If what
+was an episode in my life, is part and parcel of theirs, how much the
+better for <i>them</i>!
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+29
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To-day the sea passion, or whatever it is, came again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While I was asleep, the wind backed and freshened. Balks of wood from a
+naval target kept washing in. Balks make winter firing when coal is
+dear and money scarce. Boats had been bringing them in all the morning,
+till the sea became too rough. Tony had none however. In the afternoon
+he complained bitterly:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;They all got some wude but me, an' us an't got enough in house for the
+winter nuther.&#34; Just then we saw a large piece washing along on the
+flood tide over the outside of Broken Rocks. &#34;Get a rope&#8212;grass rope,
+mind. Down with her. The <i>Cock Robin</i>! Quick. Jump aboard. Take
+oars. Hurry up casn'? Get hold thic oar. Look out!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>OUT AFTER FLOTSAM</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No time to wait for a smooth. Tony shoved the <i>Cock Robin</i> into a
+surf we should not otherwise have thought of facing. As it turned out,
+we got off better than we usually do in only a moderate sea, though we
+should have capsized to a certainty had the boat sheered. 'Twas, &#34;Look
+out! Damme, look out! Here's a swell coming! Get her head to it or we'm
+over. Gude for us!&#34; Some of the waves, rising and topping in the
+shallow water over the rocks, seemed to make the <i>Cock Robin</i> sit
+upright on her stern, like a dog begging, and the higher the seas rose
+the more we gloried in them. Sufficient for the moment was the wave
+thereof. We swore at each other in a sort of chant. I had to repress an
+impulse to jump overboard and swim to the balk, instead of trying to
+work up to it with a boat that had, every other moment, to be turned
+bows on to the sea. The slightest error of judgment on Tony's part, and
+we should indeed have swum for it. I had such a curious feeling of
+being <i>in</i> the sea&#8212;as much a part of it as the waves
+themselves&#8212;that the affair ceased to be a struggle. It became a
+glorious great big game. Yet for work we were so cool that, though we
+towed our balk ashore and shoved off after another, we hardly got wet
+above the knees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We were beside ourselves, and all ourselves. Where does that exultant
+feeling, that devil-beyond-oneself, come from? From what depth of human
+personality does it uprise, whirling, like those primitive
+passions&#8212;sex, hunger, rage, fear&#8212;which may be boxed up awhile by the
+will, but which, once unloosed, sweep the will aside and carry one off
+like froth in a gale, until physical exhaustion sets in and allows the
+will to re-assert itself? One understands the evolution of the
+primitive self-preservative and race-preservative passions. How has
+this latent daredevilry become so implanted in us that it rises from
+the bottom depths of one's nature; and how has it become ordinarily so
+hidden?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Above all what is the effect of this passion on seafaring men? To say
+that familiarity breeds contempt is&#8212;even if it be correct&#8212;to beg the
+question. What is the effect of that familiarity? It might be said that
+they are the subjects of a sub-acute, persistent form of the
+daredevilry which uprose in me unexpectedly and acutely. But again, the
+sub-acute lifelong form of it is likely to have the greater influence
+on a man's self, on his morale and his character. Hence, I believe, the
+width of these men, their largeness. It was good to hear Tony talk in
+the most matter-of-fact manner (yet with a touch of reverence, as
+towards an ever-possible contingency) of a Salcombe fisherman who was
+drowned. &#34;Her was drownded all through his own carelessness, and didn't
+rise in the water for a month. ('Tis nine days down and nine days up,
+wi' the crab bites out of 'ee, as a rule.) An' he wer carried up by the
+tide an' collected, like, out o' the water just at the back o' his own
+house. Nice quiet chap he was.&#34; That coolness of speech one saw
+plainly, is the outcome not of contempt, still less of non-feeling, but
+of familiarity, of a breadth of mind in looking at the catastrophe. I
+have not noticed such breadth of mind elsewhere except among those who
+live precariously and the few of very great religious faith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An hour after bringing in the balks, we were hauling the boats over the
+wall, and at high tide the seas swept across the road.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+30
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A SING-SONG</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Many an evening we have had small sing-songs in the kitchen. To-night,
+on account of my going and the need to give me a cheery send-off, we
+had quite a concert. Tony was star.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Supper being pushed back on the table and a piece of wreckage flung on
+the fire, he made himself ready by taking off his soaked boots and
+stockings, and plumping his feet on Mam Widger's lap; then brought
+himself into the vocal mood with a long rigmarole that he used to
+recite with the Mummers at Christmas time. Soon we were humming,
+whistling and singing &#34;Sweet Evelina,&#34; whose sole musical merit is that
+her chorus goes with a swing. The fire crackled and burnt blue. The
+fragrant steam of the grog rose to the ceiling and settled on the
+window. We leaned right back in our chairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Missis,&#34; said Tony, &#34;I feels like zingin' to-night.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Wait a minute while I shuts the door, else they kids'll be down for
+more supper.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Us got it, an't us?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yes, but <i>they</i>'ve had enough.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Tony sings, he throws his head back and closes his eyes, so that,
+but for the motions of his mouth, he looks asleep, even deathlike, and
+is, in fact, withdrawn into himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I think he sees his songs, as well as sings them. I often wonder what
+pictures are flitting through his mind beneath (as I imagine) the place
+where the thick grizzled hair thins to the red forehead. His voice is a
+high tenor. I make accompaniment an octave below, whilst Mrs Widger&#8212;a
+little nasal in tone and not infrequently adrift in tune&#8212;supports him
+from above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We sang &#34;The Poor Smuggler's Boy&#34;&#8212;
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Your pity I crave,</p>
+<p class="i2">Won't you give me employ?</p>
+<p>Or forlorn I must wander,</p>
+<p class="i2">Said the poor smuggler's boy.</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+Then the &#34;Skipper and his Boy&#34;&#8212;
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Over the mounting waves so 'igh,</p>
+<p>We'll sail together, my boy and I-I,</p>
+<p>We'll sail together, my bo-oy and I!</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Have 'ee wrote to George?&#34; Tony asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Tis your place to du that.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I an't got time....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Thee asn't got time for nort!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>The fisher's is a merry life!</p>
+<p class="i4">Blow, winds, blow!</p>
+<p>The fisher and his vitty wife!</p>
+<p class="i4">Row, boys, row!</p>
+<p>He drives no plough on stubborn land,</p>
+<p>His fruits are ready to his hand.</p>
+<p>No nipping frosts his orchards fear,</p>
+<p>He has his autumn all the year,</p>
+<p class="i4">Blow, winds, blow!</p></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>The farmer has his rent to pay,</p>
+<p class="i4">Blow, winds, blow!</p>
+<p>And seeds to purchase every day,</p>
+<p class="i4">Row, boys, row!</p>
+<p>But he who farms the rolling deep,</p>
+<p>He never sows, can always reap,</p>
+<p>The ocean's fields are fair and free,</p>
+<p>There ain't no rent days on the sea;</p>
+<p class="i2">The fisher's is a merry life!</p>
+<p class="i4">Blow, winds, blow!</p>
+<p class="i4">Blow, damn ye, blow!</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Aye!&#34; said Tony with conviction, &#34;thic's one side o'it.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn">&#34;<i>ROLLING HOME</i>&#34;</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He tried a note or two at different pitches, then struck with energy
+into the fine song, &#34;Rolling Home.&#34; (Who that has steered for England
+in a ship&#8212;and by ship I do not mean a bustling steam-packet or a
+floating hotel, but a ship to whose crew England stands for fresh food,
+women, wine, home.... Who that has so steered the course for England,
+does not feel a catch at his vitals on hearing the melody, at once
+plaintive and triumphant, of &#34;Rolling Home?&#34;)
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Pipe all hands to man the capstan, see your cables run down clear;</p>
+<p>Soon our ship will weigh her anchor, for old England's shores we steer;</p>
+<p>If we heave round with a will boys, soon our anchor it will trip,</p>
+<p>And across the briny ocean we will steer our gallant ship:</p>
+<p class="i8">Rolling home, rolling home!</p>
+<p class="i8">Rolling home across the sea!</p>
+<p class="i8">Rolling home to Merrie England!</p>
+<p class="i8">Rolling home, true love, to thee!</p></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Man the bars then with a will, boys, clap all hands that can clap on;</p>
+<p>As we heave around the capstan, we will sing this well-known song;</p>
+<p>It will bring back scenes and changes of this parting gift so rare;</p>
+<p>We shall hear sweet songs of music softly whispering through the air.</p>
+<p class="i8">Rolling home, rolling home!</p>
+<p class="i8">Rolling home across the sea!</p>
+<p class="i8">Rolling home to Merrie England!</p>
+<p class="i8">Rolling home, true love, to thee!</p></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Up aloft amid the rigging, as we sail the waters blue,</p>
+<p>Whilst we cross the briny ocean, we will always think of you;</p>
+<p>We will leave you our best wishes as we leave this rocky shore;</p>
+<p>We are bound for Merrie England, to return to you no more!</p>
+<p class="i8">Rolling home, rolling home!</p>
+<p class="i8">Rolling home, across the sea!</p>
+<p class="i8">Rolling home to Merrie England!</p>
+<p class="i8">Rolling home, my love to thee!</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+To Mrs Widger's great disgust, Tony has been learning <i>in bed</i> the
+correct words (he knew the tune) of &#34;Gay Spanish Ladies.&#34; That he gave
+us as a finale.
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Farewell and adieu to you, gay Spanish Ladies.</p>
+<p>Farewell and adieu to you, Ladies of Spain!</p>
+<p>For we've received orders for to sail for old England.</p>
+<p>But we hope in a short time to see you again.</p></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>We'll rant and we'll roar like true British heroes,</p>
+<p>We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt seas,</p>
+<p>Until we strike soundings in the Channel of old England.</p>
+<p>From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues....</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+How we did rant and roar the wonderful up-Channel verse, with its
+clever use of the high-sounding promontories of the south!
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>The first land we made, it was called the Deadman,</p>
+<p>Next Ram Head off Plymouth, Start, Portland and Wight,</p>
+<p>We passed up by Beachy, by Parley and Dungeness,</p>
+<p>And hove our ship to off the South Foreland light....</p></div></div>
+
+<p>
+Our glasses were empty. We drove out the cat, gutted some fish,
+extinguished the lamp, and came upstairs to the tune, repeated, of
+&#34;Rolling Home.&#34; All the tunes are ringing in my head.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>ART THAT IS LIVED</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There is something about this singing of sea-songs by a seafarer which
+makes them grip one extraordinarily. They are far from perfect in
+execution, they are not always quite in tune, especially on Tony's high
+notes, yet, I am certain, they are as artistic in the best sense as any
+of the fine music I have heard. Tony sings with imagination: he sees,
+<i>lives</i> what he is singing. Between this sort of song and most,
+there is much the same difference as between going abroad, and reading
+a book of travels; or between singing folk-songs with the folk and
+twittering bowdlerised versions in a drawing-room. However imperfect
+technically, Tony's songs are an expression of the life he lives,
+rather than an excursion into the realms of art&#8212;into the expression of
+other kinds of life&#8212;with temporarily stimulated and projected
+imagination. His art is perpetual creation, not repetition of a thing
+created once and for all. The art that is <i>lived</i>, howsoever
+imperfect, has an advantage over the most finished art that is merely
+repeated. Next after the music of, as one might say, superhuman
+creative force&#8212;like Bach's and Beethoven's&#8212;comes this kind, of
+Tony's.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Cultured people talk about the artistic tastes of the poor, would have
+them read&#8212;well, they don't quite know what&#8212;something 'good,'
+something namely that appeals to the cultured. It has always been my
+experience in much lending of books, that the poor will read the
+literature of life's fundamental daily realities quickly enough, once
+they know of its existence. What they will not read, what in the
+struggle for existence they cannot waste time over, is the literature
+of the <i>etceteras</i> of life, the decorations, the vapourings. Sane
+minds, like healthy bodies, crave strong meats, and the strong meats of
+literature are usually the worst cooked. I am inclined to think that
+the taste of the poor, the uneducated, is on the right lines, though
+undeveloped, whilst the taste of the educated consists of beautifully
+developed wrongness, an exquisite secession from reality. As Nietzsche
+pointed out, degenerates love narcotics; something to make them forget
+life, not face it. Their meats must be strange and peptonized.
+Therefore they hate, they are afraid of, the greatest things in
+life&#8212;the commonplace. Much culture has debilitated them. Rank life
+would kill them&#8212;or save them.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="chapter">
+VI
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="sc">Salisbury</span>,<br>
+<i>October</i>.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+1
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is just at dawn that the coming day declares itself most plainly;
+not earlier, not later. This morning at peep o' day the wind was NNW.,
+the air delicate and peaceful. A band of dirty red water washed in
+fantastic outline along the cliffs. The sea, with its calm great
+rollers, bore upon it only the rags of last night's fury; as if it had
+been less a part of the storm than a thing buffeted by the storm, and
+now glad to sink into tranquillity. The air was scented with land
+smells. Shafts of the dawn's sunlight beamed across it. Three punts put
+off to find out if the lobster-pots had been washed away; the sea had
+its little boats upon it again. But the sky, to the SW., was looking
+very wild. The wind was SW. in the offing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While we were at breakfast a southerly squall burst open the kitchen
+door. Mrs Widger got up to see what child it was. A screaming sea-gull
+mocked her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The storm came. The trees by the railway bowed and tossed. Rain
+spattered against the carriage windows. Dead leaves scurried by. I
+wanted to get out, to go back. I wanted to know whether Tony was at
+sea. Here, at Salisbury they are already talking about the 'great
+storm'; some of the beautiful elms are down. What must the storm have
+been at Seacombe!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Curiously, I felt, the first time for years, as if I were leaving home
+for boarding school&#8212;the warmth behind, the chill in front. I smelt
+again the rank soft-soap in the great bare schoolrooms.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+2
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A postcard from Tony&#8212;
+</p>
+<div class="blockquote">
+<p>
+&#34;quite please to get your letter this morning it as been rough ever
+since you left Seacombe it was a gale the night you went Back the sea
+was all in over and knocking the boats about the road. I haven been out
+sea sinsce it is still rough hear now it is blowing a gale of wind I
+expect we shall get some witing and herring in the bay when the weather
+get fine the sea hear is like the cliff now red. Us aven catched nort
+nobody cant go to sea.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sig">
+&#34;<span class="sc">Tony</span>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I will write a letter soon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;P.S. Tony just waked up. George is coming home, Tony mazed with
+excitement and wishes you was here.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sig">
+&#34;<span class="sc">Mam</span> W.&#34;
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>
+So do I!
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+3
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>TONY OFF TO SEA</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The evening before I left Seacombe, Tony was telling us how upset and
+miserable he was, how he cried, when his two elder brothers left home
+to join the Navy. Also he told us what I knew nothing of before&#8212;his
+own one attempt to go to sea aboard a merchantman. When he was at
+Cloade's he looked on fishing as a refuge from groceries, and when he
+had given up groceries for fishing, he looked on a ship's fo'c'stle as
+a refuge from that. Fishing was very bad one summer. He and Dick Yeo
+agreed to run away together:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Us was doin' nort noway wi' the fishing&#8212;nort 't all. Father, Granfer
+that is, wer away to his drill wi' the Royal Naval Reserves. So Dick
+Yeo an' me agreed to go off together. Where he went, I was to go tu,
+an' where I went, he was to come. He had two pounds put away, in gold.
+I only had half a crown, an' cuden't see me way to get no more nuther.
+'Casn' thee ask thy maid for some?' Dick said. I was ashamed, like, but
+I did.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'What's thee want it for?&#34; her asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Tisn' nothing doing down here,' I says, 'an' I wants to go to sea.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'I an't got no money,' the maid says.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Casn' thee get nort?' I asks, having begun, you see. I'd been goin'
+with her for nigh on two years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Her cried bitter at the thought o' me going, but her did get seven
+shillin's from a fellow servant. I told me mother&#8212;her cried tu'&#8212;an'
+off us started, going by train to Bristol and stopping the night at the
+Sailor's Rest. 'Twasn't bad, you know. They Restis be gude things.
+Dick, he woke in the morning wi' a swelled faace, but I didn' feel
+nort.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Dick Yeo paid both our boat fares from Bristol to Cardiff. The
+steward&#8212;what us urned against aboard ship&#8212;recommended us to a lodging
+house in Adelaide Street, an' he giv'd me a note for a man at the Board
+o' Trade, sayin' we was Demshire fishin' chaps an' gude seamen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well, us went to the lodging house an' gave in our bags an' took a
+room wi' fude [food] for two an' six a day&#8212;each, mind yu. Then us
+looked into a big underground room wer there was a lot o' foreigners
+gathered round a fire an' us didn' much like the looks o' that. So us
+went straight down to the docks an' tried to ship together on several
+sailing ships an' steamers. Some on 'em would on'y take me, an' some
+were down to sail at a future date, like, what our money wouldn't last
+out tu. <i>I</i> cude ha' got a ship, 'cause I had me Naval Reserve
+ticket, but nobody cuden't du wi' both on us&#8212;an' where one went
+t'other was to go tu, by agreement.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>AT THE BOARD O' TRADE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Us went back to the lodging house, into a sort o' kitchen in a cellar,
+where there was a 'Merican wi' a long white beard cooking, an' men
+drunk spewing, an' men lying about asleep like logs. The 'Merican, his
+beard looking so red as hell in the firelight, wer stirring some kind
+o' stew. Yu shade ha' see'd the faaces what the glow o' they coals
+shined on! An' the fude.... An' the tables an' plates.... I've a-gone
+short many a time in my day, but I'd never ha' touched muck like they
+offered to gie us there. Dick an' me crept up the staircase to bed wi'
+empty bellies thic night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Soon a'ter we was to bed, Dick says to me: 'Can 'ee feel ort yer
+Tony?'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'No,' I says, an' whatever 'twas, I didn' feel ort o'it. But I see'd
+'em crawling so thick as sea-lice on the wall in a southerly gale, an'
+I tell 'ee, 'twas they things what took the heart out o' me more'n ort
+else, aye! more'n the food an' being away from home. Us cuden turn out,
+'cause the landlord had our bags an' us hadn' got no money to get 'em
+back wi', nor nowhere else at all to go tu.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Next morning, us went straight down to the docks again. Cuden' eat no
+breakfast what they give'd us. Didn' know what to du. I only had
+tuppence left, which wuden' ha' taken me home again, not if I'd been
+willing to give up and go. Come to the last, us was forced to break our
+agreement. I signed on as able seaman&#8212;<i>able</i> seaman 'cause I was
+a fishing chap an' had me Royal Naval Reserve ticket&#8212;aboard the
+<i>Brooklands</i>, bound for Bombay. Penny o' me tuppence, I spent
+writing home to tell mother. I cuden' stay aboard the ship (an' get
+summut to eat) 'cause I had my gear to get an' a ship to find for
+Dick&#8212;an' we still had hopes, like, o' getting a ship together.
+Howsbe-ever, us cuden't, nohow. The writer aboard the <i>Brooklands</i>
+wuden't advance me no wages to get any gear. He told me the landlord to
+the lodging house wude, him what had our bags a'ready.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Then I thought o' the steward's note to the Board o' Trade officer,
+an' us inquired our way to the Board o' Trade, where ther was a gert
+crowd outside. 'Twas by that us know'd the place. A man told us as the
+officer what the note was directed tu, wude appear outside the door an'
+call. Sure 'nuff, he did&#8212;wi' gold buttons on his coat&#8212;an' called out:
+'Six A.B.'s for the <i>Asia</i>'!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Who be that?' I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'That's he,' the man said. 'He'll come out again by'm-bye.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Us worked our way to the front&#8212;getting cussed horrible for our
+pains&#8212;an' when Mr Gold-Buttons 'peared again, I give'd him the
+steward's note. He luked at it&#8212;an' us. He cude offer me something an'
+said as he'd du his best for me, but he cuden' hold out no promise for
+Dick because, see, he hadn' got no Naval Reserve ticket.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn">&#34;<i>WER DICK GOES, I GOES</i>&#34;</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Wher Dick goes, I goes,' I says, like that. With which the Board o'
+Trade officer leaves us waiting there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;After an hour or so, he com'd out an' called, as if he hadn' ha'
+know'd us: 'Anthony Widger an' Richard Yeo! Richard Yeo an' Anthony
+Widger o' Seacombe!'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Yer we be, sir,' shouts I, thinking we was fixed up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Be yu Anthony Widger an' Richard Yeo? Come in.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Dick, he went in behind the officer, an' me behind Dick. 'Twer a
+darkish passage, but as the door closed I luked, an' there, hidden
+behind the door, sort o' flattened against the wall, who did I see but
+Dick's mother; her'd come all that way by herself. I called to Dick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'What the bloody hell be doin' here?' said Dick swearing awful.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Don't thee swear at thy mother, Dick,' I says.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Dick!' her says, 'Dick, come home again. Your father's breakin' his
+heart.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Go to b&#8212;&#8212;ry!' says Dick, swearing worse'n ever, 'cause <i>he</i>
+was wanting in his heart to be home again, yu see.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I burst out crying, then and there, wi' seeing Dick's mother cry, an'
+all o'it what we'd been drough. The Board o' Trade officer repeated as
+he'd help me an' no doubt find me a ship, but Dick&#8212;his mother was
+come'd for he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Wer Dick goes, I goes,' says I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Then Dick's mother, her says: 'Will 'ee come home then, Tony?'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Wer Dick goes, I goes,' I says again. 'Twas fixed in me head, like.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Well,' her says, 'if Dick comes home, will yu come too?'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I told her: 'I've a-signed on aboard the <i>Brooklands</i>, an' I'll
+hae to tramp it 'cause I an't got no money.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Well, if I pays <i>your</i> fare too?'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Wer Dick goes, I'll go!' I says.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;So her got over Dick a bit, an' the Board o' Trade man told us to come
+again, saying as he'd do anything for me, but Dick's mother was come'd
+for he. An' Mrs Yeo asked us to go wi' her to a restaurant.... That
+turned me more'n ort else 'cause us hadn' eaten the stuff to the
+lodging house an' us <i>was</i> hungry. An' her telegraphed home to
+Dick's father for a trap to meet us to Totnes, for 'twas a Saturday an'
+there wern't no trains no nearer home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Us went to the station, Dick swearing awful, an' in the end us come'd
+to Totnes to find the trap.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;The trap was there at the inn, sure 'nuff, an' the ostler was waiting
+up, but the man what come'd wi' the trap was disappeared. We on'y found
+'en at two in the morning, sleeping dead drunk in the manger, an' then
+he an' the ostler began fighting on account o' the ostler casting out a
+slur 'cause Dick's mother didn' gie him no more than a shilling. A
+policeman come an' cleared us out o' it!
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>CARRIAGE PEOPLE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Two or dree mile out o' Totnes the horse stops dead an' begins to go
+back'ards. Us coaxed 'en, like, an' still he kept on stopping an'
+walking back'ards. Dick an' me got out to walk to the halfway inn.
+There the landlord wuden' come down for us. But he did when the trap
+come'd up&#8212;us was carriage people than, yu see. We had drinks round,
+an' us give'd flour an' water to the horse to make 'en go. But us hadn'
+gone far when he stopped an' began to go back'ards again. Dick, he
+started swearing. 'Let's walk on,' I says, to get 'en out o'it; an' so
+us did for a mile or so. 'Twas dark, wi' a mizzling rain&#8212;an'
+quiet&#8212;an' the trees like shadows. A proper logie night 'twas. Wude 'ee
+believe me when I says I cude smell the flowers I cuden' see? Us was
+glad when a tramp caught up wi' us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Have 'ee see'd ort o' a horse an' trap wi' two persons in 'en?' I
+askis.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Two mile back,' he says.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Us lef 'en only a mile back,' Dick says.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'He've a-gone a mile back'ards then!' says I.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;And with the same, Dick laughs out loud, an' I laughs, an' the tramp,
+he laughs.... 'Twas the first laugh us had since us left Seacombe, an'
+I reckon it did us gude. Us went on better a'ter that. I covered the
+tramp up wi' hay in a hay loft, advising of him not to smoke. I could
+ha' slept tu; I wer heavy for a gude bed; but I saw lights in the
+farmhouse winder, an' us wer so near home again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well, we crept into Seacombe by the back (people was jest astir,
+Sunday morning) going each our way from the churchyard, an' I listened
+outside mother's door. Father was home again, an' they was to
+breakfast. Her'd had my letter telling them as I'd a-shipped for
+Bombay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'They'll Bumbay the beggar!' father was saying, only 'twasn't 'beggar'
+as he did say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Then my sister Mary, cried out: 'Here's Tony!'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'I know'd <i>he'd</i> never go to Bumbay!' outs father so quick as
+ever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;But they was so pleased as Punch to see Tony back, cas I ude see, if
+they'd ha' cared to say so. I don' know 'xactly why I went off to
+sea&#8212;summut inside driving of me&#8212;'twasn't only 'cause there wern't
+nothing doin'&#8212;but I an't never been no more. An' thic Mam Widger
+there'd hae summut to say about it now. Eh, Annie?&#34;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+4
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE SEA'S STAMP</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is an Englishman's privilege to grumble, and a sailorman's duty; yet
+one thing always strikes me in talking to seafaring men, namely how
+indelible the sea's stamp is; how indissolubly they are bound to the
+sea&#8212;with sunken bonds like those which unite an old married
+couple,&#8212;and also what outbursts of savage hatred they have against it.
+Tony says that if he could earn fifteen shillings a week regularly on
+land, he would give up the sea altogether. I very much doubt it. The
+sea has him fast. He says further that nobody would go to sea unless he
+were caught young and foolish, and that few would stay there if they
+could get away. There are, among the older fishermen of Seacombe, some
+who have worked well, and could still work, but prefer to stay ashore
+and starve. Tony holds them excused. &#34;Aye!&#34; he says, &#34;they've a-worked
+hard in their day, an' they knows they ain't no for'arder. An' now
+they'm weary o' it all, an' don't care; an' that's how I'll be some
+day, if I lives&#8212;weary o'it, an' just where I was!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the sea has her followers, and will continue to have them, because
+seafaring is the occupation in which health, strength and courage have
+their greatest value; in which being a man most nearly suffices a man.
+It is remarkable that Baudelaire, decadent Frenchman, apostle of the
+artificial, who was violently home-sick when he went on a voyage,
+should have expressed the relation of man and the sea&#8212;their enmity and
+love&#8212;more subtly than any English poet.
+</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Homme libre, toujours tu ch&#233;riras la mer;</p>
+<p>La mer et ton miroir; tu contemples ton &#226;me</p>
+<p>Dans le d&#233;roulement infini de sa lame,</p>
+<p>Et ton esprit n'est pas un gouffre moins amer.</p></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Tu te plais &#224; plonger au sein de ton image;</p>
+<p>Tu l'embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton c&#339;ur</p>
+<p>Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur</p>
+<p>Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.</p></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Vous &#234;tes tous les deux t&#233;n&#233;breux et discrets:</p>
+<p>Homme, nul n'a sond&#233; le fond de tes ab&#238;mes,</p>
+<p>O mer, nul ne conna&#238;t tes richesses intimes,</p>
+<p>Tant vous &#234;tes jaloux de garder vos secrets!</p></div>
+
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>Et cependant voil&#224; des si&#232;cles innombrables</p>
+<p>Que vous vous combattez sans piti&#233; ni remord,</p>
+<p>Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,</p>
+<p>O lutteurs &#233;ternels, &#244; fr&#232;res implacables!</p></div></div>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>SEA-LARGENESS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sea is never mean. Strife and brotherhood with it give a largeness
+to men which, like all deep qualities of the spirit, can be neither
+specified nor defined; only felt, and seen in the outcome. The Seacombe
+fishermen are more or less amphibious; ocean-going seamen look down on
+them. They are petty in some small things, notably in jealousy lest one
+man do more work, or make more money, than another: to say a man is
+doing well is to throw out a slur against him. Nevertheless in the
+larger, the essential things of life, their sea-largeness nearly always
+shows itself. They are wonderfully charitable, not merely with money.
+They carp at one another, but let a man make a mess of things, and he
+is gently treated. I have never heard Tony admit that any man&#8212;even one
+who had robbed him&#8212;had not his very good points. Is a man a
+ne'er-do-well, a drunkard, an idler? &#34;Ah,&#34; they say, &#34;his father rose
+he up like a gen'leman, an' that's what comes o'it.&#34; In their dealings,
+they curiously combine generosity and
+close-fistedness&#8212;close-fistedness in earning, and generosity in
+spending and lending. A beachcomber, for simply laying a hand to a
+rope, receives a pint of beer, or the price of it, and next moment the
+fisherman who paid the money may be seen getting wet through and
+spoiling his clothes in order to drag a farthing's worth of jetsam from
+the surf. Tony fails to understand how a gen'leman can possibly haggle
+over the hire of a boat. When he goes away himself, he pays what is
+asked; regrets it afterwards, if at all; and comes home when his money
+is done. &#34;If a gen'leman,&#34; he says, &#34;can't afford to pay the rate, what
+du 'ee come on the beach to hire a boat for&#8212;an' try to beat a fellow
+down? I reckon 'tis only a <i>sort o' gen'leman</i> as does that!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Like most seafarers, the fishermen are fatalistic. &#34;What's goin' to be,
+will be, an' that's the way o'it.&#34; But they are not thoroughgoing
+fatalists, inasmuch as disappointment quickly turns to resentment
+against something handy to blame. If, for example, we catch no fish,
+Tony will blame the tide, the hour, the weather, the boat, the sail,
+the leads, the line, the hooks, the bait, the fish, his mate&#8212;anything
+rather than accept the one fact that, for reasons unknown, the fish are
+off the bite. A thoroughgoing fatalist would blame, if he did not
+acquiesce in, fate itself or his luck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony is a black pessimist as regards the present and to-morrow;
+convinced that things are not, and cannot be, what they were; but as
+regards the further future, the day after to-morrow, he is a resolute
+optimist. &#34;Never mind how bad things du look, summut or other'll sure
+to turn up. It always du. I've a-proved it. I've a-see'd it scores o'
+times.&#34; He can earn money by drifting for mackerel and herring, hooking
+mackerel, seining for mackerel, sprats, flat-fish, mullet and bass,
+bottom-line fishing for whiting, conger or pout, lobster and crab
+potting, and prawning; by belonging to the Royal Naval Reserve; by
+boat-hiring; by carpet-beating and cleaning up. I have even seen him
+dragging a wheel chair. His boats and gear represent, I suppose, a
+capital of near a hundred pounds. It would be hard if he earned
+nothing. Yet he is certain that his earnings, year in and year out,
+scarcely average fifteen shillings a week. &#34;Yu wears yourself out wi'
+it an' never gets much for'arder.&#34; The money, moreover, comes in
+seasons and lump-sums; ten pounds for a catch perhaps, then nothing for
+weeks. Mrs Widger must be, and is, a good hand at household management
+and at putting money by. I doubt if Tony ever knows how much, or how
+little, gold she has, stored away upstairs. Probably it is as well. He
+is a generous man with money. He 'slats it about' when he has it.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>OPEN BOATS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It has to be realised that these fishermen exercise very great skill
+and alertness. To sail a small open boat in all weathers requires a
+quicker hand and judgment than to navigate a seagoing ship. Seacombe
+possesses no harbour, and therefore Seacombe men can use no really
+seaworthy craft. &#34;'Tis all very well,&#34; Tony says, &#34;for people to buzz
+about the North Sea men an' knit 'em all sorts o' woollen gear. They
+North Sea men an' the Cornishmen wi' their big, decked harbour boats,
+they <i>have</i> got summut under their feet&#8212;somewhere they can get in
+under, out the way o'it. They <i>can</i> make themselves comfor'able,
+an ride out a storm. But if it comes on to blow when we'm to sea in our
+little open craft, we got to hard up an' get home along&#8212;if us can. For
+the likes o' us, 'tis touch an' go wi' the sea!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony knows. At places like Seacombe every boat, returning from sea,
+must run ashore and be hauled up the beach and even, in rough weather,
+over the sea-wall. The herring and mackerel drifters, which may venture
+twenty miles into the open sea, cannot be more than twenty-five feet in
+length else they would prove unwieldy ashore. To avoid their heeling
+over and filling in the surf, they must be built shallow, with next to
+no keel. They have therefore but small hold on the water; they do not
+sail close to the wind, and beating home against it is a long wearisome
+job. Again, because the gear for night work in small craft must be as
+simple as possible, such boats usually carry only a mizzen and a
+dipping lug&#8212;the latter a large, very picturesque, but unhandy, sail
+which has to be lowered or 'dipped' every time the boat tacks. Neither
+comfort nor safety is provided by the three feet or so of decking, the
+'cuddy' or 'cutty,' in the bows. To sleep there with one's head
+underneath, is to have one's feet outside, and <i>vice versa</i>. In
+rough broken seas the open beach drifter must be handled skilfully
+indeed, if she is not to fill and sink.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have watched one of them running home in a storm. The wind was
+blowing a gale; the sea running high and broken. One error in steering,
+one grip of the great white sea-horses, meant inevitable wreck. Every
+moment or two the coastguard, who was near me with a telescope to his
+eye, exclaimed, &#34;She's down!&#34; But no. She dodged the combers like a
+hare before greyhounds, now steering east, now west, on the whole
+towards home. It was with half her rudder gone that she ran ashore
+after a splendid exhibition of skill and nerve, many times more
+exciting than the man&#339;uvres of a yacht race. Were there not many
+such feats of seamanship among fishermen, there would be more widows
+and orphans.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>BOATS SHEERING</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those are the craft, those the sort of men&#8212;two usually to a boat&#8212;that
+put to sea an hour or two before sunset, ride at the nets through the
+night, and return towards or after dawn. Anything but a moderate breeze
+renders drifting impossible. In a calm, the two men are bound to row,
+for hours perhaps, with heavy 16-20 ft. sweeps. Moreover, if the sea
+makes, or a ground swell rises, the least mistake in beaching a boat
+will cause it to sheer round, capsize, and wash about in the breakers
+with the crew most probably beneath it. Yarns are told of arms and legs
+appearing, of a horrible tortured face appearing, while the upturned
+boat washed about in the undertow, and those ashore were powerless to
+help. There is nothing the fishermen dread so much. One of them owns to
+leaving the beach when he has seen a boat running in on a very rough
+sea, so that he might not endure witnessing what he could not
+prevent.&#8212;He peeped however.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These risks need considering, not in order to exaggerate the dangers of
+drifting in open beach boats&#8212;in point of fact, accidents seldom do
+happen,&#8212;but to show what skill is habitually exercised, what a touch
+and go with the sea it is.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sundown is the time for shooting nets. Eight to fourteen are carried
+for mackerel, six to ten for herrings&#8212;the scantier the fish, the
+greater the number of nets. At Seacombe they are commonly forty fathoms
+in length along the headrope which connects them all, and five fathoms
+deep. Stretching far away from the boat, as it drifts up and down
+Channel with the tides, is a line, perhaps a thousand yards long, of
+cork buoys. From these hang the lanyards<a href="#note16" name="noteref16"><sup>16</sup></a> which support the headrope,
+from the headrope hang perpendicularly the nets themselves. Judgment is
+needed in shooting a fleet of nets. They may get foul of the bottom or
+of another boat's fleet. When, on account of careless shooting or
+tricks of the tide, the nets of several boats become entangled, there
+is great confusion, and the cursing is loud.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nets shot, the fishermen make fast the road for'ard; sup, smoke, sing,
+creep under the cutty, and sleep with one eye open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes they are too wet to sleep; often in the winter it is too
+cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Afterwards, the laborious hauling in&#8212;one man at the headrope and the
+other at the foot. Contrary to a very general impression, the fish are
+not enclosed within the net, as in seining or in pictures of the
+miraculous draught of fishes. They prod their snouts into the meshes,
+and are caught by the gills. There may not be a score in a whole fleet
+of nets, or they may come up like a glittering mat, beyond the strength
+of two men to lift over the gunwale. Twenty-five thousand herring is
+about the burthen of an open beach drifter. Are there more, nets must
+be given away at sea, or buoyed up and left&#8212;or cut, broken, lost.
+Small catches are picked out of the nets as they are hauled in, large
+catches ashore.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>FISHERMEN FLEECED</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is ashore that the fisherman comes off worst of all. Neither
+educated nor commercialized, he is fleeced by the buyers. And if he
+himself dispatches his haul to London.... Dick Yeo once went up to
+Billingsgate and saw his own fish sold for about ten pounds. On his
+return to Seacombe, he received three pounds odd, and a letter from the
+salesman to say that there had been a sudden glut in the market.
+Fishermen boat-owners have an independence of character which makes it
+difficult for them to combine together effectively, as wage-servers do.
+They act too faithfully on the adage that a bird in the hand is worth
+two in the bush, and ten shillings on the beach a sovereign at
+Billingsgate. So 'tis, when
+</p>
+
+<p class="ctr">
+There's little to earn and many to keep,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+and no floating capital at a man's disposal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In recent years, owing to bad prices and seasons and general lack of
+encouragement, or even of fair opportunity, the number of sea-going
+drifters at Seacombe has decreased by two-thirds. Much the same has
+happened at other small fishing places along the coast. This
+decline&#8212;so complacently acquiesced in by the powers that be&#8212;is of
+national importance; for the little fisheries are the breeding ground
+of the Navy. Nowadays fishermen put their sons to work on land.
+&#34;'Tain't wuth it,&#34; they say, &#34;haulin' yer guts out night an' day, an'
+gettin' no forrarder at the end o'it.&#34; Luckily for England the sea's
+grip is a firm one, and many of the sons return to it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When one hears Luscombe talk about the maddening trouble he has had in
+teaching plough-tail or urban recruits to knot and splice a rope, or
+watches, as I have, a couple of blue-jackets drive ashore in a small
+boat because they couldn't hoist sail, then one comprehends better the
+importance of the fisher-families whose work is made up of endurance,
+exposure, nerve and skill; who play touch and go with the sea; and who
+in the slack seasons have&#8212;unlike the ordinary workman&#8212;only too much
+time to think for themselves. They are the backbone of the Navy.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="chapter">
+VII
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="sc">Seacombe</span>,<br>
+<i>November</i>.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+1
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whilst the train was drawing up at the platform, I noticed the people
+moving and looking downwards as if dogs were running wild amongst them.
+Then I saw two whitish heads bobbing about in the crowd. It was Jimmy
+and another boy come to meet me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We gave the luggage to the busman, and walked on down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Tommy's gone tu Plymouth.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What for?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;They'm going to cut his eyes out an' gie 'en spectacles.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;When did he go?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A rather sulky silence....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then: &#34;Us thought 'ee was going to ride down. Dad said as yu'd be sure
+tu.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Tisn't far to walk, Jimmy....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Us be tired.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Alack! I had done the wrong thing. Their little festivity, that was to
+have made them the envy of 'all they boys tu beach,' had fallen flat.
+They had expected to ride down 'like li'l gentry-boys.' However, we
+bought oranges, and then I was taken to see yesterday's fire, and was
+told how Tony had rushed into the blazing house to rescue a carpet 'an'
+didn' get nort for it.'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony himself came downstairs from putting away an hour in bed. &#34;I'd ha'
+come up to meet 'ee,&#34; he said sleepily, &#34;if anybody'd a reminded me
+o'it. Us an't done nort to the fishing since you went away.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;An' yu an't chopped up to-morrow morning's wude nuther!&#34; added Mrs
+Widger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grannie Pinn came in at tea-time. We invited her to sit down and have a
+cup. &#34;Do 'ee think I an't got nothing to eat at home?&#34; she asked.
+&#34;Well, I have, then!&#8212;Ay,&#34; she continued, bobbing her head
+sententiously, &#34;yu got a mark in Seacombe, else yu wuden't be down yer
+again so sune. That's what 'tis&#8212;a mark! I knows, sure nuff. Come on!
+who be it now? What's her like, eh?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She cannot understand how any young unmarried man can be without his
+sweetheart. Everybody according to her, must have a mark, or be in
+search of one. I told her with the brutality which delights her factual
+old mind, that if she herself had been a little less antique and
+poverty-stricken....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;There! if I don't come round and box yer yers. Yu'm al'ays ready wi'
+yer chake.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A MARK</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I offered her five <i>per cent.</i> of the lady's fortune, if she
+would find me a mark with unsettled money. Though she laughed it off,
+she was not a little scandalized by my levity. The Tough Old Stick has
+not outlived her memory of romance. Indeed, I think she holds to it all
+the tighter for her hardheadedness in every-day affairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Midway through tea, Straighty crept into the kitchen. &#34;What do
+<i>yu</i> want?&#34; shouted Grannie Pinn. &#34;Bain't there enough kids yer
+now?&#34; Straighty stood in the centre of the kitchen, sucking three
+fingers and looking shyly at me from beneath her tousled tow-coloured
+hair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;You've not forgotten me, Straighty?&#34; I asked. &#34;You're not frightened
+of me, are you?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Go an' speak to 'en proper,&#34; commanded Grannie Pinn. &#34;Wer's yer
+manners, Dora?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;<i>Yu</i> didn' speak to me proper, Grannie Pinn! Wer's yours?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Aw, my dear soul! Now du 'ee shut up wi' yer chake!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Straighty remained sucking her fingers in the middle of the kitchen.
+She seemed about to cry. Quite suddenly, her eyes brightened. She
+glided over to me, put her wet fingers round my neck (&#34;Dora!&#34; from Mrs
+Widger), and gave me a big kiss on the chin. Then she told me all about
+everything, sitting with her head on my shoulder in the old courting
+chair.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tiny little episode, I grant; but very sweet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;That's your mark?&#34; Grannie Pinn shouted. &#34;You'll hae tu wait for she!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Straighty is established as my mark, and takes her duties, as she has
+learnt to conceive them, with amusing seriousness. She will not let me
+go out through the Square without being told where I am off to, nor let
+me return in house until I tell her where I have been. At the beginning
+of every meal we hear her creeping up the passage; see her yellow hair
+against the door-post. By the end of the meal she has summoned up
+courage to claim a kiss. &#34;Now be off tu your mother!&#34; says Mrs Widger.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+2
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger has let the back bedroom to a young married couple possessed
+of a saucer-eyed baby that cries lustily whenever its mother is out of
+its sight. How they succeed in living, sleeping, baby-tending and doing
+their minor cookery in the one pokey little room, already half filled
+by the bedstead, is difficult to understand. They do it. We see little
+of them, except just when we had rather see nothing at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For dinner and the subsequent cup o' tay, Mam Widger allows one hour.
+But usually, before even the pudding is out of the oven, first one of
+us, then another, glances round to make sure that the kettle is well on
+the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>MRS PERKINS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nowadays, however, when the kettle is beginning to sing, Mrs Perkins,
+the baby in her arms, comes downstairs and proceeds to cook for her
+husband a couple of small chops or a mess of meat-shreds and bubble and
+squeak. She stirs and chatters; she holds forth on the baby's beauty
+and goodness, its health, its father's love of it&#8212;and, in short, she
+talks to us as if we were delighted to see her and her baby. Tony's
+good manners triumph comically over his desire to get his cup o' tay
+and put away an hour up over. (He likes to take every chance of making
+up for wakeful nights at sea.) We all wish she would go quickly.
+Meanwhile, we feign an interest in what blousy, skirt-gaping,
+slop-slippered, enthusiastic maternity has to say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And when she does go, it is with a most joyful haste that we move the
+kettle to the very hottest part of the fire.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+3
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The family hubbub over Tommy's stay in the Plymouth Eye Infirmary has
+hardly died down yet. Recognizing with uncommon good sense that his
+double squint would bar him from the Navy or Army (he shows an
+inclination towards the latter), Mrs Widger took him to Plymouth; and
+on hearing that an operation would cure him, she did not hesitate, did
+not bring him home to think about it; she left him there. Then.... What
+a buzz! The child is to return very thin. Mrs Widger's cousin declares
+loudly that she would rather lead her boy about blind (he squints
+excessively) than let him go to one o' they places. Tony says, &#34;Aye!
+they may feed 'en on food of a better quality like, after the rate, but
+he won't get done like he is at home.&#34; Several times daily he wants to
+know how long they will keep Tommy there, and when Mrs Widger replies,
+six weeks, he asks in a woe-begone voice: &#34;Do 'ee think 'er'll know his
+dad when 'er comes home again?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All of which is easy to laugh at.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No doubt hospitals are a godsend to the poor, immediately if not
+ultimately. At the same time, it cannot be said that the prejudice
+against them is wholly unreasonable. Poor people declare that they are
+starved in hospital, and it is, in fact, now recognized in dietetics
+that comparatively innutritious food, eaten with gusto, is better
+assimilated than the most scientifically chosen but unpalatable
+nutriment. A man, a poor man especially, can be half starved or at all
+events much thinned, on good food, who would do well on the habitual
+coarse fare that he enjoys. His life is a long adventure in a land
+where every other turning leads to starvation, but his adventurousness
+seldom extends to new sorts of food.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>HOSPITALS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No one is so depressed by strange surroundings as the average poor man
+or woman. (Children get on much better.) Very likely he has never been
+alone, has never slept away from some relative or friend, the whole of
+his life. The unfamiliarity and precise routine of hospitals, the faces
+and ways all strange, are capable not only of greatly intensifying a
+man's sufferings, but even of retarding his recovery.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hospitals must necessarily be governed by two main conditions:&#8212;(1) The
+need of doing the greatest good to the greatest number; (2) The
+advancement of medical science and experience. Under (1) the
+overpressure on medical skill and time is bound to diminish tact and
+sympathy. Under (2) the serious or interesting cases are apt&#8212;as
+everyone who has mixed with hospital staffs knows very well&#8212;to receive
+attention not disproportionate to the nature of the malady, but
+disproportionate to the bodily, and particularly to the mental,
+suffering. The poor man can appreciate sympathy better than skill. He
+may not know how ill he is, but he knows how much he suffers. He is
+quick to detect and to resent preferential treatment. From the point of
+view of the independent poor, hospitals are far from what they might
+be. They are last straws for drowning men, useful sometimes, but best
+avoided.<a href="#note17" name="noteref17"><sup>17</sup></a>
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>JACKS THE RIPPER</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jacks is a very energetic young country surgeon. He is keen on his work
+and will procure admission to the hospital for any operative case. But
+he finds it by no means easy to get his patients there; for he is so
+keen on his work that he treats their feelings carelessly; hustles them
+through an operation; pooh-poohs their fear of anaesthetics and the
+knife. Jacks is well disliked by the poor. He has to live, and
+therefore he has to cultivate a professional manner and to dance
+attendance on wealthy hypochrondriacal patients whom otherwise he would
+probably send to the devil. The poor people have told him to his face
+that he runs after the rich and cuts about the poor; and they have
+nicknamed him <i>Jacks the Ripper</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony would have to be very far gone before he would willingly go into a
+hospital. Just now, between the mackerel and herring seasons, he is fat
+and sleepy, very sleek for him. Rheumatic fever in boyhood and
+neglected colds have left him rather deaf, and subject to noises in the
+head and miscellaneous bodily pains. He is 'a worriter' by nature.
+&#34;When I gets bothered,&#34; he says, &#34;I often feels as if summut be busted
+in me head.&#34; As the herring season comes round, so will Tony 'hae the
+complaints again,' and few will pity a man who always looks so well. A
+few years back, Mrs Widger procured for his deafness some quack
+treatment&#8212;which did do him good;&#8212;but he himself had little faith in
+it, and did not persevere. Like the mothers who rejoice in delicate
+children rather than feed them properly and send them early to bed,
+Tony prefers to think his ailments constitutional, a possession of his,
+a curse of fate, which flatters him, so to speak, by singling him out
+for its attentions. In a couple of years' time, when he comes out of
+the Royal Naval Reserve, he will have the option of accepting &#163;50 down
+at once, or of waiting till he is sixty for a pension of four shillings
+a week. Mrs Widger understands perfectly that unless he wants to buy
+boats and gear&#8212;unless, in other words, he can make the &#163;50
+productive&#8212;he had much better wait for the pension and be sure of a
+roof over his head when he is past work. Tony, however, will probably
+take the lump sum. He fears he may die and get nothing at all. He does
+not <i>feel</i> that he will never see sixty, but he is of opinion that
+he will not, and sixty to a man of his temperament is such a long way
+hence. He thinks as little as possible of old age. &#34;Aye!&#34; he
+says&#8212;almost chants, so moved is he,&#8212;&#34;the likes o' us slaves an'
+slaves all our life, an' us never gets no for'arder. Like as us be when
+we'm young, so us'll be at the end o'it all. Come the time when yu'm
+past work, an' yu be done an' wearied out, then all yer slavin's gone
+for nort. Tis true what I says. I dunno what to think&#8212;but 'tis the way
+o'it. 'Tain't right like. 'Tain't right!&#34;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+4
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Go shrimping wi' the setting-nets t'night, I reckon,&#34; said Uncle Jake.
+&#34;Tide be low 'tween twelve and one o'clock. Jest vitty, that.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was one of those evenings, wind WSW., when the sea and sky look
+stormier than they are, or will be. Uncle Jake stood on the very edge
+of the sea wall, his hands in his pockets, his torn jumper askew, and
+his old cap cocked over one ear. From time to time he turned half round
+to deride a dressy visitor, or for warmth's sake twisted his body about
+within his clothing, or shrugged his shoulders humorously with a, &#34;'Tis
+a turn-out o'it!&#34; The seine net had just been shot from the beach for
+less than a sovereign's worth of fish&#8212;to be divided, one third for the
+owner of the net and the remainder among the seven men who had lent a
+hand.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>PRAWNING</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Coo'h!&#34; Uncle Jake exclaimed. &#34;<i>'Tis</i> a crib here! Nort 't all
+doing. Not like 't used tu be. I mind when yu cude haul in a seine so
+full as.... Might pick up a shilling or tu t'night shrimping, if they
+damn visitors an' bloody tradesmen an't been an' turned the whole o'
+Broken Rocks up an' down. <i>I</i> tells 'em o'it!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Shrimps or prawns, d'you mean?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Why, prawns! Us calls it shrimping hereabout. You knows that. There's
+prawns there if yu knows where to look, but not like 't used to be.
+On'y they fules don' know where to look. An' they don' see Jake at it,
+an' I never tells 'em what I gets nor what I sells at; an' so they says
+I don' never du nort. I'd like to see they hae tu work waist-deep in
+water every night for a week when they'm sixty-five. An' in the winter
+tu!&#8212;If yu'm minded to come t'night, yu be up my house 'bout 'leven
+o'clock, an' I'll fetch me nets from under cliff if they b&#8212;&#8212;y b&#8212;&#8212;rs
+o' boys an't been there disturbin' of 'em.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Uncle Jake's cottage looks outside like a small cellar that has somehow
+risen above the ground and then has been thatched with old straw and
+whitewashed. Inside, it is a shadowy place, stacked up high with
+sailing and fishing gear, flotsam, jetsam, balks of wood and all the
+odds and ends that he picks up on his prowlings along the coast. With
+tattered paper screens, he has partitioned off, near the fire and
+window, a small and very crowded cosy-corner. There he was sitting when
+I arrived; bread, butter, onions, sugar and tea&#8212;his staple foods&#8212;on
+the round table beside him, and his prawn-nets on the flagstones at his
+feet. Three cats glided about among the legs of the table and chairs,
+on the lookout to steal. Using the gentle violence that cats love from
+those they trust, Uncle Jake flung them one by one to the other side of
+the room. They returned, purring, to snatch at the none too fresh berry
+[eggs] of spider-crab with which the nets were being baited.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The shallow small-meshed setting-nets are about two feet in diameter at
+the top. Stretched taut from side to side of the rim are two doubled
+strings or <i>thirts</i>&#8212;which cross at right angles directly above
+the centre of the net, and into which, near the middle, the four pieces
+of bait are ingeniously and simply fixed by little sliders on the
+thirts themselves. The whole apparatus hangs level from a yard or more
+of stout line, at the upper end of which is a small stick, a stumpy
+fishing rod, so to speak, often painted white so that it may be easily
+found as it lies on the dark rocks. Uncle Jake's net-sticks, however,
+are anything but white. Capable almost of finding them with his eyes
+shut, he would sooner lose his nets altogether than let whitened sticks
+point out to other people the pools which he alone knows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We put the nets into a couple of sacks and shouldered them. A long
+light pole was placed into my hand. &#34;Don't yu never leave your pole
+behind. Yu'll want it, sure 'nuff, afore this night's over.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So we set out. One by one the cats who were following, left us to go
+back home. We did not walk towards the sea. On the contrary we went
+inland, through some roads with demure sleeping villas on either side.
+&#34;If they bloody poachers,&#34; Uncle Jake explained, &#34;see'd us going
+straight towards the sea, they'd follow. <i>I</i> knows 'em! They takes
+away the livelihood o' the likes o' us an' sells it. Sells it&#8212;an' says
+'tis sport! I leads 'em a dance sometimes. I goes along a narrow ledge
+that's jest under water, wi' ten or twelve feet depth on either side.
+On they comes a'ter me. 'Uncle Jake knows where to go,' they says. And
+in <i>they</i> goes&#8212;not knowing the place like I du&#8212;head over heels
+an' a swim for it! O Lor'! they don' like it when I tells 'em they
+better go home an' tumble into dry clothes. Yu shude hear the language
+they spits out o' their mouths 'long wi' the salt water. Horrible, tu
+be sure!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>SETTING-NETS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Broken Rocks, a playground for children by day, look wild and strange
+on a night when clouds are driving across the moon, when the cliffs
+fade into darkness high above the beach, and everything not black is
+grey, except where the white surf beats upon the outermost ledge. Then
+Broken Rocks have personality. A sinister spirit rises out of them with
+the heave of the sea. It is as if some black mood, some great monotony
+of strife, were closing in around one. On the sea wall, in the
+sunshine, I used to wonder why Uncle Jake calls Broken Rocks a terr'ble
+place. Now I do not. He works there by night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We peered out from the beach underneath the cliffs. Nobody had
+forestalled us. Uncle Jake was pleased. He laughed hoarsely, and the
+echo of it was not unlike the natural noises of the place. &#34;Us'll make
+a start there,&#34; he said, pointing to a ledge between which and
+ourselves was a wide sheet of water. &#34;Yu follow me an' feel for a
+foothold wi' your pole. <i>Don't</i> yu step afore yu've felt.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Into the water he went; seemed, indeed, to run across it. &#34;Be 'ee wet?&#34;
+he asked when I stepped out the other side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Half way up my thighs!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yu hadn't no need to get wet so far up as your knees. I didn't. An' yu
+might ha' gone in there over your head. Yu use your pole, skipper. Feel
+afore yu steps. I'll set 'ee your two nets for a beginning.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With his pole he felt the depth of the water around the ledge. Then he
+dropped the nets down, edging them carefully under the overhanging
+weed, and placed the sticks on the rock above. &#34;Don't yu forget where
+yu sets your nets. Yu won't <i>see</i>'em. An' when yu hauls up, go
+gently, like so, else off goes all they master prawns, d'rec'ly they
+feels a jerk.... Leave 'em down a couple o' minutes.... But there, yu
+knows, don' 'ee? Us won't catch much till the tide turns. They prawns
+knows when 'tis beginning to flow so well as yu an' me. Yu work this
+yer, an' along easterly. I be going farther out.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>PRAWNS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I hauled up my first net I heard the faint clicketty noise&#8212;like
+paper scratching metal&#8212;of three or four prawns jumping about inside.
+My hand had to chase them many times round the net. One jumped over;
+one fell through. Nothing is more difficult to withdraw from a net than
+prawns, except it be a lobster, flipping itself about, hardly visible,
+and striking continually with its nippers. There was a lobster in the
+second net. It had to go into the same pocket as the prawns. It was
+something of an adventure afterwards to put a hand into the pocketful
+of lobster claws and prawn spines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Working eastward and outward, plunging in to the water or sliding with
+bumps and bruises off a rock, I must have passed Deadman's Rock, Danger
+Gutter, Broken Rock and the Wreckstone. (Things of the sea nearly
+always take name from their evil aspects.) Uncle Jake could have told
+me at any moment exactly where I was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, near the surf, I saw in front of me a flat table-rock,
+standing up alone, and as I descended towards the foot of it, a high
+black rocky archway became plain. Broad-leaved oarweed covered it like
+giant hair, and hung drooping into the deep black pool beneath. The
+moonlight glinted on the oarweed. The pool, though darkly calm, ebbed
+and flowed silently with the waves outside. I recognized the place. It
+was Hospital Rock&#8212;the rock the little boats strike on because it is
+smooth on top and the waves do not break over it very much. I half
+expected the ugly head of a great conger to look out at me from the
+pool. As I lay flat on the rock to drop my nets, the rattle and roar of
+the sea beyond, vibrating through the solid stone, the whistle of the
+wind through the downhanging oarweed, sounded like an orchestra of the
+mad damn'd.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I caught nothing there, and was not sorry. The place was too eerie to
+stay in long. &#34;Ah!&#34; said Uncle Jake when we met again on the inner
+reef, &#34;I've knowed they amateurs run straight off home when they've
+a-found theirselves under Hospital. A terr'ble place! Yu knows now. Did
+'ee set your nets there? Eh?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took some fresh bait from his prawn bag and fixed it in the thirts
+of my nets. &#34;'Tis nearly over,&#34; he said, &#34;but jest yu try that, an' if
+they'm there that'll hae 'em. There's no bait like that there when yu
+can get it, on'y nobody knows o'it.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nature of that bait I shall not divulge, any more than I shall name
+the place where Uncle Jake goes to play with the young ravens in the
+spring. Somebody might catch his prawns; somebody would shoot his
+ravens. We had caught about two hundred prawns between us, a few
+lobsters and some wild-crabs. As we walked homewards, the three cats
+came down the lane, one by one, to welcome Uncle Jake.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>EAST WITH A SKIM-NET</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next day we sailed east in the <i>Moondaisy</i>. Uncle Jake straddled
+the pools and lifted the heavy stones. Then in a skim-net,<a href="#note18" name="noteref18"><sup>18</sup></a> with
+marvellous dexterity, he caught the almost invisible prawns as they
+darted away. He dragged lobsters out of holes, and cursed the
+neighbouring villagers who had been down to the shore after crabs and
+had disturbed his favourite stones. He knows how each one ought to lie;
+he even keeps the seaweed on some of them trimmed to its proper length.
+&#34;But 'tain't like 't used to be,&#34; he says.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He has almost given up going to sea for fish; some say because he will
+not take the trouble; but I think it is because he loves his rocks and
+cliffs so well. No one knows how much by night and day he haunts the
+wilder stretches of shore, nor how many miles he trudges in a week. But
+the gulls know him well, and will scream back to him when he calls. His
+laugh has something of the gulls' cry in it. I have heard it remarked
+that when his time comes (no sign of it yet) he will be found one
+morning dead among his familiar rocks. He is acquainted with death
+there. He has borne home on his shoulder by night the body of a woman
+who had fallen from the cliffs above; and again a negro that had washed
+ashore. With a little self-control one might have carried the woman all
+right, but the drowned nigger.... Imagine his face in the darkness&#8212;his
+eyes! Only a man with greatness in him, or a very callous man, could
+have brought such a corpse home, all along under the crumbling cliffs;
+and Uncle Jake is certainly not callous.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+5
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Let 'em try any o' their tricks on me! They can turn out the likes o'
+us all right, I s'pose. But I can tell 'em what I thinks on 'em, here's
+luck. Thank God I don't live in no tradesman's house, an' can deal
+where I likes. Not that I shouldn't anyway....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grannie Pinn's shrill angry voice pierced the kitchen door. The
+occasion was a mothers' gossiping; the subject, a kind of boycott that
+is practised in Seacombe. On the table there was a jug of ale and stout
+and an hospitably torn-open bag of biscuits. Around it sat Grannie
+Pinn&#8212;bolt upright in the courting chair, with her hands folded&#8212;Mrs
+Meer and Mam Widger. The feathers in Grannie Pinn's hat shook like a
+bush on the cliff-edge. All of them looked as if they felt a vague
+responsibility for the right conduct of the world. In short, they
+looked political.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>POOR MAN v. TRADESMAN</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The poor people here live in small colonies scattered behind the main
+street and among the villas, in little blocks of old neglected
+property, some of which has been bought up by tradesmen. So much of the
+former village spirit still survives, and so many of the tradesmen have
+but recently risen from poorer circumstances, that between some of the
+oldest and the youngest of them, and the workmen, there is even yet a
+rather mistrustful fellowship. They call each other, Jim, Dick, Harry
+and so on&#8212;over glasses, at all events. The growth of the class spirit,
+as opposed to the old village spirit, can be seen plainly when Bessie
+returns from school, saying: &#34;Peuh! Dad's only a fisherman. Why can't
+'er catch more fish an' get a little shop an' be a gen'leman?&#34; Seacombe
+tradesmen have been withdrawing into a class of their own&#8212;the class of
+'not real gen'lemen'&#8212;and have been showing a tendency to act together
+against the rest of the people, and to form rings for the purpose of
+keeping shops empty or prices up. Nobody minds their bleeding visitors.
+That is what God sends visitors for; and besides, the season is so
+short. But when they began to overcharge their fellow townsmen, in
+summer because it was the season and in winter because it wasn't the
+season, the poor people revolted, and amid tremendous hubbub, thunders
+of talk and lightnings of threat, a co-operative store was opened. Then
+did the tradesmen remind the poor of old family debts, legacies from
+hard times. Then did the poor say: &#34;Very well, us'll hae our own store
+and bakery, and pay cash down to ourselves.&#34; Unable to obtain the
+tenancy of a shop, they bought one. They refused to raise the price of
+bread. They laughed at advertisements which professed to point out the
+fallacies of all co-operation. They succeeded, but the class difference
+was widened and clinched&#8212;poor man <i>versus</i> tradesman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grannie Pinn, Mrs Meer and Mam Widger were reckoning up the number of
+people who have been turned out of their cottages, or are under notice
+to quit, for neglecting to deal with their tradesmen landlords.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their indignation having found vent, they went on to talk of Virgin
+Offwill, who has acquired celebrity by living alone in a cottage on no
+one knows what, by sleeping in an armchair before the fire (when she
+can afford one), and by never washing. Sometime last month, Virgin sent
+for Dr Jacks because, so she said, she was wished [bewitched]; and she
+would not let him go until he threatened to report the state of her
+house to the medical officer of health.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>GOD SAVE&#8212;THE DINNER</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tale of Virgin Offwill was capped by another&#8212;that of old Mrs
+Widworthy. Several years ago (these gossips have long memories) she
+received a postal order from her son together with an invitation to
+visit him in London. The post arrived after her man had gone to work.
+She did not wait; she sent out a neighbour's child to change the order,
+packed her few things in a basket, and went off to her son by the
+midday train. On the table she left a note:
+</p>
+<div class="blockquote">
+<p>
+&#34;Widworthy, I am gone to London. Your dinner is in the saucepan. I
+shall be back directly.&#34;
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>
+There was loud laughter in the kitchen; another round of stout and ale;
+then silence. The mothers fidgeted, each after her own manner,
+meditatively. In all the world, and Seacombe, there seemed nothing to
+talk about&#8212;or too much.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Have 'ee heard ort lately of Ned Corry?&#34; asked Grannie Pinn with a
+delightful mixture of gusto and propriety. &#34;Have 'er still got Dina wi'
+'en?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yes, I think.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;An' his wife tu?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bessie burst into the room. Neither Tony nor Mrs Widger approve of
+discussing the intimate humanities before children, so Bessie was
+allowed to fling her news to us unchecked. &#34;Mother, Miss Mase says I
+can leave school so soon as yu've found me a place. Then I'll hae some
+money o' my own earnings, won't I?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yu'll bring it to me, same as I had to what I earned, an' yu'll stay
+on to school till I thinks vitty. You'm not fit for a gen'leman's
+house.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yes, I be. I can work. That's what yu'm paid for, ain't it?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;How many cups an' saucers have yu smashed this week?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Have they learned 'ee all yu wants to know up to school?&#34; inquired
+Grannie Pinn quietly, but with a twinkle at the company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;They an't learned me to play the pi-anno. That's what I wants now. If
+Dad 'd get one, <i>I</i>'d play.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Have they learned 'ee to cook a dinner?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Anybody can du thic. I've learned to play <i>God Save the King</i> on
+the school pi-anno.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;How do 'ee start then?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Why, you puts your fingers....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Naw! I means how du 'ee start to cook dinner?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Peuh!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Her an't learned tidiness,&#34; said Mam Widger. &#34;Lookse! Her scarf on one
+chair, gloves flinged on another, coat slatted on the ground an' her
+hat on the dresser&#8212;now, since her's come in! Pick 'em up to once, else
+thee't hae my hand 'longside o'ee!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bessie scrabbled up her clothes and, making sounds of disgust, went
+out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Her'll steady down, I hope,&#34; remarked Mrs Widger. &#34;Her's wild, but a
+gude maid to try an' help a body, though her makes so much work as her
+does.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Ay!&#34; said Grannie Pinn grimly. &#34;If work don't steady her, there's
+nothing will.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>NED CORRY</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Bessie was gone the conversation reverted to Ned Corry and the
+ages of his children. I met him last summer&#8212;have never ceased hearing
+about him, for his sayings are often repeated and his adventures at sea
+recounted. He came down here on holiday with his wife, who appeared to
+be very happy and was obviously very proud of her Ned. The morning he
+went back, he collected all of his old mates he could find, before
+breakfast, into a public-house, treated them to whisky until his
+pockets were empty, and then borrowed money to return to London. His
+personality seems to have left a deeper impression than any other on
+Seacombe. He is a man very alive; big, generous and uncontrollable in
+all things; so broad that he seems short; great in voice, great in
+strength, greatest in laughter. Very dark, and prominent in feature
+where his fierce black beard allows any of his face to be seen, he is a
+kind of Hebraic Berserker in general appearance, in the uncompromising
+force of him and the squat sloppiness of his clothes. Yet his eyes,
+almost bedded in hair, have often the bright peeping humorousness of a
+shaggy dog's.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had the most boats on the beach, and mighty strokes of luck with the
+fish; employed more men than anyone before or since; paid them well
+when he had the money, and with an irregularity which would have been
+tolerated from no other boat-owner. Dina went to lodge at his house. He
+made of her, so gossip says, a second wife. He succeeded in running a
+household of three; then bought two lodging houses and set a wife to
+manage each. &#34;Ned was all right,&#34; Tony says, &#34;on'y he didn't know how
+to look after hisself&#8212;didn't care&#8212;nor after his money when he made
+it.&#34; One evening, Tony found him in his bath in the middle of the
+kitchen whilst his womenfolk were cooking him a good hot supper. It was
+not his being in his bath which made Tony blush, but the freedom with
+which he called, &#34;Come in!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the prudent-minded of Seacombe clamoured to Ned for their money,
+he sold up his boats and furniture, went to London, took without
+apprenticeship a well-paid job at the docks, and now, as he walks home
+along the dockside streets, he is given <i>Good Night</i> from London
+Bridge to Tilbury. The exerting of strength seems to have been his
+leading impulse; pride in Ned Corry his only check. He was too big for
+Seacombe. In London he remains entirely himself&#8212;'West-country Ned!'
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before Ned Corry's affairs were finished with, Tony came into the
+kitchen, saying: &#34;I just been talking out there to Skinny Chubb. Nice
+quiet chap, he is. His wife <i>is</i> gone.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well, didn't 'ee know that?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>SELF-RESTRAINT</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then I heard a wonderful tale of self-restraint. Chubb is a good
+workman, a man of about fifty with grown up boys and girls. His wife
+has been no good to him. She used to have men in the house when he was
+away. She provided them with grog and food, but there was never
+anything for Chubb to eat, except abuse. She won the daughters over to
+her side. Sometimes she would go away to London, taking perhaps one of
+the girls with her. Only the eldest son, who was not at home, sided
+with his father. Neighbours used to hear the couple quarrelling half
+the night, but during the whole of their married life he never once
+struck or beat her. All he used to tell other people was:&#8212;&#34;'Tis a
+wonder how a man can stand all her du say to me, day an' night, early
+an' late.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just before Michaelmas, she decided to leave her husband: to go to
+London with a German flunkey. They broke up the home. Chubb packed up
+for her the best of the furniture. He wrote out her labels, said
+<i>Good-bye</i>, paid her cab fare to the station. Now he is living in
+lodgings. Rumour has it that the German has left her. In answer to
+inquiries, Chubb merely says: &#34;Well, I tell 'ee, <i>I</i> be glad to be
+out o'it all at last. <i>I</i>'ll never hae her back.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is a sound old piece of psychology which distinguishes a man's bark
+from his bite. The poor man's bark is appalling; I often used to think
+there was murder in the air when I heard some quite ordinary
+discussion; there would have been murder in the air had I myself been
+worked up to speak so furiously. But, comparatively speaking, he seldom
+bites; hardly ever without warning; and he can as a rule stay himself
+in the very act. The educated man, on the other hand, does not bark
+much; one of the most important parts of his education has been the
+teaching him not to do so; but when he does bite, it is blindly, and he
+makes his teeth meet if he can. We hear, of course, much more of the
+poor man in the police courts, and we imagine (spite of Herbert
+Spencer's warning) that education is to diminish his crimes. How very
+simple and fallacious! In the first place, the poor, the uneducated or
+but slightly educated, greatly out-number the educated. Suppose by
+means of complete and trustworthy criminal statistics, we could work
+out the <i>percentage criminality</i> of the different classes. I fancy
+that the poor man would not then show&#8212;even judged by our whimsical
+legal and moral standards&#8212;a greater percentage criminality than the
+educated. And if in our statistics we could include degrees of
+provocation to the various crimes, such as hunger, poverty, want of the
+money to leave exasperating surroundings&#8212;it would probably be found
+that the poor are, if anything, less criminally disposed than other
+sections of the community; that, though they lack something of the
+secondary self-restraint which prevents bark and noise, they are, other
+things being equal, actually stronger in that primary self-restraint,
+the lack of which leads directly to crime. On <i>a priori</i>,
+historical, grounds one would anticipate such a conclusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is certain that they forgive offence more readily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have often wondered how many nice quiet respectable vindictive
+murders are yearly done by educated men too clever to be found out. The
+poor man is a fool at 'Murder as a Fine Art.' He hacks and bashes.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+6.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sighting, as we thought, some balks of timber, floating away on the ebb
+tide over the outside of Broken Rocks, two of us shoved a small boat
+down the beach. Our flotsam was a trick of the fading light on the sea,
+just where Broken Rocks raised the swell a little; but in the
+exquisite, the almost menacing, calm of the evening, we leaned on our
+oars and watched for a while. To seaward, the horizon was a peculiar
+lowering purple, as if a semi-opaque sheet of glass were placed there.
+On land, over the Windgap, the sunset was like many ranks of yellow and
+shining black banners&#8212;hard, brassy. The sea was a misty blue. One by
+one, according to their prominence, the bushes on the face of the
+cliffs faded into the general contour. As we landed, a slight lop came
+over the water from the dark south-east. &#34;Ah!&#34; said Uncle Jake. &#34;We'm
+going to hae it. South-easter's coming!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>CALLED OUT BETIMES</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was some discussion as to whether or not we should haul the boats
+up over the sea-wall. In the end we hauled the smaller ones, leaving
+the <i>Cock Robin</i> and the drifter upon the beach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the very early morning&#8212;it was so dark I could not see the outline
+of the window&#8212;I half awoke to an indistinct sensation that the house
+was rocking and hell unloosed outside. Something solid seemed to be
+beating the wall. Than I heard Grandfer's voice roaring at the foot of
+the stairs:&#8212;&#34;What is it? Why, tell thic Tony he'd better hurry up else
+all the boats 'll be washed away. Blowing a hurricane 'tis! Sea's
+making. Oughtn't to ha' left they boats....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Be quiet! yu'll wake all the kids up.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Blowing a hurricane 'tis! Nort to me if the boats du wash off. Tony'd
+never wake.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;All right, I'll wake him.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In five minutes we were downstairs, with the fire lighted and the
+kettle on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Outside, it was pitch dark. There was nothing there, it seemed, except
+a savage wind and stinging splotches of rain and the cry of the low
+tide on the sand. I felt my way up the Gut and out, sliding one foot
+before the other so as not to fall over the sea-wall. John Widger
+bumped into me, and together we crept along to the capstan. A white
+shadow of surf was just visible. We dropped gingerly off the wall to
+the beach, trusting there was no iron gear there to smash our ankles.
+Then for an hour we fumbled our way about; pushed, hauled,
+disentangled, slid and swore; grasping sometimes the right rope and
+sometimes the wrong one with hands almost too cold and stiff, too
+painful, to grasp anything at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out of the blackness came another hurricane squall with rain that
+lashed. The rushing air itself shook. We crouched, all humped up, in
+the lew of a drifter's bows, whilst the rain water washed around our
+boots and coat-tails. &#34;This 'll tell 'ee what 'tis like for us chaps,&#34;
+said Tony. &#34;I be only sorry,&#34; Uncle Jake added, &#34;for them what's out to
+sea now in ships wi' rotten gear.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A DISCOLOURED FURY</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the dawn broke thick, the sea rose still further, until it was a
+discoloured fury battering the shore. With Uncle Jake I watched some
+long planks, four inches in thickness and ten broad, swept off the top
+of the beach. We saw them hurtled over Broken Rocks, now dashed against
+the cliff, now careering, so to speak, on their hind legs. Such were
+their mad capers that we laughed aloud. We were far from wishing to
+save them. We rejoiced with them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the day blew on, the wind moderated inshore and the lop gathered
+itself together into a heavy swell. And after dark, at half tide, Uncle
+Jake and myself worked hard. We dragged the heavy planks from a surf
+that seemed ever advancing on us to drive us towards the cliffs, yet
+never did, and we propped up the planks against cliffs whose crumbling
+drove us constantly down to the sea. There's a winter's firing there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We talked&#8212;out-howling the noise jerkily&#8212;of wrecks and wreckages. Had
+we had the chance, we might then conceivably have wrecked a ship. For
+there, on the narrow strip of shingle between the wash of the waves and
+the unstable cliff, we were primitive men, ready without ruth to wreck
+for ourselves the contrivances of civilization.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+7.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony has received one or two presents this autumn, and now the gales
+have put an end to all kinds of fishing, he is beginning to write his
+letters of thanks. Or rather, he bothers Mam Widger to write them for
+him, and when she has said sufficiently often, &#34;G'out yu mump-head! Du
+it yourself!&#34; he sets to work. After long hesitation, pen in hand, and
+a laborious commencement, he dashes off a letter, protests that it
+ought to be burnt, and sends it to post. He acts, indeed, a comic
+version of the groans and travail about which literary men talk so
+much.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>PRESENTS AND TIPS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whether he prefers a present or a tip is doubtful, and depends largely
+on the amount of money in the house. Presents are more valued; tips
+more useful. He feels that 'there didn't ought to be no need of tips';
+knows obscurely that they are one of the effects, and the causes, of
+class difference; that they are either a tacit admission that his
+labour is underpaid, or else such an expression of good-will as a man
+would not presume to give to 'the likes o' himself,' or else an
+indirect bribe for some or other undue attention. Usually, however, not
+wishing to go into the matter so thoroughly&#8212;having come in contact
+with outsiders chiefly when they have been on holiday and least
+economical&#8212;he considers a tip merely as the outflowing of a
+gen'leman's abundance. &#34;They can afford it, can't 'em? They lives in
+big houses, an' it helps keeps thees yer little lot fed an' booted.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If, however, he has reason to believe that 'a nice quiet gen'leman' is
+really hard-up, then he is very sorry, and will reduce the rate of hire
+by so much as half. In such cases, it is well that the gen'leman should
+add a small tip, for his niceness' sake. Then is Tony more than paid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The gentleman, as such, seems to be losing prestige. Gentility is being
+made to share its glory with education, 'Ignorant' is becoming a worse
+insult than 'no class.' Grandfer, in argument will think to prove his
+case by saying: &#34;Why, a gen'leman told us so t'other day on the Front.
+A gen'leman told me, I tell thee!&#34; Grandfer's sons would like the
+gen'leman's reasons. In fact the stuff and nonsense that the chatting
+gen'leman, feeling himself safe from contradiction, will try to teach a
+so-called ignorant fisherman, is most amazing. If he but knew how
+shrewdly he is criticised, afterwards....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Education even is esteemed not so much for the knowledge it provides,
+still less for its wisdom, as for the advantage it gives a man in
+practical affairs; the additional money it earns him. &#34;No doubt they
+educated people knows a lot what I don't,&#34; says Tony, &#34;an' can du a lot
+what I can't; but there's lots o' things what I puzzles me old head
+over, an' them not the smallest, what they ain't no surer of than I be.
+Ay! an' not so sure, for there's many on 'em half mazed wi' too much
+o'it.&#34;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+8.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>BESSIE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bessie has finally left school. The excitement, the chatter, the sudden
+air of superiority over the other children, the critical glance round
+the room when she returns home.... She has learnt next to nothing of
+school-work&#8212;which matters little, since she is strong, hopeful, and
+has a genuine wish to do her best. What does matter is, that she is
+careless, inclined to be slatternly, and has no idea of precision
+either in speech or work. (Few girls have.) This is in part, no doubt,
+mere whelpishness to be grown out of presently. She picks up some piece
+of gossip. &#34;Mother! Mrs Long's been taken to hospital. Her's going to
+die, I 'spect.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No her an't gone to hospital nuther. Dr Bayliss says as her's got to
+go if she ain't better to-morrow. Isn't that what you've a-heard now?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yes&#8212;but I thought her'd most likely be gone 'fore this,&#34; says Bessie
+without, apparently, the least sense of shame, or even of inexactitude.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The other day she reached down a cup to get herself a drink of water.
+Then she took some pains to see if the cup still <i>looked</i> clean,
+and finding it did, she replaced it among the other clean ones on the
+dresser.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her mother sent her out to the larder for some more bread. Bessie
+brought in a new loaf.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;That ain't it,&#34; said Mrs Widger. &#34;There's a stale one there.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No, there ain't.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yes, there is.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I've looked, an't I?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yu go an' look again, my lady.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well, 'tis dark, an' I an't got no light to see with.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Protesting vehemently, Bessie found the stale loaf. Were I her
+mistress, she would irritate me into a very bad temper, and then, by
+her muddle-headed willingness, would make me sorry. She is untrained.
+School has in no way disciplined her mind. From early childhood, of
+course, she has had to do many odd jobs for her mother, but a woman
+with the whole burden of a house on her shoulders, who has never found
+the two ends more than just meet, cannot spare time or thought to train
+her girls systematically. It is so much easier to do the whole of the
+work herself. Bessie's usefulness, such as it is, speaks a deal for her
+disposition. After all, how many women in any station of life, have
+precision and forethought enough to lay a fire so that it will burn up
+at once? Bessie is only thirteen. It is, indeed, her ability for her
+age that tempts one to judge her by a standard which elsewhere&#8212;except
+among women discussing their servants&#8212;would only be applied to a girl
+of twenty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suppose fathers judged their daughters as mothers judge their
+servants....
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>GOING INTO SERVICE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For the present, Bessie is in daily service at a lodging-house. For a
+'gen'leman's residence,' which would be better for her, she is
+over-young and would, besides, need an outfit of dresses, caps and
+aprons which she is not yet old enough to take care of, nor will be
+until she is ready to fall in love. She can go to Mrs Butler's in a
+torn dress and dirty pinafore. She is not expected to appear before the
+visitors; only to do the dirty, rough, and heavy work behind the
+scenes. It was a condition of her leaving school so young, that she
+should go into service and sleep there. Very naturally, Mrs Widger and
+Mrs Butler soon arranged that the 'education lady,' when she came to
+inspect, should be shown Bessie's bedroom at the lodging-house&#8212;and
+that Bessie should sleep at home. It was better for all three; for Mrs
+Butler who is short of room, for Mrs Widger who wants Bessie's help,
+and for Bessie who still requires her mother's authority and oversight.
+Educationalists don't seem to understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In return for two shillings a week and her food, Bessie is supposed to
+work twelve hours a day, from eight till eight. All she does might
+possibly be crammed into three hours a day; that is all she is paid
+for. She brings home her supper in a piece of newspaper. One evening
+she brought some chicken bones which had been in turn the foundation of
+roast chicken, cold chicken, stewed chicken, and soup. Bessie rather
+enjoyed them. Another evening, she unwrapped a whole cake. It fell on
+the floor, whack! neither bouncing, nor breaking. It was full of dough.
+A basin of soup-dregs which she brought home two days ago was found to
+contain a length of stewed string. Stewed to rags, it was, like badly
+boiled meat. Bessie says that Mrs Butler did miss a bell-rope.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+9
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a rush and a banging up the passage. The kitchen door burst
+violently open. A girl (though she wore long skirts her figure was
+unformed and her waist had a stiff youthful curve) ran quickly into the
+room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her eager bright-coloured young face&#8212;that also not yet fully
+formed&#8212;was overshadowed by a flapping decorated hat obviously
+constructed less for a woman's head&#8212;less still for a maiden's&#8212;than
+for a cash draper's window. Her chest was plastered with a motley
+collection of cheap jewellery and lace. Her boots had not been cleaned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She dropped her cardboard boxes on the floor. Regardless of her womanly
+attire, like nothing so much as a hasty child, she flung her arms round
+Tony's neck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Hallo, Dad! How be 'ee? Eh? How's everybody? Lord, I'm hungry. Look
+what I got for 'ee. An't forgot nobody this time, though 'tisn't
+everybody as remembers me. Look, Dad!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What is it?&#34; asked Tony, looking blankly, as if he could hardly
+realise so much clatter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Lookse, Dad! What do 'ee think o'it?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A box was torn open. From it came a couple of glass ornaments, and
+various sorts of 'coloured rock' and sticky toffee for the children.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>BACK FROM SERVICE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Tony's eldest daughter, Jenny, come home from service. She
+walked round the room picking up things to examine, things to eat,
+things that she claimed were hers, and things that she desired given
+her. She talked without, so far as I could see, any connection between
+the sentences. Mouthfuls of food reduced her babbling shriek to a
+burr-burr.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Be 'ee glad to see your daughter, Dad?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss....&#34; said Tony, looking at her very fondly, but still puzzled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Don't believe yu be. Why didn't 'ee write then if yu loves me so?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Thic's Mam 'Idger's job.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out!&#34; said Mrs Widger,&#8212;&#34;Jenny, you an't see'd our addition, have
+'ee.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I held out my hand. Jenny blushed; then she said: &#34;Good evening, sir&#34;;
+then she giggled; and finally she turned her back on me. It took a
+minute or two for her happy carelessness to return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Domestic servants on holiday, more than any other class of people,
+strain one's tact and rouse one's ingrained snobbery. They tend to be
+over-respectful&#8212;the sort of respectfulness that presupposes
+reward,&#8212;and to brandish <i>sirs</i>, or to be shy and silly, or else
+to treat one with a more airy familiarity than the acquaintanceship
+warrants. In the matter of manners, they sit between two chairs, the
+class they serve has one code; the class they spring from has another,
+equally good perhaps, certainly in some respects more delicate, but
+different. In imitating the one code, unsuccessfully, they lose their
+hold on the other. Their very speech&#8212;a mixture of dialect and standard
+English with false intonations&#8212;betrays them. They are like a man
+living abroad, who has lost grip on his native customs, and has
+acquired ill the customs of his adopted country. It is not their fault.
+Circumstances sin against them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger tells me that, when she left her mother's for service, she
+felt nothing so keenly as the loneliness, the isolation, of being in a
+house where no one could be in any full sense of the word her
+confidant, where she was at the beck and call of strangers from the
+time she got up till the time she went to bed, where her irregular
+hours of leisure were passed quite alone in a kitchen. It seems, as
+might be anticipated, that <i>mental</i> comfort or discomfort is at
+the bottom of the servant question, and that class differences, class
+misunderstandings, are ultimately the cause of it. Often enough the
+mistress wishes to be kind, but she fails to understand that what she
+values most differs from what is most valued by her servants. Often
+enough the servants wish to do their best, but little irritations,
+unsalved by sympathy and not to be discussed on terms of equality, lead
+to sulky, don't-care moods which exasperate the mistress into positive,
+instead of negative, unkindness. So a vicious circle is formed. The
+covert enmity between one woman and another simply calls for give and
+take where both are of the same class, but when one of them is, for
+payment and all day, at the disposal of the other.... How many homes
+there are where the menfolk can get anything done willingly, and the
+mistress nothing whatever! The girls go out so early. They miss the
+rough and tumble of their homes. They have their own little ambitions,
+hardly comprehensible to anyone else. Whether or no they desire to be
+satisfactory, they do want their own little flutters.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+10
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>LITTLE SERVANT GIRLS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor brave small servant girls, earning your living while you are yet
+but children! I see your faces at the doors, rosy from the country or
+yellowish-white from an&#230;mia and strong tea; see how your young breasts
+hardly fill out your clinging bodices, all askew, and how your hips are
+not yet grown to support your skirts properly&#8212;draggle-tails! I see you
+taking the morning's milk from the hearty milkman, or going an errand
+in your apron and a coat too small for you, or in your mistress's or
+mother's cast-off jacket, out at the seams, puffy-sleeved, years behind
+the fashion and awry at the shoulders because it is too big. I see your
+floppety hat which you cannot pin down tightly to your hair, because
+there isn't enough of it;&#8212;your courageous attempts to be prettier than
+you are, or else your carelessness from overmuch drudgery; your
+coquettish and ugly gestures mixed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I picture your life. Are you thinking of your work, or are you dreaming
+of the finery you will buy with your month's wages; the ribbons, the
+lace, or the lovely grown-up hat? Are you thinking of what he said, and
+she said, and you said, you answered, you did? Are you dreaming of
+<i>your</i> young man? Are you building queer castles in the air? Are
+you lonely in your dingy kitchen? Have you time and leisure to be
+lonely?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I follow you into your kitchen, with its faint odour of burnt grease
+(your carelessness) and of cockroaches, and its whiffs from the
+scullery sink, and a love-story that scents your life, hidden away in a
+drawer. I hear your mistress's bell jingle under the stairs. You must
+go to bed, and sleep, and be up early, before it is either light or
+warm, to work for her; you must be kept in good condition like a cart
+horse or a donkey; you must earn, earn well, your so many silver pounds
+a year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In mind, I follow you also into your little bedroom under the roof,
+with its cracked water-jug that matches neither the basin or the
+soap-dish, and its boards with a ragged scrap of carpet on them, and
+your tin box in the corner; and the light of the moon or street lamp
+coming in at the window and casting shadows on the sloping whitewashed
+ceiling; and your guttered candle. What will you try on to-night? A
+hat, or a dress, or the two-and-eleven-three-farthing blouse? Shift the
+candle. Show yourself to the looking-glass. A poke here and a pull
+there&#8212;and now put everything away carefully in the box under the bed,
+and go to sleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though I say that I follow you up to your attic, and watch you and see
+you go to sleep, you need not blush or giggle or snap. I would not do
+you any harm; your eyes would plague me. And besides, I do not entirely
+fancy you. You are not fresh. You are boxed up too much. But I trust
+that some lusty careless fellow, regardless of consequences, looking
+not too far ahead, and following the will of his race&#8212;I trust that he
+will get hold of you and whirl you heavenwards, and will fill your
+being full to the brim; and will kiss you and surround you with
+himself, and will make you forget yourself and your mistress and all
+the world, the leaves and birds of the Lover's Lane, the shadowy cattle
+munching in the field and the footsteps approaching.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I wish you luck&#8212;that your young man may stick to you. It is after all
+a glimpse of God I wish you, perhaps your only one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+You've got a longish time before you.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+11
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>MRS YARTY</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Yarty, up Back Lane, is reduced to that last extremity of poor
+women: she is cleaning her cottage and preparing as well as she can 'to
+go up over' on credit, without either doctor or midwife&#8212;unless she
+becomes so ill that someone sends for the parish doctor. She will not
+wish that done, and probably when her time comes, some neighbour will
+look in to see if she is going on as well as can be expected. Were
+Yarty and his wife sufficiently servile to attend church or chapel,
+prayer-meetings or revivals, all sorts of amateur parsons, male and
+female, would flock round; but in any case, Mrs Yarty has no time for
+such goings-on, and if Yarty found anyone sniffing about his house, he
+would certainly tell them that it <i>was</i> his house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A while ago one of the 'district ladies' came here, to Tony's. We were
+a little short with her, and as a last resource, she remarked
+superciliously, in a tone of pleasant surprise: &#34;You are really
+<i>very</i> clean here.&#34; 'Twas an untruth. We are not <i>very</i>
+clean: we are as cleanly as is practicable. I should have liked to show
+her the door. &#34;'Tis only the way of 'em!&#34; said Mrs Widger. &#34;They'm
+stupid, but they means all right.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE YARTY CHILDREN</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Yarty is not low-spirited at all, and though her voice sounds
+rather hysterical, it is merely her manner of speaking, slightly
+accentuated perhaps by more trouble than usual. She is fairly well used
+to such events by now. Yarty himself is angry. His ordinary habits are
+bound to be upset for a few days; for ever, if Mrs Yarty dies. He is
+what successful and conceited people call a waster. &#34;There ain't no
+harm in him,&#34; Tony says. &#34;He wuden't hurt a fly. The only thing is, 'er
+don't du much.&#34; I have never seen him actually drunk. He keeps very
+nearly all his irregular earnings for his own use in a strong locked
+box upstairs. His house is a sort of hotel to him, where he expects to
+find a bed and food, and it is apparently not his business to inquire
+how the food is obtained. If there is none, he makes a fuss, and will
+not take for an answer that he has failed to bring the money. Bobby
+Yarty, thin, pale, big-eyed, the eldest son but one&#8212;a nice intelligent
+boy though he swears badly at his mother&#8212;is ill of a disease which
+only plenty of good food can cure. If, however, food is scarce, it is
+first Mrs Yarty who goes short, then the children. Whether they do, or
+don't, have as much as a couple of chunks each of bread and dripping,
+Yarty must have his stew or fry. The wage-earner has first claim on the
+food, and even when the wage-earner does not earn, the custom is still
+kept up. It is possible also that Mrs Yarty has still an underlying
+affection for her man, a real desire, become instinctive, to feed him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She does not say so. Far from it. She says that she is sorry she ever
+left a good place to marry Yarty. She would, she declares, go back into
+service but for her children. Washing-day, she swears, is her jolliest
+time, and she boasts, with what pride is left her, of there being
+places at twelve or fourteen shillings a week still open to her. She
+did take a place once&#8212;was allowed to take her baby with her&#8212;but at
+the end of a fortnight she arrived home to find that her husband,
+impatient for his tea, had thrown all the crockery on the floor. She
+saw then that she must be content with things as they are.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her present worry is, what will become of the children while she is up
+over, and who will feed them? Mam Widger will do her share, I don't
+doubt. Very often now she puts aside something for them. There is a
+sort of pleasantness in watching them take it: they run off with the
+dish or baking tin like very polite and very hungry dogs, and bring it
+back faithfully with exceeding great respectfulness towards a household
+where there is food to spare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Yarty is one of those people who work better for others than for
+themselves. She is no manager. &#34;They says,&#34; she remarked the other day,
+&#34;as He do take care of the sparrows.&#34; She is a sparrow herself; she
+grubs up sustenance, rubs along without getting any forwarder, where
+others would go under altogether. Years ago she must have been
+good-looking. Her patchily grey hair is crisp; she still has a few
+pretty gestures. But trouble and too much child-bearing have done next
+to their worst with her. Sensible when she grasps a thing, she is often
+a bit mazed. She has the figure of an old woman&#8212;bent, screwed&#8212;and the
+toughness of a young one. Her words, spoken pell-mell in a high
+strained voice which oscillates between laughter and tears, seem to be
+tumbling down a hill one after another. Spite of all her household
+difficulties, she retains the usual table of ornaments just inside the
+front door. Last summer she reclaimed from the roadway a tiny
+triangular garden, about five inches long in the sides, by wedging a
+piece of slate between the doorstep and the wall. There she kept three
+stunted little wall-flowers&#8212;no room for more&#8212;which she attended to
+every morning after breakfast. Cats destroyed them in the end. She
+laughed, as it were gleefully. Her laugh is her own; derisive,
+open-mouthed, shapeless, hardly sane&#8212;but she has a smile&#8212;a smile at
+nothing in particular, at her own thoughts&#8212;which is singularly sweet
+and pathetic. I cannot but think that the spirit which enables her to
+live on without despair, to love her little garden and to smile so
+sweetly, is better worth than much material comfort. Hers, after all,
+is a life that has its fragrance.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+12
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>TONY AS NURSEMAID</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger went off after tea to look at Rosie's grave. She likes to go
+alone, without the children, and she also likes to stop and have a chat
+with someone she knows up on land. In consequence, Tony, taking his
+Sunday evening promenade, found the children on the Front just in that
+state when they want, and do not wish, to go to bed. They followed him
+in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Wer's thic Mam 'Idger?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Don' know!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Her's gone to cementry.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Didn' ought to leave 'ee like thees yer.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Her's gone to see Rosie.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony felt himself rather helpless. &#34;Now then,&#34; he cried with a vain
+nourish, &#34;off to bed wi' 'ee!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No!&#8212;No!&#8212;Shan't!&#8212;Us an't had no supper.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Wer is yer supper? What be going to hae?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Don' know.&#8212;Mam! Mam 'Idger!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One started crying, then the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Casn' thee put 'em to bed thyself?&#34; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I don' know! Better wait.... Her's biding away a long time. I'll hae
+to talk to she.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony sat down in the courting chair. The two boys climbed one on each
+of his knees. They wriggled themselves comfortable, and fell asleep. He
+woke them. &#34;Won' 'ee go to bed now? I wants to go out.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No! No!&#34; they cried peevishly. &#34;Wer's thiccy Mam?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their white heads, turned downwards in sleep on either side of Tony's
+red weathered face, looked very patient and bud-like. Tony's eyes
+twinkled over them with a humorous helplessness, crossed occasionally
+by a shade of impatience. So the three of them waited for the
+household's source of energy to return. Tony had been wanting a glass
+of beer. He nearly slept too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mam Widger said, when she did come, that they were 'all so big a fule
+as one another.' &#34;Casn' thee even get thy children off to bed?&#34; she
+asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I can't help o'it,&#34; was Tony's reply.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>LOSS OF TEMPER</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She has taken the household affairs so completely on her shoulders that
+he is almost helpless without her. In many ways, and in the better, the
+biblical, sense of the word, he is still so childlike that he often
+gets done for him what it would be useless for other people who have
+little of the child in them, to expect. For the same reason, bullies
+choose him out for attack. If I should happen to lose my temper with
+him, it is a fault on my part, quickly repented of and quicker
+forgiven, but a fault nevertheless. If he, on the other hand, loses his
+temper with me, he merely says afterwards: &#34;Ah! I be al'ays like
+that&#8212;irritable like; I al'ays was an' I al'ays shall be to the end o'
+the chapter.&#34; He assumes that there was no fault on his part, that his
+loss of temper was simply the outcome of the nature of things and of
+himself, and consequently that there was nothing to call for
+forgiveness. The curious thing is that one feels his view to be right.
+One does not <i>forgive</i> children; nor the childlike spirit either.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Returning from sea one evening, more lazy than tired, he said: &#34;You
+wash me face, Mam, an' I'll wash me hands myself.&#34; His face was washed
+amid shouts of laughter, and I tugged off his boots. We were all quite
+pleased. Happy is the man for whom one can do that sort of thing!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger explained the other day at dinner that for a time after they
+were married, Tony used to help a great deal with the housework, until
+once, when he was doing something clumsily, she said: &#34;Git 'long out
+wi' 'ee, I can du that!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss,&#34; added Tony, &#34;I used to scrub, and help her wi' the washing (an'
+kiss her tu), but I ain't done nort to it since her spoke to me rough,
+like that, an' now I be got out the way o'it, an' that's the reason
+o'it&#8212;thic Mam 'Idger there!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out! 'tis thy....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Oh well, I du cuddle 'ee sometimes, when yu'm willing!&#34;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+13
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Against the beach the listless sea made a sound like a rattle, very
+gently and continuously shaken by a very tired baby. Nothing was doing.
+The air was a little too chilly for pleasure boating. Tony had gone to
+'put away up over' the after-dinner hour. I lay down to read, and fell
+asleep to the meg-meg of Mam Widger's voice chatting in a neighbour's
+doorway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two or three small pebbles jumped through the open window. Uncle Jake
+was below. When he says, on the Front, that he is going somewhere, he
+may set off this week, next week, or never; but when he wakes one
+up.... I hastened down.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>PRAWNING WITH BOAT-NETS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Going shrimpin' wi' the boat-nets,&#34; he said, flavouring, as it were, a
+tit-bit in his mouth. &#34;Must try and earn summut if I bean't going to
+feel the pinch o' <i>thees</i> winter.&#34; Then he added as if it were an
+afterthought: &#34;Be 'ee coming?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;When?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Now&#8212;so sune as I can get enough bait. I've a-got a beautiful cod's
+head towards it. Back about midnight, I daresay.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;All right.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Put some clothes on your back. I'll bring a bottle o'tay&#8212;better than
+brewers' tack&#8212;an' go'n get the boat ready. Take the
+<i>Moondaisy</i>.... Eh?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony, just downstairs and still rubbing his eyes (when he snoozes he
+goes right to bed), asked what was up. &#34;Shrimping wi' Uncle Jake,&#34; I
+replied. &#34;That'll gie thee a doing!&#34; he said. &#34;Yu ask George. George
+used to be Uncle Jake's mate. 'Tis, 'Back oar-for'ard&#8212;back wi'
+inside&#8212;steady&#8212;steady&#8212;damn yer eyes!' George couldn't put up wi' it.
+Jake don' never sleep hisself, and wuden' let he sleep.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The poor little <i>Moondaisy</i>, lying on ways at the water's edge,
+looked as if she had a small deckhouse aft. Sixteen boat-nets,<a href="#note19" name="noteref19"><sup>19</sup></a> with
+their lines and corks, were piled up on the stern seats. In the
+stern-sheets were two baskets, one of them very smelly, and a newspaper
+parcel that reeked. Piled up in the bows were bits of old rope, sacks
+and bags (very catty), chips of wood, empty tea-bottles, and all the
+litter that collects in a boat used by Uncle Jake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Where are we going?&#34; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;<i>I</i> knows; but if anybody asks yu where we'm going, or where
+we've been, don't yu tell 'em. Don't want none o' they treble-X-ers on
+our ground. You say like ol' Pussey Pengelly used to: 'Down to Longo.'
+I don't hae nobody 'long wi' me what can't keep a quiet tongue.&#8212;I can
+see some o' they hellers down there now, but they ain't so far west as
+we'm going, not by a long way. An' yu wuden' see 'em where they be if
+they didn't think 'twas going to be a quiet night with not much pulling
+attached to it. But <i>I</i> shuden' be surprised to see a breeze down
+easterly 'fore morning. Don't du to get caught down to Longo be an
+easterly breeze. Lord, the pulls I've a-had to get home 'fore now!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE HIGH-TIDE WAVES</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A very old-fashioned figure Uncle Jake looked, standing up in the
+stern-sheets and bending rhythmically, sweep and jerk, sweep and jerk,
+to his long oar, as if there were wires inside him. His grey
+picture-frame beard seems to have the effect of concentrating the
+expressiveness of his face, the satiric glint of his eyes, the dry
+smile, the straightness of his shaven upper lip, and the kindly
+lighting-up of the whole visage when he calls to the sea-gulls and they
+answer him back, and he says with the delight of a child, &#34;There! Did
+'ee hear thic?&#34; Keeping close along shore in order to avoid the
+strength of the flood tide against us, we rode with a perfection of
+motion on the heave of the breaking swell. As we were passing over the
+inside of Broken Rocks, three waves ran far up the beach. &#34;Did 'ee hear
+thic rattle?&#34; Uncle Jake exclaimed. &#34;That was the high-tide wave, then,
+whatever the tide-tables say. Yu'll hear the low tide t'night if yu
+listens.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once I backed the boat ashore for Uncle Jake to go and look at one of
+the numerous holes under the cliffs, in every one of which he has
+wreckage stored up for firewood against the winter. He can at least
+depend on having warmth. When he is nowhere to be found, he is a as a
+rule down-shore carrying jetsam into caves. Much of it he gives away
+for no other payment than the privilege of talking sarcastically at
+those who don't trouble to go and of blazing forth at them when they
+do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The November sun went down while we rowed, an almost imperceptible
+fading of daylight into delicate thin colours and finally into a shiny
+grey half-light. More and more the cliffs lowered above us. They lost
+their redness except where a glint of the sun burned splendidly upon
+them; coloured shadows, as it were, came to life in the high earthern
+flanks, lifted themselves off, and floated away into the sunset, until
+the land stood against and above the sea, black and naked, crowned with
+distorted thorn bushes. Very serene was the sky, but a little hard.
+&#34;Wind down east t'morrow,&#34; Uncle Jake repeated. We passed Refuge Cove,
+over Dog Tooth Ledge, and along Landlock Bay. We tossed over the Brandy
+Mull, a great round pit in a reef, where even in calm weather the tide
+boils always. No further were there any beaches. The sea washed to the
+sheer cliffs through tumbled heaps of rocks. &#34;<i>'Tis</i> an ironbound
+shop!&#34; said Uncle Jake. &#34;Poor fellows, that gets wrecked hereabout! I
+knows for some copper bolts when they rots out o' the wreck where they
+be.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had rowed down to Longo on the calm sea; we were on the sea, almost
+in it, in so small a boat; and shorewards were the tide-swirls, the
+jagged rocks, the high black cliffs. The relation of sea and land was
+become reversed for us. The sea was no longer a thirsty menace, an
+unknown waste. It was the land, the rocks and the cliffs, which
+threatened hungrily. Night-fears, had there been any, would surely have
+sprung out from the land.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A COD'S HEAD</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We rowed into a bay whose wide-spreading arms were like an amphitheatre
+of shadows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Take thees yer oar,&#34; said Uncle Jake. &#34;Wer's thic cod's head?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everywhere in the boat, to judge by one's nose. He found it, hacked it,
+then beat it with a pebble, and hacked again, and tore. From it came
+two awful separate smells&#8212;one like that of a dissecting room, the
+other like bad crab's inside, or like fearfully perverted cocoa, just
+wetted&#8212;a sort of granulated stink that stopped one's breath. Beautiful
+bait!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Now then, while I fixes the bait between the thirts,&#34; said Uncle Jake,
+&#34;yu paddle westward. Keep 'en straight, else if a bit of a breeze
+comes, us'll never find the buoys.&#34; While I rowed very slowly, he flung
+overboard first a buoy and then its net, a buoy and its net, till he
+had hove the whole sixteen with about four boat's lengths between each.
+The <i>plop</i> was echoed from the cliff, and as the nets sank the
+sea-fire glittered green upon them. He drew on a ragged pair of oilskin
+trousers, stationed himself on the starboard side of the stern-sheets,
+and grasped the longer tiller. On account of the ebb tide and
+consequent lay of the corks, we worked back, in reverse order,
+eastwards. It was for me to row the boat up until the bow was just
+inside the large buoy. Then Uncle Jake's directions, more or less
+abbreviated, came fast one after another:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Back outside oar</i> (or <i>Pull inside oar</i>), to bring the bows
+round towards the buoy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Pull both oars</i>, to bring the boat up to the buoy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Pull outside oar</i>, to bring the stern of the boat a nice striking
+distance from the line between the buoy and the small corks. (Uncle
+Jake strikes under and up with the tiller.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Pull both oars</i>, while he hauls in the loose line.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Back both</i>, to stop the boat's way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Back outside oar</i>, to keep the line just clear of the gunwale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>Stop</i>, while he hauls very slowly and stealthily at first, lest
+prawns and lobsters jump out, then swiftly, raising his arms high above
+his head, until the net is aboard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So, in single and even half strokes, with variations according to
+current and wind, for all the sixteen buoys and nets. Whilst Uncle
+Jake, on his part, dropped the prawns into a bag which hung from his
+neck, flung the wild-crabs amidships, and the lobsters under the stern
+seat, and hove out the net again a few yards from where it was at
+first&#8212;I, on my part, had to spy the next buoy, a mere rocking blot on
+the water, to find out how the line lay from it, and then to hold the
+boat steady till he was ready with the tiller. After a time, one became
+a little mazed, one's head ached with screwing it round to sight the
+buoys, and his directions ceased so long as everything was going right.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>MAKING THE ROUNDS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very wonderful, even exhilarating was the silence and loneliness, the
+feeling that ourselves only, of all the world, were in that beautiful
+mysterious place. Had I had prayers to say, I should have said them,
+sure that some sort of a God was brooding on the waters and suspicious
+perhaps, at the back of my mind, that where the black cliffs upreared
+themselves, there the devil was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After we had hauled and shot again the sixteenth net, Uncle Jake
+counted one hundred and seventy odd prawns from his bag into the
+basket. &#34;Do 'ee see how whitish they be?&#34; he asked. &#34;They'm al'ays like
+that in the dirty water after a gale. Lord, what a battering they poor
+things must get when it blows on thees yer coast!&#34; He picked over the
+lobsters to see if any were saleable, but found only small
+ones&#8212;cockroaches&#8212;that, as he said, &#34;it don't do to let the bogie-man
+[fishery inspector] glimpse.&#8212;An' I've a-catched,&#34; he added, &#34;more than
+five shill'orth o' fine lobsters in one round of the prawn-nets 'fore
+they bloody men from the west'ard came up hereabout wi' their pots. Ah,
+shrimpin' ain't what 't used to be!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We made three more rounds in that bay, then hauled all our nets into
+the boat, rowed further west, and shot our nets round a submarine
+ledge, the whereabouts of which Uncle Jake knew to a yard. A couple of
+rounds there, and we brought up to the buoy of a lobster pot (for the
+ebb tide, washing round the headland, kept on hurtling us out to sea),
+had our supper, and waited. Prawns take longer to go into the nets
+after a second round in the same water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A haziness that had been in the sky, strengthened into a lurry of
+little cloudlets between us and the stars. &#34;That's where 'tis going to
+be,&#34; said Uncle Jake. &#34;Easterly! Do 'ee feel this bit of a swell? Us
+won't be here to-morrow night.&#8212;There! Did 'ee hear that? Eh?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two waves gave forth a peculiar confidential chuckle, long drawn out
+and very gentle, very fatigued&#8212;as if the sea were making some signal
+to us; as if it wished to say that it was tired of ebbing and flowing.
+The cliff shadow listened, I thought, immovable and pitiless, but I
+fancy that I heard the cry of a bird a quarter of a mile to the
+eastward. Sea life wakes up with the flow of the tide. I had forgotten
+the gulls and the ravens; had forgotten the existence of all living
+things except prawns, lobsters and wild-crabs. No more waves
+chuckled.... &#34;That's the low tide waves sure 'nuff&#8212;thic chuckle.
+There's mostly three on 'em. An' I can al'ays hear the rattle of the
+high tide waves tu&#8212;iss, even in a gale o' wind. What a rattle they
+makes on the beach, to be sure! They fules o' visitors 'ould laugh at
+'ee if yu was to tell 'em that&#8212;they've a-laughed at me&#8212;but 'tis true.
+Yu've heard, an't 'ee?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The end buoy was troublesome to find. And in the middle of the round, I
+rowed up to a shadow thinking to find a buoy, and there close beside
+the boat, revealed as the swell sank, was a reef of rock, humped and
+covered with seaweed which stood up on end as the water flowed
+shallowly over the ledge. It was like a grisly great head, ages old,
+immense, and of terrible aspect, heaving itself up through the sea at
+us.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>UNCLE JAKE'S MATES</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With much careful working of the boat, we picked up the middle buoys
+from the ledge, and hove them further to sea. Uncle Jake swore at the
+reef, at the nets, at himself, at his luck. &#34;<i>'Tis</i> a bloody crib!
+Didn't think the tide was going to fall so far. This same happened the
+very last time I was down yer wi' old Blimie&#8212;old Sublime, us calls
+'en. 'Let's get out o' this!' he said. 'Leave the blasted nets an'
+let's get out o' it quick!' But I 'ouldn't let 'en, not I&#8212;us had three
+thousand shrimps thic night; an' he very nearly cried, he did.
+'<i>Tis</i> some mates I've had for thees yer job. Most of 'em won't
+come when they can pay the brewer any other way. <i>I'll</i> never come
+out again wi' the last three on 'em, not if I starves for it. One of
+'em went to sleep; t'other cuden' see the buoys; an' old Blimie was
+blind and not willing neither. 'Wer be the cursed things?' he'd say.
+'Back!' I'd say. 'Back oars! You'm on top o' it!' 'Well, I be backing,
+bain't I?' he'd say, an' go on pulling jest the same. Then 'er said 'er
+was ill and wanted to go home. <i>He</i> won't come no more, not if he
+starves, an' me too. I won't hae 'en!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A ripple came down from the east. The sound of its <i>lap-lap-lap</i>
+under the boat stole on one's ears sleepily, but it roused Uncle Jake
+to quick action. &#34;Do 'ee see thees little cockle on the water?&#34; he
+said. &#34;Do 'ee feel the life o'it in the boat? Must get out of thees
+yer, else we shan't never find the buoys.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We picked up the buoys&#8212;those we had shifted out of line were hard to
+find, for the stars were now all hidden by cloud&#8212;and a little breeze
+followed the ripple from the east. Rowing along under the cliffs, even
+inside some of the rocks, through passages that only Uncle Jake is sure
+of, we caught the young flood tide. The north-easter, that blew out
+freshly from the Seacombe valley, chilled us to the bone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seacombe was asleep. No one was on the Front. We had to carry the nets
+up from the water's edge to the seawall before our utmost straining
+could drag the <i>Moondaisy</i> up the bank of shingle. For more than
+an hour we hauled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When at last it was over, I brought Uncle Jake in house and made him a
+cup of cocoa. We had been nine hours' rowing. Though he could have done
+the same again, without food or rest, he looked a little haggard. It
+seemed impossible to believe that the grey old man with disordered hair
+and beard, clothed in rags and patches, sipping cocoa in a windsor
+chair, was that same alert shadow who had been reckoning up life, so
+humorously and wisely, in the darkness under the cliffs. He referred
+again to the winter's pinch. It must mean that he has not enough money
+put by from summer for the days coming, when even he will not be able
+to find some odd job. Yet, as I know very well, when the pinch does
+come he will go short and say nothing whatever to anybody. He will be
+merely a shade more sarcastic. One of the children may come home saying
+that 'thic Uncle Jake an't had half a pound of butter all this week,'
+or that he has been in one of his passions with Aunt Jake for taking in
+a loaf of bread without paying cash for it. He will bring out a
+ha'penny from a little screw of newspaper to buy milk for his cats, and
+he will take some crumbs to leave on dry rocks under the cliffs for the
+robins that flutter after him there. &#34;Poor things!&#34; he'll say. And to
+people he will still be saying what he thinks, fair or foul, gentle or
+hard. To understand his sternness and his kindness, it needs to go with
+him wrinkling in the sunshine and prawning in the dark. He is become
+very like his beloved rocks and cliffs. He is, as one might say, a
+voice for them, and his words and deeds are what one would expect their
+words and deeds to be, did they not stand there, warm, sunny and
+graciously coloured, or dark and stern, fronting the sea immovably, as
+Uncle Jake fronts life. &#34;Du <i>I</i> want to die?&#34; he says when asked
+his age. &#34;Why, I'd like to live a thousand years!&#34;
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+14
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony is singularly free from any craving either for narcotics or
+stimulants. Most people I know, especially those who do brain work or
+live in cities, are satisfied if they can strike a working balance
+between the two. Granfer must have his glass of beer regularly, but
+neither smokes nor drinks much tea; Uncle Jake snuffs and loves his
+tea, but drinks no alcohol whatever; John Widger smokes heavily; and I
+have never known Mrs Widger get up in the morning without her cup o'
+tay. Tony, on the other hand, smokes, for politeness' sake, an
+occasional cigarette when it is offered him, does not hanker after his
+tea, and scarcely ever drinks alone. He gets drunk now and then, not
+because he greatly wants to, but socially; because, when half-a-dozen
+of them are drinking in rounds, 'What can a fellow du?' Even then he
+often leaves untouched a glassful that has been ordered for him, though
+all the while after his third or fourth glass, he may be asking other
+men to 'drink up and hae another.' Drinking with him is an expression
+of jollity, not the means of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Perkinses went at the end of last week into a jerry-built villa up
+on land. To escape the brunt of moving in, probably, Perkins took Tony
+to a football match at Plymouth. It was not so much that they drank a
+great deal, as that they came home, singing, in a very overcrowded and
+smoky railway carriage. &#34;I s'pose I got exzited like,&#34; Tony says. He
+was all right until they got out into the fresh air, and then ...
+Perkins brought him in house and laid him along the passage. &#34;Here's
+your husband, Mrs Widger.&#34; Being rather afraid of Mrs Widger, because
+she always speaks her mind, Perkins disappeared quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>TONY ON DRINK</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>In vino veritas</i>, no doubt. When Tony is drunk he becomes most
+affectionate, and begins 'slatting things about'&#8212;not violently or
+maliciously, but simply out of joyous devilment and a desire to feel
+that he is doing something. Mrs Widger neither wept nor upbraided him.
+&#34;Yu silly gert fule!&#34; she said. &#34;Yu silly gert fule! Shut up, or yu'll
+wake they chil'ern.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Be glad tu see yer Tony?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out! Git yer butes off.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony made the chairs skip round the room and thought he'd like to see
+the table (with the lamp) upside down. The window curtains annoyed him.
+Mrs Widger took steps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Luckily, she is not with child, or otherwise delicate, and can
+therefore stand a deal of rough and tumble. She pushed him headlong
+into a chair and took off his boots. (Those two, there alone, for Under
+Town was asleep.) Then she shouldered him upstairs, like a heavy piece
+of luggage, and laid him on their bed. Poor Tony was more than leery.
+He swam. He moaned. He was sick. He could neither lie down nor get up.
+&#34;Sarve thee damn well right!&#34; said Mam Widger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;<i>I</i> can't help o'it....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;<i>Yu can't help o'it!</i>&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Between three and four in the morning, she went downstairs, relighted
+the fire and made him and herself a cup o' tay. After that, not so very
+long before daylight, they slept.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To-day Tony is ill and subdued, if not repentant. He reckons he will do
+the same again (&#34;What chap don't, 'cept they mump-headed long-faced
+beggars?&#34;), but at present he turns from liquor; he always does for a
+day and a half after 'going on the bust.' &#34;Didn' ought never to drink
+more'n one glass,&#34; he says; &#34;no, n'eet none at all!&#34; Seeing what it
+would mean for the family if Tony took to drink, Mrs Widger is, and was
+at the time, wonderfully calm and cheerful&#8212;how far from reliance in
+herself, or from trust in Tony, is not plain. I asked her what she
+would do if he became a drunkard and brought no money home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Oh,&#34; she said carelessly, &#34;I s'pose I should turn tu and get some work
+to du and keep things going somehow.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Would you let him have any pocket-money?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Ay, I 'spect I should&#8212;enough for his pint.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There's not a shadow of doubt but she would do both.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+15
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony has always been a man for the girls; so much so, and so naively,
+that whatever he might do would seem quite innocent; as innocent as the
+love-play of animals. Along the Front, of an evening, he calls out,
+&#34;How be 'ee, my dear?&#34; to any girl he chooses, and perhaps takes her
+arm for a few steps. Given half a chance, he snatches a playful kiss.
+They never seem to turn rusty with him. He has the primitive quality of
+knocking their conventionality to bits at one blow.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>FLIRTATIONS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just before the Perkinses left, he turned out at five in the morning to
+see if the high long tide was flowing up to the boats. At six he made
+tea and went with it to bed again. When he came downstairs at eight
+o'clock (in his pants, darning the seat of his trousers), Mrs Widger
+and Mrs Perkins both had breakfasts frying on the fire. Mrs Widger,
+very loud-voiced that morning, was packing the children off to school;
+Mrs Perkins was bent over the pan, browning sausages. Tony crept up
+behind her, seized her by the waist, and kissed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Oh, you naughty man!&#34; said Mrs Perkins, who was married out of a
+drapery establishment and has the drapery style of talking to
+perfection. &#34;If my dear hubby knew....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Tell him!&#34; retorted Tony. &#34;I be ready for 'en. I feels lively this
+morning. I'll gie 'ee another if yu'll darn thees yer trousers for me.
+Thic Mam 'Idger there won't du nort. You wuden' think I'd had two
+nights o'it, wude 'ee? I went to bed last night, an' then I got up,
+five o'clock, and 'cause there weren't nort doing I went to bed again
+an' had an hour or an hour an' a half's more sleep.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Oh, you sleepy man!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I didn' want to sleep. I wanted the missis here to cuddle me, on'y her
+'ouldn't. Her turned away from me that cold.... I went off to sleep.
+An' when I woke up again, thinkin' her'd cuddle me then, her gave me a
+kick an' got out bed. I never see'd ort like it. Her ain't what her
+used to be, for all her ain't a bad li'l thing, thee's know.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out!&#34; said Mrs Widger. &#34;I be older&#8212;and wiser.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Don' know about that. I shall go into Plymouth an' git a nice li'l
+girl there.... Oh, I've know'd plenty on 'em. All the li'l girls likes
+ol' Tony.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I know they do,&#34; remarked Mrs Perkins sententiously, while Mrs Widger
+laughed rather proudly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss; us was to Plymouth once, an' a nice li'l girl wi' a white bow
+roun' her neck came up an' spoke to me when I was a-looking into a shop
+window, an' her said, 'I lives jest here,' an' I said, 'Do 'ee, my
+dear? I'll be 'long in a minute....'&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Where was Mrs Widger then?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Oh, her was 'bout ten yards in front.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss; if her won't be nice to me when I wants her tu, I shall go into
+Plymouth an' find out my li'l girl there....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Garn then, yu fule! I can du wi'out 'ee. I shall hae thic divorce.
+Thee's think, I s'pose, as I can't get 'long wi'out 'ee? Thee's much
+mistaken!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Git 'long out wi' 'ee!&#34; repeated Mrs Widger, laughing and very
+proudly. &#34;Git 'long out an' let me clear these yer breakfast things.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What have yu got for dinner, me dear? Then I'll remain with 'ee an'
+not go out at all.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Amid loud laughter, Tony snatched a kiss from both ladies, and pranced
+out.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+16
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>MRS WIDGER</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Tisn't no use to be jealous,&#34; Mrs Widger says. &#34;I used to be a bit
+taken that way once, but I ain't now, an' 'twuden' make no difference
+if I was.&#34; Doubtless she is quite right, and she certainly succeeds in
+never showing what jealousy she may feel when, for instance, she
+catches sight of Tony strolling in through the Gut with his arm half
+round another woman's waist, as his playful way is. If Tony speaks of
+his first wife she does not, like most second wives, stop talking. If
+she hears of a woman unhappily married, she usually dismisses the
+affair with a &#34;Well, her shuden't ha' married 'en: her must put up wi'
+'en now her's got 'en.&#34; The goings-on of unmarried people do not easily
+scandalise her. &#34;I reckon,&#34; she says, &#34;yu can du as yu like afore yu'm
+married, but after that yu'm fixed.&#34; She is so confident of the
+fastness of the marriage tie (it is, of course, much more indissoluble
+for poor people who cannot travel, have no servants, and cannot afford
+lawyers for divorce proceedings) that she can afford to give Tony
+plenty of rope in small things. Her trust in his faithfulness is
+absolute, and justified. She has him; he cannot get along without her;
+she knows that. Her attitude is founded on experience and common-sense;
+not on some abstract system of morality that never controlled men's
+lives, and never will.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I used to look upon fishermen as picturesque common objects of the
+seashore, I thought their womenfolk rather dreadful. Now, however, the
+more I see of this household the more I admire Mrs Widger's management
+of it. I know of few other women who could direct it better and with
+less friction. Indeed, I am acquainted with no middle-class woman at
+all who could direct any of these poor men's households as their own
+wives so noisily and so cleverly do. Mrs Widger does not attempt to
+gain her own way by sheer force and hardness, not even with the
+children; she bends to every current; but she never breaks, and finally
+prevails. Like most West-country people, she has more staying power
+than visible energy. By going not straight over the hills, like a Roman
+road, but round by the valleys and level paths, she arrives at her
+journey's end just as quickly and with much less disturbance and
+fatigue. She does nothing quite perfectly; neither cooking, mending,
+cleaning nor child-rearing; but she does everything as well as is
+practicable, as well as is advisable. Tony would often like things a
+little better done, but if he had to do them they would be done a
+little worse. Some people here greatly pride themselves on keeping
+their homes spotlessly clean, and their front doors locked so that no
+dirty boot shall soil the oilcloth in the passage. Mrs Widger says that
+her house is for living in. Children run in and out of it, laughing and
+shouting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In some respects, she and Tony remind one of a French bourgeois couple.
+He has the sentiment, the expressed ideality, the sensitiveness. He
+perceives a great deal, but perceives much of it vaguely. He seldom
+makes up his mind&#8212;then unalterably. He is like the little man in
+Blake's drawing, who stands at the foot of a long ladder reaching up to
+the moon, and cries, &#34;I want!&#34; What he wants, he does not precisely
+know. Summut or other. Mrs Widger, on the other hand, knows what she
+wants very exactly; so exactly that she is content to bide her
+opportunity. When they were married, Tony had neither boats nor gear.
+He has them now.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A STEADY HEAD</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How she keeps a steady head passes my understanding; at breakfast-time,
+for example, when the boys are clamouring for their kettle-broth or
+loudly demanding fish, or trying to sneak lumps of sugar; and the
+girls, nearly late for school, are asking what she wants from the
+butcher's or stores; and one or two of them require clean things, or
+something darned, or have not washed their faces or combed out their
+hair properly; and Tony's and my breakfasts are cooking; and the kettle
+is boiling out or over; and Tony is asking her where he has left his
+other guernsey, and everybody is talking nineteen to the dozen&#8212;and she
+wants her own breakfast too. It is at such a moment that she displays
+best her most characteristic gesture.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Most people who work with a will, possess some gesture or movement
+which is typical of, and sums up, the major part of their
+activities&#8212;the gesture that sculptors and painters try to catch. To
+lay out on home and family the earnings of a workman who is regularly
+paid, calls for skill and care enough on the part of a wife who has no
+reserve fund and must make the weekly accounts balance to within a few
+ha'pence. But successfully to lay out, and to lay by, the earnings of a
+man like Tony, whose family is large and whose money comes in with
+extreme irregularity, requires a combination of forethought and
+self-control which falls little short of genius. And it has to be done
+on a cash basis, for debt would worry Tony out of his wits. The family
+purse must necessarily be the centre, and the symbol, of Mrs Widger's
+household activities; a matter to which she must give more thought than
+to any other one thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Mabel, I want you to go out for me,&#34; she says. &#34;Get me my purse.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>CHARACTERISTIC GESTURE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Standing, as a rule, by the dresser, she receives the purse into her
+hand, opens it meditatively, looks in, pokes a ringer in, tips the
+purse and peers between the coins as they fall apart; takes one or two
+out and replaces them as if they fitted into slots. Then with a
+wide-armed gesture, curiously commanding and graceful, she hands out to
+the child perhaps a ha'penny. &#34;Get me a ha'porth o' new milk, quick!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The purse is put away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So striking is the little ceremony, so symbolic, so able to stop our
+chatter while we look, that we have nicknamed Mam Widger <i>The Purse
+Bearer</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That is the name for her&#8212;Purse Bearer.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+17
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Downstairs in the front room there are two or three photographs of
+George, that he himself has sent home since that day he went off to the
+Navy. The earliest shows him still boyish, sitting small, as it were,
+and a little shy of his new uniform. In the latest, taken not long ago,
+nor very long in point of time after the first, he is sitting bolt
+upright, chest inflated, arms akimbo with a straight, level, almost
+ferocious look in his eyes. He has apparently taken a measure of the
+world outside Under Town, and is all the surer of his feet for having
+stood up against greater odds and for having walked the slippery plank
+of Navy regulations. &#34;If you'm minded to run up against me,&#34; he seems
+to be saying, &#34;come and try; here I am.&#34; The two photographs suggest
+the difference between a bird in winter and in the mating season.
+George's uniform, in the later photograph, has become his spring
+plumage.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>GEORGE HOME</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he sent word that he was coming home on leave, I was prepared for
+a great change in him, but scarcely for the new George. He used to be
+so like a cat on a sunny wall; used to lie along the stern seat of the
+<i>Moondaisy</i> so lazy and content that only his ever-watchful eyes
+held any expression. He was deeply sunburnt: scraggy in the neck;
+strong and lissome, but not very smart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He is returned home no less strong and lissome, and exceedingly smart.
+The sunburn is gone; indeed there's many a maiden would envy his
+complexion; and his long stout neck, with the broadening bands of
+muscle, would delight a sculptor. The alert expression, that used to be
+more or less limited to his eyes, has spread, so to speak, over all his
+face, over the whole of him and into all his movements. He is
+organised; unified. In repose now, he would not be simply lazy; he
+would be <i>being lazy</i>. His features, rather indeterminate of old,
+have become curiously refined, almost delicate, almost supercilious (in
+the pride of young strength), but not quite either. It is noticeable
+generally that an orderly mental existence has great power to
+regularise the features, and in so doing, to refine them. Hence perhaps
+this refinement of feature in George; for if, in the effort to gain
+promotion, he has been putting his heart into his work&#8212;the routine
+work of his ship and the Naval barracks&#8212;it follows that his mental
+existence must have been very orderly and regular. But how far the
+total change in him is due to Navy discipline, and how far to his
+arrival at mating time, one cannot say, neither probably could he.
+Among working people nothing so smartens a young man and so quickly
+sets him on his own feet as a little traffic with the maidens;
+especially when he can't get his own way too easily. George, I gather,
+is paying attention to two or three.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whereas his toilet used to consist of dragging on trousers, guernsey
+and boots, and lacing up the last-named aboard his boat, if at all, it
+is now a function delightful to witness as he stumps backwards and
+forwards between the kitchen looking-glass and the scullery-sink. What
+a washing and spluttering! what a boot-blacking and hair brushing! what
+retouches and last glances into the glass! The cap comes off and is
+replaced at a jauntier angle, a ribbon is tied again, the lanyard is
+put just right, and George goes forth to a war that began before
+battleships were thought of. One makes fun of his titivations, and
+admires nevertheless. Pride o' life, I have heard it called. Hitching
+one's wagon to a star is doubtless good; so is driving one's wagon
+along mankind's track. Thank God we have still a deal of the monkey in
+us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I should like to see how Master George would carry on the land campaign
+if he had money to spare. That, however, he has not. The presents he
+brought home for the whole family, as is customary, must have cost him
+a good deal. He has had, too, a spell in the Naval barracks&#8212;which
+means spending money on shore amusements instead of putting it by. And
+as he has bought some civilian clothes on the instalment system, and
+will have that to pay off, he cannot borrow much of his father or
+mother.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Being 'on his own' now, he does not, of course expect a supply of money
+from his father, nor on the other hand does Tony try to force his
+authority upon George. Whilst he was here, George met a few of his old
+chums up in the Town, and about midnight he came home rather drunk. We
+were all abed; he had to knock several times; and in the end Tony went
+down to let him in. 'Twas a good opportunity for a quarrel that would
+have wakened the whole Square. But Tony said nothing then. He saw
+George safely to bed, and merely remarked next day in George's hearing,
+that &#34;'Tisn't gude to drink tu much if you can help o'it, specially
+when yu'm young; besides, it costis tu much.&#34; George was very ashamed.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>MRS WIDGER'S DIPLOMACY</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs Widger it was who had the row over George's spree, but not with
+George, and owing to her clever diplomacy it was hardly a row at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mabel rushed into the house at breakfast-time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Mother, is George come home?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Course he is. What next?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well, Lottie Rousdon says as he come'd home last night an' yu an' Dad
+wuden' let 'en in. Drunk's a handcart, falling about, her says he was.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Tis a lie!&#34; began Mrs Widger loudly. Then she appeared to think of
+something; her eyes widened, and she spoke quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Who told yu thic tale?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Why, May Rousdon jest as I was coming in now. Her stopped me an' asked
+if what Lottie'd told her was true.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yu go an' tell Lottie Rousdon that if she has a minute to spare when
+she comes home this afternoon to clean herself [Lottie Rousdon is a day
+servant], as mother'd like to see her. Don't yu&#34;&#8212;this with rising
+voice&#8212;&#34;don't yu tell anything more'n that or I'll break your neck for
+yu.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mabel rushed out full of importance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;The lying bitch!&#34; remarked Mam Widger.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lottie Rousdon walked into the trap. She came in the early evening,
+feathers flying, very innocent. She was in a strange house, not in the
+Square or among her relatives. Mrs Widger was on her own ground. Both
+went into the front room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What for did yu&#8212;&#34; we could not help hearing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Oh, I didn't, Mrs Widger; I'm sure I didn't&#8212;&#8212;&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yu did!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Mabel,&#34; called Mrs Widger. &#34;Go'n ask May Rousdon to kindly step this
+way.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+May Rousdon came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Who told yu what yu told Mabel about George, this morning? Did
+<i>yu</i> make it up?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Twas Lottie told me, Mrs Widger.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;There! if I didn't think.... Don't yu ever say such a wicked thing
+again! Yu don' know what harm....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The parlour door was shut fast. A hubbub went on within. After a time,
+Lottie, weeping, was led out of the house by her sister.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;The lying bitch,&#34; Mrs Widger repeated. &#34;I've a-give'd it to her.
+Making up that tale so pat as if 'twas all true! That's the sort o'
+thing they used to put about when Tony and me was first married, but I
+fought 'em down, I did, an' I thought 'twas all stopped long ago. They
+tried to make out as 'twas me drove George to sea. Nobody can't ever
+say I haven't luked after Tony's first wife's children so well as I
+have me own&#8212;but they <i>have</i> said it, all the same, an' I've up
+an' give'd it to 'em 'fore now. Whenever I used to correct the
+children, they'd only to run out o' the house an' they cude always find
+someone to listen to 'em and say as I was cruel to 'em and God knows
+what. One time, when I wasn't very well, I felt I cuden' put up wi' it
+any longer. But I did. An' here I be, same's ever. Pretty times us used
+to have, I can tell yu, when we was first married an' some of 'em put
+my blood up!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I understand that she cursed several&#8212;literally kicked one or two&#8212;out
+of the house; but now when anybody is ill, or anything has to be done,
+she is the first person to be sent for; and when George said goodbye to
+her at the station, he wept.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+18
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>IN THE BAR</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I was in the Alexandra bar this evening, drinking bitter ale. Apart
+from the new saloon counter, it is an old-fashioned place, full of
+wooden partitions and corners and draughts. The incandescent light was
+flickering dimly in the draught that the sea-wind drove through the
+window and the front door. Seated around the fireplace or against the
+painted partitions, and standing about in groups, were fishermen in
+guernseys, ex-fishermen, some bluejackets, and some solid-looking men
+who were pensioners or sailors in mufti. A couple of repulsive
+lodging-house keepers (they eat too much that falls from the lodgers'
+tables) were talking local politics with a foxy-faced young tradesman
+of the semi-professional sort. The barman, who had had enough to drink,
+was thumb-fingered, loud-voiced, hastily slow. Sometimes the sound of a
+heavier wave than usual broke through the buzz of conversation, and
+sometimes, when the conversation dropped, wave after wave could be
+heard sweeping the shingle along the beach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A party of vagrant minstrels came to the front-door steps. They played
+a comic song, and the voices within rose in defiance of the music, so
+that when it stopped suddenly, they were surprised into silence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Up through that silence welled the opening notes of Schubert's
+<i>Serenade</i>. Nobody spoke. The barman took up a glass cheerily. &#34;My
+doctor ordered me to take a little when I feel I need it,&#34; he said; and
+was <i>hushed</i> down. Some edged towards the door, others sat back
+with faces and pipes tilted up, and others gazed down at the floor. A
+memory-struck, far-away look came into their eyes. Only the barman with
+his glass, and the tradesman in his smart suit, seemed wholly
+themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <i>Serenade</i> ceased. None spoke. The light gave a great flicker.
+&#34;What the bloody hell!&#34; exclaimed John Widger. The day-dreamers awoke,
+as if from a light sleep. An everyday look came quickly into their eyes
+and each one shifted in his seat. Some even shook themselves like dogs.
+A joke was made about the woman who came in to collect pence, and the
+conversation rose till nothing of the sea's noise could be heard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I realised with a shock that in four days I shall not be here, and when
+I left the bar, I forgot entirely to say <i>Good-night</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A GLIMPSE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was as if, for the moment, we had all been very intimate; as if we
+had all gone an adventure together and had peeped over the edge of the
+world.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="chapter">
+VIII
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="sc">Salisbury</span>,<br>
+<i>January</i>.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+1
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>CONTRASTS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Chilliness&#8212;a social and emotional chilliness that can with difficulty
+be defined or nailed down to any cause&#8212;is, above and below all, what
+one feels on returning from a poor man's house into middle-class
+surroundings. It is not unlike that chill with which certain forms of
+metropolitan hospitality strike a countryman. He meets a London friend,
+a former fellow-townsman, perhaps, who has migrated to London and whom
+he has not seen for a year or two. &#34;Glad to see you,&#34; says the
+Londoner. &#34;You must call on my wife before you go back. Her day is
+Wednesday.&#34; Or, &#34;You must come to dinner one evening. When are you
+free? Next Tuesday? or Friday?&#34; If the hospitality had begun forthwith,
+and the countryman had been haled off, country fashion, to the very
+next pot-luck meal, he would have had a pleasant adventure. It would
+have been like old times. The former glow of friendship would have more
+than revived. But the calculated invitation for a future date, the idea
+that the countryman will like to call for a twenty minutes' chat on
+generalities and a couple of cups of bad afternoon tea.... Though he
+may understand that a multiplicity of engagements in London renders
+this sort of thing convenient, he none the less feels a chill when it
+is applied to himself, and usually cares little whether he go or not.
+He becomes conscious of the desire to save trouble, which is at the
+bottom of such calculations. Had the Londoner revisited the country, he
+would have found old friends ready to upset all their arrangements for
+the sake of entertaining him. The London hospitality is the 'better
+done,' but country hospitality is warmer. Middle-class life runs
+smoother than the poor man's, it is more arranged and in many ways
+'better done,' and it is chillier precisely because, for smooth
+running, the warmer human impulses, both good and bad, must be
+repressed. 'Something with a little love and a little murder' in it,
+was what the illiterate old woman wanted to learn to read. It is what
+we all want in our hearts, much more than smooth running and
+impenetrable uniform politeness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Down at Seacombe we warm our hands, so to speak, at the fire of life;
+hunger lurks outside, and the fire is dusty and needs looking after;
+but it glows, and we sit together round it. Here at Salisbury,
+throughout the social house, we have an installation of hot-water
+pipes; they may be hygienic (which is doubtful), and they are little
+trouble to keep going; but they don't glow. Give me the warmth that
+glows, and let me get near the heart of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Voices are often raised in Under Town and quarrels are not infrequent,
+but the underlying affections are seldom doubted, and when they do rise
+to the surface, there they are, visible, unashamed. 'Each for himself,
+and devil take the hindmost,' is more admired in theory than followed
+in practice. 'Each for himself and the Almighty for us all,' is Tony's
+way of putting it. The difference lies there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+My acquaintances here are well off for the necessities of life. No one
+is likely to starve next week. Nevertheless, they are full of worry,
+and by restraining their expressions of worry so as not to become
+intolerable to the other worriers, they make themselves the more lonely
+and increase their panic of mind. They are afraid of life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At Seacombe, though there were not a fortnight's money in the house, we
+lived merrily on what we had. In Tony's &#34;Summut 'll sure to turn up if
+yu be ready an' tries to oblige&#34; there is more than philosophy; there
+is race tradition, the experience of generations. The Fates are
+treacherous; therefore, of course, they like to be trusted, and the
+gifts they reserve for those that trust them are retrospective.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>INSTANCES</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All of us at Tony's wanted many things&#8212;a pension, enough to live on,
+work, a piano, or only 'jam zide plaate'&#8212;God knows what we didn't
+want! But the things that men haven't, and want, unite them more than
+those they have. <i>I want</i> is life's steam-gauge; the measure of
+its energy. It is the ground-bass of love, however transcendentalised,
+and whether it give birth to children or ideas. <i>I have</i> is
+stagnant. And <i>I am afraid</i> is the beginning of decay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is still <i>I want</i>, rather than <i>I am afraid</i>, that spurs
+the poor man on.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+2
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For his first marriage and towards setting up house, Tony succeeded in
+saving twenty shillings. He gave it to his mother in gold to keep
+safely for him, and the day before the wedding, he asked for it. &#34;Yu
+knows we an't got no bloody sovereigns,&#34; said his father. It had all
+been spent in food and clothes for the younger children. So Tony went
+to sea that night and earned five shillings. A shilling of that too he
+gave to his mother; then started off on foot for the village where his
+girl was living and awaiting him. She had a little saved up: he knew
+that, though he feared it might have gone like his. They were married,
+however; they fed, rejoiced, and joked; and 'for to du the thing proper
+like,' they hired a trap to drive them home. With what money was left
+they embarked on married life, and their children made no unreasonable
+delay about coming. &#34;Aye!&#34; says Tony, &#34;I'd du the same again&#8212;though
+'twas hard times often.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before I left Seacombe I asked a fisherman's wife, who was expecting
+her sixth or seventh child, whether she had enough money in hand to go
+through with it all; for I knew that her husband was unlikely to earn
+anything just then. &#34;I have,&#34; she said, &#34;an' p'raps I an't. It all
+depends. If everything goes all right, I've got enough to last out, but
+if I be so ill as I was wi' the last one, what us lost, then I an't.
+Howsbe-ever, I don't want nort now. Us'll see how it turns out.&#34; She
+went on setting her house in order, preparing baby linen and making
+ready to 'go up over,' with perfect courage and tranquillity. When one
+thinks of the average educated woman's fear of childbed, although she
+can have doctors, nurses, an&#230;sthetics and every other alleviation, the
+contrast is very great, more especially as the fisherman's wife had
+good reason to anticipate much pain and danger, in addition to the
+possibility of her money giving out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Those are not extraordinary instances, chosen to show how courageous
+people can be sometimes; on the contrary, they are quite ordinary
+illustrations of a general attitude among the poor towards life. To
+express it in terms of a theory which in one form or another is
+accepted by nearly all thinkers&#8212;the poor have not only the <i>Will to
+Live</i>, they have the <i>Courage to Live</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE COURAGE TO LIVE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the whole, they possess the <i>Courage to Live</i> much more than
+any other class. And they need it much more. The industrious
+middle-class man, the commercial or professional man, works with a
+reasonable expectation of ending his days in comfort. He would hardly
+work without. But the poor man's reasonable expectation is the
+workhouse, or some almost equally galling kind of dependency. The
+former may count himself very unlucky if after a life of work he comes
+to destitution; the latter is lucky if he escapes it. Yet the poor man
+works on, and is of at least as good cheer as the other one. If he can
+rub along, he is even happy. He is, I think, the happier of the two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The more intimately one lives among the poor, the more one admires
+their amazing talent for happiness in spite of privation, and their
+magnificent courage in the face of uncertainty; and the more also one
+sees that these qualities have been called into being, or kept alive,
+by uncertainty and thriftlessness. Thrift, indeed, may easily be an
+evil rather than good. From a middle-class standpoint, it is an
+admirable virtue to recommend to the poor. It helps to keep them off
+the rates. But for its proper exercise, thrift requires a special
+training and tradition. And from the standpoint of the essential, as
+opposed to the material, welfare of the poor, it can easily be
+over-valued. Extreme thrift, like extreme cleanliness, has often a
+singularly dehumanising effect. It hardens the nature of its votaries,
+just as gaining what they have not earned most frequently makes men
+flabby. Thrift, as highly recommended, leads the poor man into the
+spiritual squalor of the lower middle-class. It is all right as a means
+of living, but lamentable as an end of life. If a penny saved is a
+penny earned, then a penny earned by work is worth twopence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Courage to Live</i> is the blossom of the <i>Will to Live</i>&#8212;a
+flower far less readily grown than withered. It might be argued that
+since apprehensiveness implies foresight, the poor man's <i>Courage to
+Live</i> is simply his lack of forethought. In part, no doubt, it is
+that. But he does think, slowly and tenaciously, as a cuttlefish grips.
+He foresees pretty plainly the workhouse; and he has the courage to
+face its probability, and to go ahead nevertheless. His reading of life
+is in some ways very broad, his foothold very firm; for it is founded
+closely on actual experience of the primary realities. He looks
+backwards as well as forwards; his fondness and memory for anecdote is
+evidence of how he dwells on the past; instead of comparing an
+occurrence with something in a book, he recalls a similar thing that
+happened to So-and-so, so many years ago, you mind.... He knows vaguely
+(and it is our vaguer knowledge which shapes our lives) that only by a
+succession of miracles a long series of hair's-breadth escapes and
+lucky chances, does he stand at any moment where he is; and he doesn't
+see why miracles should suddenly come to an end. Hence his active
+fatalism, as opposed to the passive Eastern variety. In Tony's opinion,
+&#34;'Tis better to be lucky than rich.&#34; I have never heard him say that
+fortune favours the brave. He assumes it.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+3
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>INTELLECTUAL TYRANNIES</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As one grows more democratic in feeling, as one's faith in the people
+receives shock after shock, yet on the whole brightens&#8212;so does one's
+mistrust of the so-called democratic programmes increase. One becomes
+at once more dissatisfied and less, more reckless and much more
+cautious. One sees so plainly that the three or four political parties
+by no means exhaust the political possibilities. The poor, though
+indeed they have the franchise, remain little more than pawns in the
+political game. They have to vote for somebody, and nobody is prepared
+to allow them much without a full return in money or domination. They
+pay in practice for what theoretically is only their due. Justice for
+them is mainly bills of costs. The political fight lies still between
+their masters and would-be masters; not so much now, perhaps, between
+different factions of property-owners as between the property-owners
+and the intellectuals. Out of the frying-pan into the fire seems the
+likely course; for the intellectuals, if they have the chance, enslave
+the whole man; they are logical and ruthless. The worst tyrannies have
+been priestly tyrannies, whether of Christians, Brahmins or negro
+witch-doctors; and those priests were the intellectuals of their time.
+I wonder when we shall have a party of intellectuals content to find
+out the people's ideals and to serve them faithfully, instead of trying
+to foist their own ideals upon the people.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Law-makers, however, will probably continue to work for the supposed
+benefit of the people rather than on the people's behalf; and equally,
+the supposed welfare of the people will continue to be the handiest
+political weapon; for the property-owning, articulate classes are
+better able to prevent themselves being played with. To those two facts
+one's political principles must be adjusted. The articulate classes,
+moreover, are actually so little acquainted with the inner life of the
+poor that there is no groundwork of general knowledge upon which to
+base conclusions, and it is impossible to do more than speak from one's
+own personal experience. I don't mind confessing that, though I should
+prefer justice all round, yet, if injustice is to be done&#8212;as done it
+must be no doubt&#8212;I had rather the poor were not the sufferers. There
+is no reason to believe that present conditions cannot be bettered&#8212;to
+believe, with Dr Pangloss, <i>que tout est au mieux dans ce meilleur
+des mondes possibles</i>. I have found that to grow acquainted with the
+class that is the chief object of social legislation is to see more
+plainly the room for improvement, and also to see how much better, how
+much sounder, that class is than it appeared to be from the outside:
+how much might be gained, of material advantage especially, and at the
+same time how much there is to be lost of those qualities of character
+which have been acquired through long training and by infinite
+sacrifice. To learn to care for the poor, for their own sake, is to
+fear for them nothing so much as slap-dash, short-sighted social
+legislation.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE WILL TO LIVE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man matters more than his circumstances. The poor man's <i>Courage
+to Live</i> is his most valuable distinctive quality. Most of his
+finest virtues spring therefrom. Any material progress which tends to
+diminish his <i>Courage to Live</i>, or to reduce it to mere <i>Will to
+Live</i>, must prove in the long run to his and to the nation's
+disadvantage. And the <i>Courage to Live</i>, like other virtues,
+diminishes with lack of exercise. Therefore every material advance
+should provide for the continued, for an even greater, exercise and
+need of the <i>Courage to Live</i>. If not, then the material advance
+is best done without.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That is the main constructive conclusion to be drawn. Somewhat akin to
+it is another conclusion of a more critical nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In Nietzsche's <i>Beyond Good and Evil</i> there is an apophthegm to
+the effect that, &#34;Insanity in individuals is something rare&#8212;but in
+groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.&#34; And whilst, on
+the one hand mental specialists have been extending the boundaries of
+insanity to the point of justifying the popular adage that everyone is
+a bit mad, they have, on the other hand, tended to narrow down the
+difference between sanity and its reverse until it has become almost
+entirely a question of mental inhibition, or self-control.
+</p>
+<div class="blockquote">
+<p>
+The highest aim of Mental Hygiene should be to increase the power of
+mental inhibition amongst all men and women. Control is the basis of
+all law and the cement of every social system among men and women,
+without which it would go to pieces.... <i>Sufficient power of
+self-control should be the essence and test of sanity.</i><a href="#note20" name="noteref20"><sup>20</sup></a>
+</p>
+</div>
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>SOCIAL HYGIENE</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is too gratuitously assumed by law-makers (<i>i.e.</i> agitators for
+legislation as well as legislators) that the poor man is woefully
+deficient in inhibition and must be legislated for at every turn.
+Because, for instance, he furnishes the police courts with the majority
+of 'drunks and disorderlies,' he is treated as a born drunkard, to be
+sedulously protected against himself, regardless of such facts as (1)
+there is more of him to get drunk, (2) he prefers 'going on the bust'
+to the more insidious dram-drinking and drugging, (3) he has more cause
+to get drunk, (4) he gets drunk publicly, (5) tied-house beer and cheap
+liquors stimulate to disorderliness more than good liquor. The truth is
+that the poor have a great deal of self-restraint, quite as much
+probably as their law-makers; but it is exercised in different
+directions and, possibly, is somewhat frittered away in small
+occasions. The poor man has so much more bark than bite. He fails to
+restrain his cuss-words for example&#8212;but then cuss-words were invented
+to impress fools. There is much in his life that would madden his
+law-makers, and <i>vice versa</i>. If control is the cement of every
+social system and if it is the highest aim of mental hygiene, it
+follows that control should be the highest aim of legislation and
+custom, which together make up social hygiene. And&#8212;always remembering
+that control is of all virtues the one which strengthens with use and
+withers with disuse&#8212;every piece of new legislation should be most
+carefully examined as to its probable effect on the self-control of the
+people. Control, in short should be the paramount criterion of new
+legislation. A proximate advantage, unless it be a matter of life and
+death, is too dearly purchased by an ultimate diminution of
+self-control.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+4
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since the Industrial Revolution and rise of the press, the middle-class
+has become more and more the real law-maker. The poor have voted
+legislators into power; the upper class in the main has formally made
+the laws; but the engineering of legislation has been, and is, the work
+of the middle class. And the amusing and pathetic thing is that the
+middle class has used its power to try to make other classes like
+itself. That it has succeeded so badly is largely due to the fact that
+the poor man is not simply an undeveloped middle-class man. The
+children at Seacombe showed true childish penetration in treating a
+<i>gentry-boy</i> as an animal of another species: the poor and the
+middle class are different in kind as well as in degree. (More
+different perhaps than the poor and the aristocrat). Their
+civilizations are not two stages of the same civilization, but two
+civilizations, two traditions, which have grown up concurrently, though
+not of course without considerable intermingling. To turn a typical
+poor man into a typical middle-class man is not only to develop him in
+some respects, and do the opposite in others; it is radically to alter
+him. The civilization of the poor may be more backward materially, but
+it contains the nucleus of a finer civilization than that of the middle
+class.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>TWO CIVILIZATIONS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The two classes possess widely dissimilar outlooks. Their morale is
+different. Their ethics are different.<a href="#note21" name="noteref21"><sup>21</sup></a> Middle class people
+frequently make a huge unnecessary outcry, and demand instant
+unnecessary legislation because they find among the poor conditions
+which would be intolerable to themselves but are by no means so to the
+poor. And again, the benevolent frequently accuse the poor of great
+ingratitude because, at some expense probably, they have pressed upon
+the poor what they themselves would like, but what the poor neither
+want nor are thankful for. The educated can sometimes enter fully, and
+even reasonably, into the sorrows of the uneducated, but it is seldom
+indeed that they can enter into their joys and consolations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Broadly speaking, the middle-class is distinguished by the utilitarian
+virtues; the virtues, that is, which are means to an end; the
+profitable, discreet, expedient virtues: whereas the poor prefer what
+Maeterlinck calls 'the great useless virtues'&#8212;useless because they
+bring no apparent immediate profit, and great because by faith or
+deeply-rooted instinct we still believe them of more account than all
+the utilitarian virtues put together.<a href="#note22" name="noteref22"><sup>22</sup></a>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The poor, one comes to believe firmly, if not interfered with by those
+who happen to be in power, are quite capable of fighting out their own
+salvation. A clear ring is what they want&#8212;the opportunity for their
+'something in them tending to good' to develop on its own lines. (When
+I say 'a clear ring' I do not mean that one side should have seconds
+and towels provided and that the other side should be left with
+neither.) That their culture, so developed, will be different from our
+present middle-class culture, is certain; that it will be superior is
+probable. The middle class is in decay, for its reproductive instincts
+are losing their effective intensity, and it is afraid of having
+children; its culture, that it grafted on the old aristocratic stem,
+must decay with it. When the culture derived from the lower classes is
+ready to be grafted in its turn upon the old stem it is possible that
+mankind's progress will go backwards a little to find its footing, and
+will then take one of its great jumps forward.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+5
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE SOCIO-POLITICAL PROBLEM</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The socio-political problem turns out, on ultimate analysis, to be a
+wide restatement of the old theological Problem of Pain. Suffering does
+not necessarily make a fine character, but the characters that we
+recognise as fine could not, apparently, have been so without
+suffering. It is possible to say, &#34;I have suffered, and though I am
+scarred and seared, yet I know that on the whole I am the better for
+that suffering. I do not now wish that I had not had that suffering. I
+even desire that those I love shall suffer so much as they can bear,
+that their conquest may be the greater, their joys the fuller, and
+their life the more intense.&#34; Nevertheless, the very next moment, the
+same man will try by every means possible to avoid suffering for
+himself and for those he loves. That is the dualism which dogs humanity
+in the mass no less than in the individual. That lies at the core of
+domestic politics. But it may be that the part of our nature which
+finds reason to be grateful for past suffering is higher than that part
+which seeks to avoid it in the future.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Waste of the benefits of suffering is waste indeed.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="chapter">
+IX
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="sc">Seacombe</span>,<br>
+<i>December</i>.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+1
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We hired a drosky&#8212;one of the little light landaus that they use with a
+single horse in this hilly district&#8212;and thus we came down from the
+station. On the box were the coachman (grinning), a cabin trunk, a
+portmanteau, a gaping gladstone bag, and a rug packed with sweaters and
+boots. On the front seat, a large parcel of books, a typewriter, a
+dispatch case, a grubby moon-faced little friend of Tommy's, Tommy
+himself, and Jimmy. On the back seat, Straighty, Dane and myself. The
+small boy stood up on the seat, and Dane squatting on his haunches,
+overtopped us all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Down the hill we drove, swerving, wobbling, laughing&#8212;a May party in
+leafless winter. Dane, in his efforts to lick the children's faces,
+tumbled off his perch. We helped him back to his seat amid a chorus of
+happy screams. The grubby boy was just too astonished to cry, just too
+proud of travelling in a carriage. He screwed up his face&#8212;and
+unscrewed it again. Every now and then Tommy sat back as far as he
+could from the disorder, the collection of jerking arms and legs, in
+order to adjust the Plymouth spectacles, of which he is so proud, on
+his small pug nose. As we passed the cross-roads, Straighty was trying
+to snatch a kiss. While we drove along the Front, the children waved
+their hands over the sides of the drosky, and shouted with delight.
+'Twas a Bacchanal with laughter for wine. The Square turned out to
+witness our arrival. &#34;Her's come!&#34; the kiddies cried. Dane leapt out
+first, found a rabbit's head and bolted it whole. The rest of us
+scrambled out. The luggage was piled up in the passage. Hastening in
+his stockinged feet (he had been putting away an hour) to say that he
+was on the point of coming up to station, Tony bruised a toe and barked
+a shin. But it was no time to be savage. I wonder where else the two
+shillings I paid for the drosky would have purchased so much delight.
+Or rather, the delight was in ourselves, in the children; the two
+shillings served only to unlock it.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>CHILDREN</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What precisely there is of difference between these children and those
+of the middle and upper classes has always puzzled me. That there is a
+difference I feel certain. A few years ago, when I had so much to do
+with the boys and girls of a high school, they liked me pretty well, I
+think, and trusted me, but they did not take to me, nor I very greatly
+to them. They went about their business, and I about mine. If I invited
+them for a walk, they came gladly, not because it was a walk with me,
+but because I knew of interesting muddy places, and where to find
+strange things. Their manners to me were always good: good manners
+smoothed our intercourse. But in no sense were our lives interwoven. We
+were side-shows, the one to the other. I was content that it should be
+so, and they were too.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here, on the other hand, my difficulty is to get rid of the children
+when I wish to go out by myself. They follow me out to the Front, and
+meet me there when I return, running towards me with shouting and arms
+upraised, tumbling over their own toes, and taking me home as if I were
+a huge pet dog of theirs. &#34;Where be yu going?&#34; they ask, and, &#34;Where yu
+been?&#34; Jimmy regards me as a fixture. &#34;When yu goes away for two or
+dree days,&#34; he says, &#34;I'll write to 'ee, like Dad du.&#34; I cross the
+Square, and some child, lolling over the board across a doorway, laughs
+to me shrilly and waves its arms. If by taking thought, I could send
+such a glow to the hearts of those I love, as that child, without
+thinking, sends to mine.... But I cannot. I can only wave a hand back
+to the child, and be thankful and full-hearted. Often enough I wish I
+could have a piano and find out whether my fingers will still play
+Chopin, Beethoven, and Bach; often I hanker after a sight of a certain
+picture or a certain statue in the Louvre or Luxembourg, for a concert,
+a theatre, a right-down good argument on some intellectual point, or
+for the books I want to read and never shall. Yet, all in all, I am
+never sorry for long. This children's babble and laughter, these
+simple, commonplace, wonderful affections, are a hundred times worth
+everything I miss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is not that I buy the children bananas or give them an infrequent
+ha'penny. When bananas and ha'pence are scarce, their love is no less.
+It is not that I am always good-tempered and jolly. Sometimes I snap
+unmercifully, so that they look at me with scared, inquiring eyes. It
+is not that they are always well-behaved. Frequently they are very
+naughty indeed. The causes of our sympathy lie deeper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They are more na&#239;ve than the children who are in process of being
+well-educated; more independent and also more dependent. They feel more
+keenly any separation from those they love; they cry lustily if their
+mother disappears only for an hour or two; and nevertheless they can
+fend for themselves out and about as children more carefully nurtured
+could never do. Less able to travel by themselves, they do travel
+alone, and in the end quite as successfully. They make more mistakes
+and retrieve them better. Affection with them more rapidly and frankly
+translates itself into action. They laugh quickly, cry quickly, swear
+quickly. &#34;Yu'm a fule!&#34; they rap out without a moment's hesitation; and
+I suppose I am, else they wouldn't want to say so. Perhaps I overvalue
+the physical manifestations of love, but if a child will take my hand,
+or climb upon my knee, or kiss me unawares, then to certainty of its
+affection is added a greater contentment and a deeper faith. The peace
+of a child that sleeps upon one's shoulder, is given also to oneself.
+The appurtenances of love mean much to me; nearness, warmth, caresses.
+But I cannot make the advances; I was bred in a different school where,
+though frankness was encouraged, <i>na&#239;vet&#233;</i> was repressed; and I am
+the more grateful to these children for taking me in hand&#8212;for being
+able to do so.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>MANNERS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tommy has returned from the Plymouth Eye Infirmary much quietened down
+in many respects and, as most people would say, much better mannered.
+He is neater and a better listener to conversation. He puts his shoes
+under the table, does not throw them. But he has brought back also some
+of the nurses' exclamations of surprise&#8212;&#34;Oh, I say!&#34; &#34;Not I!&#34; &#34;You
+don't say so!&#34; &#34;What idiocy!&#34; and the like. No doubt those expressions
+sounded quite proper among the nurses, but on Tommy's lips they seem
+curiously more vulgar than his natural and rougher expletives. It is,
+besides, as if one were eavesdropping outside the nurses' common room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Much of the charm of these children, and of the grown-ups too, lies in
+the fact that, apart from a few points on which etiquette is very
+strict, they have no manners. I don't mean that they are bad-mannered;
+quite the contrary; what I mean is that their manners are not codified.
+Having no rules for behaviour under various circumstances, they must on
+each occasion act according to their kindliness and desire to please,
+or the reverse. They must go back to the first principles of manners.
+What they are, that they appear. What they feel at the moment, that
+they show. The kind man or child is kindly; the brutal or spiteful by
+nature are brutal or spiteful in manner. Elsewhere, among people of
+breeding, manners make the man&#8212;and hide him. Here, the man makes his
+own manners, and in so doing still further reveals himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I have known a professional man who was rather well-spoken of for his
+good manners, fail lamentably so soon as he found himself in
+surroundings not his own. His code of manners did not apply there, and
+outside his code he had no manners. He was excessively rude. He showed
+at once that his customary good manners were founded on rules well
+learnt, and not on any real consideration for other people's feelings.
+The incredible impertinence of clergymen and district visitors
+furnishes plenty of cases in point. Their manners, no doubt, are pretty
+good among themselves. Yet it is a common saying here, &#34;What chake they
+gentry've got!&#34; A 'district lady' entered Mrs Stidson's cottage without
+knock or warning, just when Mrs Stidson was cleaning up and wanted no
+visitors of any sort. &#34;What's the matter with your eye?&#34; asked the
+district lady. Mrs Stidson refused to answer. (&#34;Untidy, intractable
+woman!&#34;) But a neighbour upspoke and said, &#34;Tis her husband, mam, as
+have give'd her a black eye.&#34; At which the district lady exclaimed, &#34;My
+good woman, why don't you leave him. You <i>ought</i> to leave him&#8212;at
+once!&#34; Mrs Stidson has a number of young children.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>TONY'S FOOT IN IT</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It might have been expected, on the other hand, when Tony and myself
+went on holiday up-country, stayed at a largish much-upholstered hotel,
+and dined out several times as he had never done before, that he would
+have been like a fish out of water, very awkward, and would have
+committed a number of bad <i>faux pas</i>. Nothing of the sort. He was
+nervous, certainly, and the numerous knives, forks and glasses somewhat
+confused him at first. But Tony's good manners are not codified. He is
+sensitive, kindly, desirous of pleasing, quick to observe. On that
+basis, he invented for himself, according to the occasion, the manners
+he had not been taught. At the same time he remained himself. And he
+was a complete success. Nobody had any reason to blush on Tony's
+behalf. Except once; when he remarked to some ladies after dinner that
+he found Londoners very nice and free-like; that a pretty young lady
+had stopped him in the Strand the evening before, and had called him
+Percy; that he hadn't had time to tell her she'd made a mistake, and
+that, in fact, he might have knowed her tu Seacombe, only he didn't
+recollect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a bad pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony doesn't think ill of anybody without cause. <i>Honi soit qui mal y
+pense</i> might very well be <i>his</i> motto.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+2
+</p>
+
+<p>
+News has come along from Plymouth that the boats there have fallen in
+with large shoals of herring. The air here has since been charged with
+excitement&#8212;the excitement of men who earn their livelihood by gambling
+with the sea. The drifters have fitted out. Most of the boats are up
+over&#8212;lying on the sea wall&#8212;but a few days ago many busy blue men slid
+the big brown drifters down their shoots to the beach. Looking along,
+one saw a couple of men standing in each drifter and, with the
+leisurely haste of seamen, drawing in their nets. It gave a peculiar
+savour, a hopeful animation, to the blank wintry sea. It was as if the
+spring had come to us human beings prematurely, before it was ready to
+seize on nature.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>ON THE CLIFFS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yesterday afternoon I felt too unwell to lend a hand in shoving off the
+boats. So I climbed to the top of the East Cliff. The air was cool and
+still&#8212;so still that all the Seacombe smoke hung in the valley and
+drifted slowly to seawards and faded there. While the sun was setting
+behind a bank of sulky dull clouds, some woolpacks, faintly outlined in
+white against the grey, rose almost imperceptibly in the western sky.
+Everything, the sea itself, seemed very dry. Nothing moved on the
+cliffs, except some small birds which flittered homelessly among the
+black and twisted burnt gorse. They were very tiny and pitiful against,
+or indeed amid, the solemn gathering of the great slow clouds. On
+looking down from the edge of the cliff, a slight mistiness of the air
+gave one the impression that there was, lying level above the sea, a
+sheet of glass that dulled the sound of the water yet allowed one to
+discern every half-formed ripple, and even the purple of the rocks
+beneath. Five hundred feet below and a quarter of a mile out, were
+three boats. They also, like the birds, seemed pitifully tiny. But,
+unlike the birds, they did not seem purposeless. It was evident they
+were moving, though one could not see rowers, oars, or splashes, for
+they progressed in short jumps and above the dulled rattle of a billow
+breaking on the pebbles, the faint click-thud of oars between
+thole-pins was plainly audible. I had an odd fancy that the six men
+were rowing through immensity, into eternity, to meet God; and that
+they would so continue rowing, eternally.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This morning, very early, the crackle of burning wood in the kitchen
+fireplace awoke me. Then I heard the sea roaring; then Tony's bare feet
+on the stairs. &#34;Wind's backed an' come on to blow,&#34; he said. &#34;They've
+a-had to hard up an' urn for it. Two on 'em's in, an' one have a-losted
+two nets. I told 'em 'twasn't vitty when they shoved off. 'Tis blowing
+hard. I be going out along to see w'er t'other on 'em's in eet.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sea was angry, the moon obscure. The dead-asleep town stood up
+motionless before the madly-living breakers. It seemed as if a horrible
+fight was in progress; loud rage and dumb treachery face to face in the
+semi-darkness; and between the livelong combatants, little men ran to
+and fro, peering out to sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently the third boat ran ashore. Its bellied sail hid everything
+from us who waited at the water's edge. It was hoisted on a high wave,
+and cast on land. The sea did not want it then. The sea spewed it up.
+The sea can afford to wait, even until the clean bright little town is
+a ruin on a salt marsh.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Returning in house, we made hot tea, and laughed.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+3
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had, as it were, said <i>Good-Night</i> to the town, though it was
+only half-past three in the afternoon. Most lazy we must have looked as
+we sailed off to the fishing ground with a light fair wind, NNW. John's
+young muscular frame was leaning against the mainmast, like a
+magnificent statue dressed for the moment in fishermen's rig. Tony aft
+was lounging across the tiller. He fits the tiller, for he is older and
+bent and his eyes are deeply crowsfooted with watching. Both of them
+showed the same splendid contrast of navy-blue jerseys against sea eyes
+and spray-stung red and russet skins. I was lying full length along the
+midship thwart. We lopped along lazily, about three knots to the hour.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>HERRING DRIFTING</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As we lounged and smoked, each of us sang a different song, more or
+less in tune. It sounded not unmelodious upon the large waters. At
+intervals we asked one another where the 'gert bodies of herrings' had
+gone off to. Eastwards, westwards, to the offing, or down to the bottom
+to spawn?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So near the land we were, yet so far from it in feeling. There, to the
+NE. was the little town, sunlit and brilliantly white, with the church
+tower rising in the middle and the heather-topped cloud-capped hills
+behind. There around the bay, were the red cliffs, crossed by deep
+shadows and splotched with dark green bushes. The land was there. We
+were to sea. The water, which barely gurgled beneath the bows of the
+drifter, was rushing up the beaches under the cliffs with a
+myriad-sounding rattle. Gulls, bright pearly white or black as
+cormorants, according as the light struck them, were our only
+companions. The little craft our kingdom was&#8212;twenty-two foot long by
+eight in the beam,&#8212;and a pretty pickle of a kingdom!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mixed up together in the stern were spare cork buoys, rope ends, sacks
+of ballast and Tony. Midships were the piled up nets and buoys. For'ard
+were more ballast bags and rope ends, some cordage, old clothes, sacks,
+paper bags of supper, four bottles of cold tea, two of paraffin oil and
+one of water, the riding lamp and a very old fish-box, half full of
+pebbles, for cooking on. All over the boat were herring scales and
+smelly blobs of roe. It's sometime now since the old craft was scraped
+and painted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the golden light of the sunset gilded everything, and the probable
+catch was what concerned us.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We chose our berth among the other drifters that were on the ground. We
+shot two hundred and forty fathom of net with a swishing plash of the
+yarn and a smack-smack-splutter of the buoys. We had our supper of
+sandwiches and tatie-cake and hotted-up tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Can 'ee smell ort?&#34; asked John sniffing out over the bows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Herring!&#34; said I. &#34;I can smell 'em plainly.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Then there's fish about.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony however remarked the absence of birds, and declared that the water
+didn't look so fishy as when they had their last big haul. &#34;They
+herrings be gone east,&#34; he repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out! What did 'ee come west for then? I told yu to du as yu was
+minded, an' yu did, didn' 'ee? Us'll haul up in a couple o' hours an'
+see w'er us got any.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We didn't turn in. We piled on clothes and stayed drinking, smoking,
+chatting, singing&#8212;a boat-full of life swinging gently to the nets in
+an immense dark silence, an immense sea-whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>HAULING IN THE NETS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About nine o'clock we hauled in for not more than nine dozen of fish.
+The sea-fire glimmered on the rising net, glittered in the boat, and
+then, with an almost painful suddenness, snuffed out. &#34;They be so full
+as eggs,&#34; said John every minute or two, holding out fish to Tony, who
+felt them and answered, &#34;Iss, they'm no scanters [spawned or undersized
+fish]. <i>They</i> bain't here alone.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nets inboard, we rowed a little east of another boat, to shoot a second
+time. John said, &#34;Hoist the sail, can't 'ee.&#34; Tony said, &#34;What's the
+need?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before eleven we were foul of the other boat's nets and had again to
+haul in. Tony puffed and panted with the double weight; John
+disentangled the mesh and swore.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;If we'd a-hoisted the sail...&#34; he grumbled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;There wasn't no need if we'd a-pulled a bit farther.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What's the good o' pulling yer arms out?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I knowed where to go, on'y yu said we was far enough.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No I didn't!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;S'thee think I don' know where to shute a fleet o' nets?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well, we'm foul, anyhow.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I was herring drifting afore yu was born. I knows well enough.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Why don' 'ee hae yer own way then, if yu knows. Yu'm s'posed to be
+skipper here.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;If I'd had me own way....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Hould thy bloody row, casn'!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It sounded like murder gathering up; but Tony calls it their brotherly
+love-talk, and they are no worse friends for it all. The better the
+catch, the more exciting the work, and the livelier the love-talk. They
+say, therefore, that it brings luck to a boat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A third time we shot nets, safely to the east of every other craft.
+Then John with his legs in a sack and a fearnought jacket round him,
+snored in the cutty, whilst Tony nodded sleepily outside. The sky
+eastwards had already in it the weird whitish light of the coming moon.
+The risen wind was piping out from land. I could see the bobbing lights
+of the other drifters to westward, and the glint of the Seacombe lamps
+on the water. Every now and then a broken wave came up to the boat with
+a confidential hiss. I had a constant impression that out of the dark
+flood some great voice was going to speak to me&#8212;speak quite softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Shall us hot some more tea?&#34; said Tony. &#34;My feet be dead wi' cold.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We took the old fish-box and placed on the pebbles in it an old
+saucepan half full of oakum soaked in paraffin. Across the saucepan we
+ledged a sooty swivel, and on the swivel a black tin kettle which
+leaked slowly into the flame. Tony and myself lay with our four feet
+cocked along the edge of the box for warmth. The smoke stank in our
+nostrils, but the flame was cheery. By that flickering light the boat
+looked a great deep place, full of lumber and the blackest shadows. The
+herring scales glittered and the worn-out varnish was like rich brown
+velvet. And how good the tea, though it tasted of nothing but sugar,
+smoke, paraffin and herring.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>A LONG NIGHT AT SEA</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was nearly midnight. Tony suggested forty winks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+John was still sprawling beneath the cutty. Tony and I snoozed under
+the mainsail, huddled up together for the sake of warmth, like animals
+in a nest. At intervals we got up to peep over the gunwale or to bale
+the boat out. Then with comic sighs we coiled down together again. It
+was bitterly cold in the small hours. We pooled our vitality, as it
+were, and shared and shared alike. When we finally awoke, about five in
+the morning, the wind had died down, the sky and moon were clouded, and
+a dull mist was creeping over the sea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We hauled in the net&#8212;fathoms of it for scarcely a fish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Have 'ee got anything to eat?&#34; asked Tony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Have yu got ort to drink?&#34; asked John.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Got a cigarette?&#34; I asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Not one.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;If we was to go a bit farther out and shute....&#34; said Tony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out! Hould yer row!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;All very well for yu. Yu been sleeping there for all the world like a
+gert duncow [dog-fish]. Why didn' 'ee wake up an' hae a yarn for to
+keep things merry like?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>NORT' AT ALL</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+John was leaning out over the bows. He rose up; stretched himself.
+&#34;Shute again!&#34; he said with scorn. &#34;Us an't got nort to eat, nort to
+drink, nort to smoke, nor nort to talk about, an' us an't catched nort.
+Gimme thic sweep there, an' let's get in out o' it, I say.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was foggy. I steered the boat by compass over a sea that, under the
+smudged moon, was in colour and curve like pale violently shaken liquid
+mud. In time we glimpsed the cliffs with the mist creeping up over
+them. Day was beginning to break, and with a breath of wind that had
+sprung up from the SE., we glided like a phantom ship on a phantom sea
+towards a phantom town between whose blind houses the wisps of the fog
+writhed tortuously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sixteen hours to sea in an open boat&#8212;for three hundred herrings&#8212;and
+the price three shillings a hundred!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is nothing to fishermen, that; but we were all glad of our
+breakfast, a smoke and our beds.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+4
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony was gone to sea on Christmas Eve. (They caught three thousand).
+Mrs Widger had cricked her back, or had caught cold in it standing at
+the back door with the steaming wash-tub in front of her and a
+northerly wind behind. We wanted some supper beer....
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I felt more than a little shy on entering the jug and bottle department
+with a jug. It is such a secret place. To face a bar full of people and
+plump a jug down on the counter, is one thing; but it is quite another
+to slink up the stairs and into the wooden box&#8212;about seven feet high
+and four by four&#8212;that does duty for the jug and bottle department, and
+the privy tippling place, of the Alexandra Hotel. There is no gas
+there. Light filters in from elsewhere. It holds about five people,
+jammed close together. Round it runs a shelf for glasses, and at one
+end is a tiny door through which jugs are passed to the barman. Once
+there was a curtain across the entrance, but it was put to such good
+and frequent use that they removed it. Talk in the jug and bottle box
+is usually carried on in soft whispers punctuated by laughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Three cloaked old women were there and one young one. Their jugs stood
+on the shelf, ready to take home, but meanwhile they were having a
+round of drinks on their own account. They looked surprised at my
+arrival (it was an intrusion); and more surprised still when, on
+hearing that the barman was merely having a chat the other side, I
+rattled the jug on the shelf and bumped the little door. They gasped
+when I slipped the bolt of the little door with a penknife. What chake
+to be sure! The hotel shows respect to its light-o'-day customers, but
+the dim jug and bottle box is supposed to show respect to the hotel. It
+calls the barman <i>Sir</i>. It said, &#34;Good-night, sir!&#34; in astonished
+chorus to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But just as the mere act of jumping a skipping rope made me long ago a
+freeman among the children, so I notice that fetching the supper beer
+has resulted in another indefinable promotion. I am not so much now
+'thic ther gen'leman tu Tony Widger's.' I am become 'Mister
+So-and-so'&#8212;myself alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When I returned with the jug Jimmy was seated at the table and saying
+between tears, &#34;I want some supper, Mam. I be 'ungry.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yu daring rascal! Yu'll catch your death o' cold if yu goes on getting
+your feet wet like this, night after night. I'll break every bone in
+your body, I will! Take off they beuts to once, an' go on up over. An't
+got no supper for the likes o' you. Yu shan't wear your best clothes
+to-morrow, n'eet at all, spoiling 'em like this, yu dirty little cat!
+I'll beat it out o' 'ee. Now then! Up over!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Very tearful, very hungry, and very slowly, Jimmy went to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No supper's the thing for the likes o' he,&#34; his mother remarked. &#34;I
+shall gie it to him one o' these days, but I don't hold wi' knocking
+'em about tu much.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her impatience in speech and patience in action are alike
+extraordinary. She says she will half kill the children and seldom
+strikes even: if I had the responsibility of them, I fear I should do
+both.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>SUNDAY CLOTHES</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next morning there was a fine dispute over the Sunday clothes. Both
+Jimmy and Tommy went upstairs defiantly, and routed them out. The
+kitchen was filled with cries and jeers and threats. Tommy appealed to
+me. I told him I knew nothing about it, because I hadn't got any Sunday
+clothes myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss, yu 'ave,&#34; said Tommy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No, not a rag.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yu 'ave.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I haven't. I've none at all. You've never seen them.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;That's right.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well,&#34; said Tommy confidentially, &#34;Yu got a clean chimie-shirt then,
+an't 'ee?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the laughter which followed, the Sunday clothes were slipped on. And
+while Jimmy was struggling with a new pair of boots, he paid me the
+nicest compliment I have ever heard. He looked up, red but thoughtful.
+&#34;Yu'm like Father Christmas,&#34; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Why for, Jimmy?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Cause yu'm kind.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jimmy doesn't know how kind he is to me. And I don't suppose it would
+do him any good to tell him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We had a very typical and enjoyable English Christmas. We over-ate
+ourselves, and were well pleased, and the children went to bed crying.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+5
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE &#34;SHOOTING STAR&#34; FITS OUT</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;<i>Shuteing Star o' Seacombe!</i> '<i>Tis</i> a purty crew to go
+herring driftin'! I'd so soon fall overboard in a gale o' wind as go
+out to say wi' thic li'l Roosian like that ther. Lord! did 'ee ever see
+the like o'it? I never did. But there, what can 'ee 'spect when the
+herring be up in price an' men an' boats as hasn' been to sea for years
+fits out for to go herring driftin'? Coo'h! driftin'!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was Uncle Jake's opinion. He stood on the shingle with his old
+curiosity of a hat cocked on one side and his hands deep in his trouser
+pockets, turning himself round inside his clothes to rub warmth into
+his skin; talking, always talking, whilst his twinkling eyes watch sea
+and land; but ready to help a boat shove off, and willing to take as
+pay the opportunity of talking to, and at, its crew. &#34;'Tis blowing a
+fresh wind out 'long there, I tell 'ee,&#34; was his formula of
+encouragement for a starting boat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Herrings were up! Sixteen shillings a thousand they had been before
+Christmas; then eighteen, twenty-three, thirty-one.... &#34;They'm fetching
+two poun' a thousand tu Plymouth, what there is, an' buyers there
+waiting from all over the kingdom. An' they'm still going up, 'cause
+there ain't none. Nine bob a hunderd tu St Ives, I've a-heard say.
+There's a Plymouth buyer here to-day. I've a-see'd our Seacombe buyers
+luke. They Plymouth men be the bwoys!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Herrings too have been in our bay as they have not come for
+years&#8212;'gert bodies of 'em'&#8212;while a succession of gales and blizzards
+has been sweeping the whole of the rest of the British coasts, and
+driving the steam-drifters into harbour. Hence the price of fish:
+quotations very high; business nil, or next door to it. Our bay
+however, by a fortunate freak of the weather, has been amply calm for
+our little undecked drifters, though squalls off land have made sailing
+tricky in the extreme. We have seen the snow on the distant hills but
+none has fallen here. We have had the ground-swell, rolling in from
+outside, but of broken seas, not one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boats that came in early on Christmas night (they didn't like the
+look of the weather) brought hauls of ten thousand or so. They had
+given away netfuls of herring to craft from other places, because they
+had caught so many, and the wind was against them and the sky wild.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next night, much the same thing. It was rumoured that some Cornish
+craft were beating up to the bay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Next day, the Little Russian, a small, snug, ragged, much-bearded man,
+was to be seen painting the stern of his old boat&#8212;a craft more
+tattered and torn, if possible, than her owner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What be doing, Harry?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No reply. Great industry with the paint-brush.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Be going to sea then?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss intye! What did 'er think?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Little Russian went on doggedly with his work, and when he rose
+from his knees, there appeared complete, on the stern of his boat, in
+lanky, crooked white letters: <i>Shooting Star of Seacombe</i>.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Be it true yu'm going to sea t'night, Harry?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What do 'ee 'spect to catch? Eh?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No answer again. The Little Russian was hauling a couple of nets
+aboard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Who be going with 'ee?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Ol' Joe Barker an' 'Gustus Theodore.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Good Lord! '<i>Tis</i> a crew, that! Be 'ee going to catch dree dozen
+or ten thousand?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;We'm on'y taking two nets,&#34; replied the Little Russian quite
+seriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was very busy.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>AND SHOVES OFF</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+About three in the afternoon, when the drifters put out to sea, the
+nor'west wind was springing out from land in squalls. It had not
+sea-space to raise big waves, but it blew the white tops off the
+wavelets which hurried out against, and on the top of, the sou'westerly
+swell that was heaving its way in. As Uncle Jake remarked: &#34;'Tis
+blowing fresh, I can tell 'ee, an' not so very far out at that. An'
+'tis blowing half a gale from the sou'west outside in the Channel. Do
+'ee see thic black line across the horizon? That's the sou'west wind,
+an' plenty o'it. Luke at thees yer run along the shore, wi' a calm sea.
+'Tis the sou'west outside as makes that tu.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boats hoisted their smaller mainsails. &#34;Aye, an' they'll hae to
+reef they down afore they gets out far. There! did 'ee see thic? That's
+thiccy seine-boat as fitted out. Seine-boats ain't no fit craft for
+herring driftin'.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The mainmast of the seine boat had toppled over to port. No sooner was
+it re-stepped, and the sail hoisted, than over it went again. &#34;Step o'
+the mast gone, I'll be bound,&#34; said Uncle Jake. &#34;They'm going to
+capsize, going on like that, if they bain't careful. Poor job! when
+mastises goes over like that. Better to row.... There's thic Li'l
+Roosian shoving off!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In fact, the <i>Shooting Star</i> was shoved off, but a wave threw her
+back upon the shore. She was again shoved off. Again she grounded on
+the sand, and there she stuck. A roar of laughter broke forth all along
+the beach. The Little Russian and his crew stood up in the heeled-over
+boat, and by using their oars like punt poles, they tried to prevent
+the seas from slewing them round broadside on. Very helpless they
+looked, very comic, very futile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A swarm of small boys buzzed around and jeered. The Little Russian
+jumped up and down with vexation. Augustus Theodore, rowing frantically
+in a foot or so of water, splashed and 'caught crabs.' Joe Barker,
+tall, patriarchal, thin and thinly clad, stood up to his oar, looked
+savage curses from his sunken old eyes and muttered them into his
+beard.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>AND GETS OFF</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;That <i>be</i> a purty crew!&#34; repeated Uncle Jake. &#34;I 'ouldn' go to
+say wi' 'em, not if.... A purty fellow, thic 'Gustus Theodore! They
+calls chil'ern by names nowadays, but they called he 'Gustus Theodore,
+an' us can't get over thic, so us al'ays calls 'en 'Gustus Theodore in
+long. Bain't no gude tu hisself nor nobody else. I've a-took 'en to
+say.... Never again! 'Er ain't no fisherman nuther. An' thic Joe
+Barker's past it. He've had his day. Been in the Army an' been in the
+Navy, an' an't brought no pension out o' the one n'eet out o' t'other.
+Helped throw a 'Merican midshipman overboard once, so they say, drough
+a porthole. Thought they was going to be hanged for it, but they
+wasn't. He've a-lived wildish in his time, I can tell 'ee; an' now he's
+the man for sleep. Take 'en out shrimping or lifting crab-pots, stop
+rowing a minute an' he's fast asleep. The Li'l Roosian hisself an't
+been to say thees dozen years. 'Tis a crew o'it! Luke! <i>they</i>
+can't shove off. I can see they wants Uncle Jake there.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The <i>Shooting Star</i> was still being shoved. The Little Russian was
+still jumping up and down in the stern-sheets; Augustus Theodore was
+still rowing fast and fruitlessly; and Joe Barker stood impassively
+tall&#8212;a mummy of a man, wrapped up in aged clothes and a great dirty
+white beard. Life was contracted within him. No more than his eyes
+seemed alive, and hardly those until you looked closely; for the yellow
+rims and whites appeared to be dead, and the old cursing flame of life
+burnt only in the pupils.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Do 'ee really mean to go?&#34; asked Uncle Jake, taking up a long oar to
+shove with. &#34;'Tisn't nowise fit for a crazy craft like thees yer.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;When a man,&#34; said the Little Russian solemnly, &#34;when a man has a
+chance to catch herring and pay his way, and pay a debt or two maybe,
+'tis on'y right to try.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;For sure 'tis. But why an't 'ee been to say thees twelve year then?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;An't been fit....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Fit! Tis the price o' herring fetches the likes o' yu. Have 'ee got
+yer lead-line and compass aboard?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I've broke mine.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Tis tempting Providence to go away wi'out 'em Be yu off? Off yu goes
+then. Luke out!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A yell went up as a wave broke in over the stern and soaked Joe
+Barker's back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;They'm off!&#34; cried Uncle Jave with ironic merriment. &#34;Wet drough to
+the skin they be!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Little Russian rowed steadily on the same side as 'Gustus Theodore.
+Both of them just balanced Joe Barker, who rowed on the other side in
+strong jerks, as if his aged strength revived for a part only of each
+stroke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Darkness, drawing in over the sea, hid the drifters from sight. Along
+the beach we asked one another in jest, &#34;I wonder what the <i>Shuteing
+Star</i> is doing now?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The commonest answer was a laugh. But we did want to know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Between eleven o'clock and midnight sail after sail appeared silently
+on the black darkness, as if some invisible hand had suddenly painted
+them there. The boats were coming in. Creaks and groans of winches
+sounded along the beach.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>AND RETURNS</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Who be yu?&#34; was the greeting from a rabble of youths who scuttled up
+and down the waters' edge to guide boats to their berths and gain first
+news of the catches. &#34;Have 'ee see'd ort o' the <i>Shuteing Star</i>?&#34;
+they shouted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No-o-o-o!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;<i>I</i> shan't go to bed till they comes in,&#34; said Uncle Jake.
+&#34;Cuden' sleep if I did. '<i>Tis</i> a craft! Her's so leaky as a sieve,
+lying dry all these years. Not but what her was a gude 'nuff li'l craft
+in her time&#8212;tu small for winter work. But I wishes 'em luck, I du.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last, the <i>Shooting Star</i> did row in. They had not dared to
+sail her. She touched the beach before we glimpsed her, for all our
+watching. A crowd ran down to haul her up and to crack jokes on her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Have 'ee catched ort, Harry?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Tu or dree dizzen, an' half a ton o' coral an' some wild-crabs.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Did 'er sail well&#8212;keep up to the wind? Eh?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Us rowed. 'Tis blowin' a gale out there.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What yu done to your nets?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Broke 'em.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;On to the bottom?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Why didn't 'ee go crab-fishing proper? Be 'ee going again?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The little Russan saw no joke. He bustled about the boat and replied:
+&#34;A-course we be, if 'tis fit.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Well, I wishes 'ee luck then.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We all wished luck to the <i>Shooting Star</i>&#8212;to that cranky old
+boatload of pluck, ill-luck, and ancient desperation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Said Uncle Jake: &#34;I'd rather see they come in wi' a boatload o' herring
+than any boat along the beach. 'Tis a purty craft an' a purty crew, but
+they du desarve it.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So said we all. 'Twas the least payment we could make for our
+entertainment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as they were hauled up, Joe Barker lit his pipe, and, instead
+of going to bed, he went west along the shore, and carried up and
+sifted sand till dawn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Jest what he be fit for now,&#34; Uncle Jake remarked. &#34;That'll get 'en
+his bread an' baccy far sooner'n drifting for herring in thic
+<i>Shuteing Star</i>.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But if we only could have looked into the <i>Shooting Star</i> at sea.
+The <i>Shooting Star of Seacombe</i>!
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+6
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Us got 'em at last then!&#34; so we tell one another. We have caught the
+catch of the season.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For three or four days the hauls had been fairly good. Elsewhere on the
+coast, the snow, sleet, wind and wrecks continued. Here alone, in
+Seacombe Bay, it got colder and colder, and the sea became calmer and
+sunnier. &#34;Tis like old days,&#34; Uncle Jake said while he spliced a new
+cut-rope to the drifter. &#34;The herring be come again, in bodies, and the
+price be up. Us'll hae 'em.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>PAYING CALLS AT SEA</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An hour before sunset on Saturday afternoon we were shoved off the
+beach&#8212;Tony, John, and myself. Every article of underclothing in
+duplicate, a couple of guernseys and a coat or two were next to
+nakedness. We were bloated with clothes, but that northerly air, it
+seemed to be fingering our very skins. Yet there was hardly wind enough
+to fill the sail. Ricketty-rock, ricketty-rock, went the sweeps between
+the thole-pins, as we rowed to the fishing ground six miles or so away.
+Not one of us wished to shirk the heavy work. 'Twas indeed our only
+source of warmth. The sun was setting. The moon began to rise. The sea
+was all of a glimmer and glitter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I should think we was nearly where they fish be,&#34; said John.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Bit farther,&#34; said Tony. &#34;Us'll drift back 'long when the flid tide
+makes.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Du as yu'm minded tu.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Steer her a little bit in,&#34; directed Tony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;A little bit out,&#34; directed John the next minute.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a middle course that turned out so happily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We shot our nets&#8212;seven forty-fathom nets we had aboard&#8212;between the
+dying sunlight and the rising moon. Very still was the sea, and quiet,
+except where the other drifters were shooting their nets. Their talk
+lingered on the water; small voices that yet sounded strong. By the
+light of the moon I counted twenty-seven drifters, some of them great
+harbour craft from Cornwall, carrying fifteen or more nets. It seemed
+as if not a herring on that little fishing ground could escape the long
+fleets of nets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We lighted the paraffin flare; supped on sandwiches and oily tea. We
+stamped about the stern-sheets to try and warm our feet. We sat awhile
+beneath the cutty. We thought we smelt fish, but it might have been
+only the smoke from our oil fire and the herring roe plastered about
+the boat. Despairing of sleep in such a cold, we sang and smoked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently a plash of oars. Little punts were detaching themselves from
+the larger drifters and flitting about on the sea like slow-winged
+moon-butterflies. One came alongside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Whu's that there?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Tony an' John Widger&#8212;Have 'em been catching much to Hallsands?&#8212;Be
+they Plymouth drifters up t'night?&#8212;What price yu been making?&#8212;How
+deep yu got yer nets?&#8212;Have 'ee catched holt the bottom?&#8212;How's Aaron
+an' Charles?&#8212;Did he get back ort o' his gear?&#8212;Us an't done a gert
+deal eet. Few thousands thees week. Be yu going to haul in
+soon?&#8212;Better, be her? Thought her was dead by now....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>HAULING IN</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fish-gossip over, we knew all the news of our stretch of coast.
+After taking another cigarette and another pull at our 'drop o' summut
+short,' the man in the punt rowed off to his drifter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;D' yu know your fourth buoy's awash?&#34; he shouted back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Is it, by God!&#34; said John.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;I can see 'tis,&#34; said Tony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out! why didn' 'ee see 'twas afore then? Let's go an' luke.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We buoyed the end of the road and started rowing alongside the
+net-buoys. The fourth was bobbing up and down. The fifth appeared now
+and then. None of the others was visible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Damn'd if us bain't going to see some sport!&#34; shouted John as we
+hastened back to take up the road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We tugged on oilskins and then waited watchfully&#8212;for the inside net to
+fill as well. The third buoy disappeared. The second went awash. &#34;Now
+'tis time, ain't it?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss, I reckon.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We bent to it, and began to haul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The road come in heavy: John hauled and Tony coiled. As the net rose we
+saw a shimmer in the water, not of sea-fire&#8212;it was too cold&#8212;but of
+silver-sided herring. Then John took the foot of the net, Tony the mesh
+and myself the headrope. One strain. Altogether! Net and fish came in
+over the gunwale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;No use to try and pick 'em out yer!&#34; said John.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Us 'ould never ha' got 'em in wi' two,&#34; panted Tony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Haul, casn'! Trim the boat. We'm going to hae all us can carry if
+t'other nets be so full as thees yer.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We hauled, and pulled, and puffed and swore. The fish came over the
+side like a band of jewels, like shining grains on a huge and
+never-ending ear of corn, like a bright steel mat.... It was as if the
+moonlight itself, that flooded air and water, was solidifying into fish
+in the dimmer depths of the sea. A good catch must have dropped back
+out of the net. At times, it seemed as if nothing could move the
+headrope. I jammed a knee against the gunwale, waited till the dipping
+of the boat gave me a foot or two of line, then jammed again to hold
+it. The sea-birds screeched at their feast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony, an inflated mannikin, danced on the piled-up nets and fish.
+&#34;Help, help!&#34; he cried to the next drifter. &#34;Us got a catch.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Hould yer row!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Help, help!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Shut up, yu fule!&#8212;We'm not done yet.&#8212;Thee doesn't want to pay for
+help, dost?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE CATCH OF THE SEASON</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We hauled, pulled, puffed and swore again. Yard by yard the nets came
+up, now foul, now broken, now tangled, now wound about the headrope and
+almost solid with fish.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Oh, my poor back.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Lord, my arms!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Casn' thee trim a boat better'n that?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Where 'er down tu?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;There's only two strakes to spare.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The water was within less than a foot of the gunwale, and we were five
+or six miles from home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Help, help!&#34; shouted Tony again, and this time we let it pass. Five
+out of our seven nets were aboard; we could not take the remaining two.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another drifter came alongside and took in the sixth net.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Come on! here's the seventh&#8212;the last.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Can't take no more.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Ther's on'y thees yer outside net. Casn' thee take thic?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Can't du it. We'm leaking now. Here's your headrope. Good-night.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony gave a gesture of despair. &#34;What shall us du? Us can't take in
+much more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Hould yer row, an' haul!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The last net was fuller than ever. We hauled in half of it. A punt came
+near. &#34;Can 'ee take one net?&#34; yelled Tony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Us got 'en half in now,&#34; said John.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss, but the wind's gone round&#8212;north-easterly&#8212;dead against us. An'
+luke at the circle round the mune. Ther's wind in thic sky, I tell 'ee.
+Us got so much now as we can carry home on a calm sea, let 'lone
+choppy.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We cut the net.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Hurry up! Hoist sail and get in out o'it 'fore the wind rises. Come
+on!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With two oars out to windward we started beating home. We made a tack
+out to sea. There the waves skatted in over the bows, for the
+deeply-laden boat was down by the head because the heavy pile of net
+and fish prevented the water from running aft where we could have
+bailed it out. If we had had to tack much farther to sea.... We should
+have lost the catch, and perhaps ourselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We put the boat round towards Seacombe. &#34;Luff her up all yu can,&#34; said
+John. &#34;Luff her up, I tell thee, or we'm never going to fetch. The
+sea's rising an' us an't got nort to spare.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By keeping the luff of the sail in a flutter, sometimes too much into
+the wind, I just fetched. Then we rowed into smoother water.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Tis fifteen thousand if 'tis one,&#34; said John.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;'Tis more'n that,&#34; said Tony with a note of respect in his voice.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>PACKING THE FISH</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Better wait till they sends some boats out. Us can't baych the boat
+wi' thees weight in her.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We yelled, anchored, then waited; swore, yelled and waited. Someone
+came at last. The great heavy mast was sent ashore. Two boatloads of
+net and fish followed, and finally the drifter herself was beached.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The crowd that had gathered on the shingle worked at the winch and
+ropes. We walked about among them answering questions, but for the
+moment doing nothing. We felt we had a right to watch the landlubbers
+work in return for the herrings we threw out to them. We had been to
+sea; had caught the catch of the season.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I came in house and fried some herrings for supper. Tony and John went
+back to the boat. All night long they worked under the moon, drawing
+out the net and picking the fish from it, standing knee-deep in fish,
+spotted with scales like sequins. Far into Sunday they worked, counting
+and packing the fish while the Sunday folk in their best clothes
+strolled along the sea-wall and sniffed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Twenty-two long-thousand herrings&#8212;squashed, dirty and
+bloodstained&#8212;were carted away in the barrels. Twenty-eight hours Tony
+and John had worked. Then they washed, picked herring scales off
+themselves, and rested. The skin was drawn tightly over their faces
+and, as it were, away from their eyes. I saw, as I glanced at them,
+what they will look like when they are old men: the skull and
+crossbones half peeped out. And I said to myself: &#34;When we feed on
+herrings we feed on fishermen's strength. Though we don't cook human
+meat, we are cannibals yet. We eat each other's lives.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rightly considered, that's not a nasty thought. Nor a new one either.
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="head">
+7
+</p>
+
+<p>
+New Year's Eve last night.... Tony did not go to sea. He announced that
+he would turn over a new leaf, and be a gen'leman, and not do no work
+no more. &#34;Summut'll turn up,&#34; he said when I asked him how he was going
+to feed his family. &#34;Al'ays have done an' al'ays will, I s'pose. Thees
+yer ol' fule 'll go on till he's clean worked out. Thee casn' die but
+once, an' thee casn' help o'it nuther.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Shut thee chatter an' bring in some wude,&#34; said Mrs Widger. &#34;Now then
+yu children, off yu goes! Up over, else my hand'll be 'longside o'ee!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Gude-night!&#34; say the children in chorus. &#34;Gude-night! Gude-night! See
+yu t'morrow morning. Du us hae presents on New Year's Day, Mam?&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Yu'll see. P'raps a cracker....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Coo'h....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Up over!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;What 'tis tu be a family man,&#34; said Tony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Whu's fault's that?&#34; Mam Widger retorted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;There, me ol' stocking, don't thee worry a man! Gie us a kiss....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;G'out!&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>DREE-HA'P'ORTH</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Christmas decorations and the little spangled toys from the
+children's crackers were still hanging from clothes-lines across the
+kitchen. We piled wood on the fire; it had barnacle shells on it; with
+the wreckage of good ships we warmed ourselves. Mam Widger laid the
+supper. The steam from the kettles puffed merrily into the room.
+Herrings were cooking in the oven. A faint odour&#8212;they were being
+stewed in vinegar&#8212;stole out into the room to give us appetite and for
+the moment a sense of plenty. Mrs Widger took a penny-ha'penny from the
+household purse and handed it, together with a jug to Tony.
+&#34;Dree-ha'p'orth o' ale an' stout. Go on.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony returned with tupence-ha'p'orth. He had added a penny out of his
+own pocket because he is ashamed to ask for less than a pint. Grannie
+Pinn came in at the same time. &#34;I got the t'other pen'orth for me
+mither-in-law,&#34; said Tony.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Chake again!&#34; Grannie Pinn cried. &#34;I wants more'n a pen'orth, I du.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tony slipped off his boots just in time. It was I who had to fetch an
+extra dree-ha'p'orth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We supped with the uproariousness that Grannie Pinn always brings here.
+Some other people dropped in to see how we were doing. Not staying to
+clear the supper, we sang. The songs, as such, were indifferently good,
+but we meant them and enjoyed them. For a while Grannie Pinn contented
+herself with humming and nodding to the chorus. She started singing:
+swore at us for laughing at her. &#34;I cude sing a song wi' anybody once,&#34;
+she said; and therewith she struck up a fine, very Rabelaisian old song
+in many verses. She lifted up her face to the ceiling, blushed (I am
+sure the Tough Old Stick blushed), and in a high cracked voice that
+gradually gathered tone and force, she trolled her verses out. With an
+infectious abandonment, we took up the chorus. After all, 'twas a song
+of things that happen every day&#8212;one of those pieces of folk-humour
+which makes life's seriousness bearable by carrying us frankly back to
+the animal that is in us, that has been cursed for centuries and still
+remains our strength.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grannie Pinn's song was the event of the evening. Excited by her
+efforts to the point of hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry, she
+told us we were 'a pack o' gert fules,' and went. The other visitors
+followed after.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Don' know what yu feels like,&#34; said Tony when they were all gone. &#34;I
+feels more-ish. 'N hour agone I wer fit for bed, now I feels 's if I
+cude sing for hours on end....&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>THE NEW YEAR</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;May as well welcome in the New Year now 'tis so late as 'tis,&#34; said
+Mrs Widger, taking from one of her store-places a bottle of green
+ginger-wine and another of fearful and wonderful 'Invalid Port' which,
+as she remarked, 'ain't so strengthening as the port what gentry has.'
+Tony added hot water to his ginger-wine, lay back in the courting
+chair, plumped his feet on Mrs Widger's lap, and sang some more of
+those sea songs that have such melancholy windy tunes and yet most
+curiously stimulate one to action. I think it must be because they echo
+that particular sub-emotional desperation which causes men to do their
+reckless best&#8212;the desperation that the treacherous sea itself
+engenders.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At a minute or two before twelve by the clock, the three of us went out
+to the back door. When the cats had scuttled away, the narrow walled-in
+garden was very still. By the light of the stars, shining like points
+in the deep winter heavens, I could see the beansticks, the balks of
+wood and the old masts and oars. I could also smell the drain. Tony, in
+his stockinged feet, leant on his wife's shoulder while he raised first
+one foot from the cold stones, and then the other. We were a little
+hushed, with more than expectancy. So we waited; to hear the church
+clock strike and to welcome in the New Year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And we waited until Tony said that his feet were too cold to stay there
+any longer. The church clock struck&#8212;<i>ting-tang, ting-tang</i>&#8212;in
+the frosty air.... A quarter past! The New Year had been with us all
+the while. It was our German-made kitchen clock had stopped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+We laughed aloud because the strain was relaxed; then bolted the door
+and began putting away the supper things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;If anybody wants to make me a New Year's Gift,&#34; said Tony, &#34;they can
+gie me a thousand a year.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;And then yu'd be done for,&#34; I said. &#34;Yu cuden' stand a life o' nort to
+du. Nor cude I. We'm both in the same box, Tony. We've both got only
+our strength and skill and health, and if that fails, then we'm done.
+We'm our own stock-in-trade, and if we fail ourselves, then we've both
+got only the workhouse or the road.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Iss,&#34; said Mam Widger, &#34;an' I don' know but what yu'm worse off than
+Tony. He <i>cude</i> get somebody to work his boats&#8212;for a time. An' I
+cude work. But afore yu comes to the workhouse yu jest walk along thees
+way, an' if us got ort to eat yu shall hae some o'it.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&#34;Be damn'd if yu shan't!&#34; said Tony. (I was putting away the pepper-pot
+at the moment). &#34;Us 'ouldn't never let thee starve, not if us had it
+ourselves for to give 'ee.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+So there 'tis. I'd wish to do the same for him, that he knows. How much
+the spirit of such an offer can mean, only those who have been without
+a home can understand fully. This New Year's Day has been happier than
+most. Life has made me a New Year's Gift so good that I cannot free
+myself from a suspicion of its being too good.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It has given me home.
+</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="chapter">
+X
+</p>
+
+<p class="head">
+POSTSCRIPT
+</p>
+
+
+<p class="right"><span class="sc">Seacombe.</span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+I am often asked why I have forsaken the society of educated people,
+and have made my home among 'rough uneducated' people, in a poor man's
+house. The briefest answer is, that it is good to live among those who,
+on the whole, are one's superiors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is pointed out with considerable care what ill effects such a life
+has, or is likely to have, upon a man. It is looked upon as a kind of
+relapse. But to settle down in a poor man's house is by no means to
+adopt a way of life that is less trouble. On the contrary, it is more
+trouble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is true that most of what schoolmasters call one's accomplishments
+have to be dropped. One cannot keep up everything anywhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is true that one goes to the theatre less and reads less. Life,
+lived with a will, is play enough, and closer acquaintance with life's
+sterner realities renders one singularly impatient with the literature
+of life's frillings. I do not notice, however, that it makes one less
+susceptible to the really fine and strong things of literature and art.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is true that one drops into dialect when excited; that one's manners
+suffer in conventional correctness. I suppose I know how to behave
+fairly correctly; I was well taught at all events; but my manners never
+have been and never will be so good, so considerate as Tony's. 'Tisn't
+in me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is true that one becomes much coarser. One acquires a habit of
+talking with scandalous freedom about vital matters which among the
+unscientific educated are kept hid in the dark&#8212;and go fusty there. But
+I do not think there is much vulgarity to be infected with here.
+Coarseness and vulgarity are incompatibles. It was well said in a book
+written not long ago, that &#34;Coarseness reveals but vulgarity hides.&#34;
+Vulgarity is chiefly characteristic of the non-courageous who are
+everlastingly bent on climbing up the social stairs. Poor people are
+hardly ever vulgar, until they begin to 'rise' into the middle class.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>WISDOM</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It is true that, so far as knowledge goes, one is bound to be cock o'
+the walk among uneducated people&#8212;which, alone, is bad for a man. But
+knowledge is not everything, nor even the main thing. Wisdom is more
+than knowledge: it is <i>Knowledge applied to life, the ability to make
+use of the knowledge well</i>. In that respect I often have here to eat
+a slice of humble-pie. For all my elaborate education and painfully
+gained stock of knowledge, I find myself silenced time after time by
+the direct wisdom of these so-called ignorant people. They have
+preserved better, between knowledge and experience, that balance which
+makes for wisdom. They have less knowledge (less mental dyspepsy too)
+and use it to better purpose. It occurs to one finally that, according
+to our current standards, the great wise men whom we honour&#8212;Christ,
+Plato, Shakespeare, to name no more&#8212;were very ignorant fellows.
+Possibly the standards are wrong.
+</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="sn"><i>DIFFERENTIAL EVOLUTION</i></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To live with the poor is to feel oneself in contact with a greater
+continuity of tradition and to share in a greater stability of life.
+The nerves are more annoyed, the thinking self less. Perhaps the
+difference between the two kinds of life may be tentatively
+expressed&#8212;not necessarily accounted for&#8212;in terms of Differential
+Evolution,<a href="#note23" name="noteref23"><sup>23</sup></a> somewhat thus:
+</p>
+<div class="blockquote">
+<p>
+(1) The first, the least speculative, evolutionary criterion of an
+animal is its degree of adaptation to its environment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(2) Man exhibits a less degree of adaptation to environment than any
+other animal; principally because (<i>a</i>) he consists, roughly
+speaking, incomparably more than any other animal, of three
+interdependent parts&#8212;body, thinking brain, and that higher mental
+function that we call spirit&#8212;the development of any one of which,
+beyond a certain stage, is found to be detrimental to the other two;
+and because (<i>b</i>) he is able possibly to control directly his own
+evolution, and certainly to modify it indirectly by modifying the
+environment in which he evolves. He is able to make mistakes in his own
+evolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(3) The typical poor man is better adapted to his environment, such as
+it is, than the typical man of any other class; for he has been kept in
+closer contact with the primary realities&#8212;birth, death, risk,
+starvation;&#8212;in closer contact, that is to say, with those
+sections of human environment which are not of human making and which
+are common to all classes. He has fewer mistakes to go back upon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It might be said, of course, that mal-adaptation at any given moment is
+more than counterbalanced by greater evolutional potentialities, or by
+greater inducement to evolve; and that the above chain of reasoning
+simply goes to prove that the poor man is more of an animal&#8212;less
+evolved. On the other hand, from an evolutionary standpoint, the animal
+faculties are the most basic of all. A sound stomach is more necessary
+than a highly developed brain, and good reproductive faculties are
+essential; because the first demand of evolution is plenty of material.
+It does not follow that our typical poor man is more of an animal, is
+less evolved, or has a smaller potentiality to evolve, because he has
+preserved better the animal faculties which lie at the basis of
+evolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Furthermore:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(4) There is a reasonable probability that an interior balance, between
+body, brain, and spirit, is more needful for realising the
+potentialities of evolution than rapidity of development in any single
+respect. <i>Mens sana in corpore sano&#8212;animaque integra</i> is an
+ideal as sound as it is unachieved. More haste less speed, is probably
+true of human evolution. A healthy baby is more hopeful than a mad
+adult.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+(5) The typical poor man does, now, exhibit a better balance between
+these three components of him. Less evolved in some ways, he is on the
+whole, and for that reason, more forward. His evolution is proceeding
+with greater solidity. It is more stable, and more likely to realise
+its potentialities.
+</p></div>
+
+<hr class="short">
+
+<p>
+That is a speculation among probabilities and possibilities; an attempt
+to go in a bee-line across fields that are mainly hidden ditches; a
+first spying out of a country that wants mapping; a course over a sea
+that can never perhaps be buoyed, where bearings must be taken afresh
+from the sun for each voyage that is made. In any case, my belief grows
+stronger that the poor have kept essentially what a schoolboy calls the
+better end of the stick; not because their circumstances are
+better&#8212;materially their lives are often terrible enough&#8212;but because
+they know better how to make the most of what material circumstances
+they have. If they could improve their material circumstances and
+continue making the most of them.... That is the problem.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Good Luck to us all!
+</p>
+<br>
+<hr class="med">
+<br>
+<p class="ctr"><b>Footnotes</b></p>
+<a name="note1">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref1"><sup>1</sup></a> A heavy stone used instead of an anchor over rocks, among
+which an anchor might get stuck and lost.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note2">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref2"><sup>2</sup></a> After the end of July, the mackerel are mostly caught not
+in nets, but by trailing a line behind a sailing boat.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note3">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref3"><sup>3</sup></a> Composite pictures apparently; made from a photograph of a
+ship and of a bad painting of a hurricane.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note4">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref4"><sup>4</sup></a> Prawning.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note5">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref5"><sup>5</sup></a> Periwinkle gathering.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note6">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref6"><sup>6</sup></a> Freights, <i>i.e.</i> pleasure parties.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note7">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref7"><sup>7</sup></a> Granfer's brother, Tony's uncle.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note8">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref8"><sup>8</sup></a> A <i>lop</i> is a short choppy sea raised by the immediate
+action of a breeze. A <i>swell</i> consists of the long heaving waves
+which follow, and sometimes precede, a storm. The diverse action of
+different sorts of waves on a shingle beach is interesting. Short seas
+(<i>i.e.</i> short from crest to crest), even when they are very high,
+have not nearly the force or <i>run</i> of a long, though much lower
+ground-swell; that is they neither run so far up the beach nor so
+greatly endanger the boats. All kinds of waves possess more run at
+spring than at neap tides. A lop on a swell at spring tide is therefore
+the most troublesome of all to the fishermen.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note9">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref9"><sup>9</sup></a> The fishermen's line is very different from the tackle
+makers' arrangements. It varies a little locally. At Seacombe, the
+upper part consists of 2-3 fathoms of stoutish conger line, to take the
+friction over the gunwale, and 5-6 fathoms of finer line, to the end of
+which a conical 'sugarloaf' lead is attached by a clove hitch, the
+short end being laid up around the standing part for an inch or so and
+then finished off with the strong, neat difficue (corruption of
+<i>difficult</i>?) knot. A swivel, or better still simply an eyelet cut
+from an old boot, runs free, just above the lead, between the clove
+hitch and difficue knot. To the eyelet is attached the
+'sid'&#8212;<i>i.e.</i>, two or three fathoms of fine snooding;&#8212;to the sid
+a length of gut on which half an inch ofclay pipe-stem is threaded, and
+to the gut a rather large hook. The bait is a 'lask,' or long
+three-cornered strip of skin, cut from the tail of a mackerel. The
+older fishermen prefer a round lead, cast in the egg-shell of a gull,
+because it runs sweeter through the water, but with this form the
+fish's bite is difficult to feel on account of the jerk having to be
+transmitted through the heavy bulky piece of lead.
+</p>
+
+<p class="foot">
+The lines are trailed astern of the boat as it sails up and down, where
+the mackerel are believed to be. When well on the feed they will bite,
+even at the pipe clay and bare hook, faster than they can be hauled
+inboard. River anglers and even some sea fishers are disposed to deny
+the amount of skill, alertness and knowledge which go to catching the
+greatest possible number of fish while they are up. It is often said
+that the mackerel allows itself to be caught as easily by a beginner as
+by an old hand. One or two mackerel may: mackerel don't. In hooking, as
+opposed to fishing fine with a rod, the sporting element is supplied by
+fish, not <i>a</i> fish; by numbers in a given time, not bend and
+break. The tackle brought to the sea by the superior angler, who thinks
+he knows more than those who have hooked mackerel for generations, is a
+wonder, delight, and irritation to professional fishermen: it is
+constructed in such robust ignorance of the habits, and manner of
+biting, of mackerel, and it ignores so obstinately the conditions of
+the sport. Likewise the fish ignore <i>it</i>.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note10">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref10"><sup>10</sup></a>  Undoubtedly, if the mackerel are only half on the feed, a
+fresh lask is better than any other bait, better than an equally
+brilliant salted lask. It is the shine of the bait at which the fish
+bite, as at a spinner, but probably the fresh lask leaves behind it in
+the water an odour or flavour of mackerel oil which keeps the shoal
+together and makes them follow the boat.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note11">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref11"><sup>11</sup></a>  The flexibility and expressiveness of dialect lies largely
+in its ability to change its verbal form and pronunciation from a
+speech very broad indeed to something approaching standard English. For
+example, &#34;You'm a fool,&#34; is playful; &#34;You'm a fule,&#34; less so. &#34;You're a
+fool,&#34; asserts the fact without blame; while &#34;Thee't a fule,&#34; or &#34;Thee
+a't a fule!&#34; would be spoken in temper, and the second is the more
+emphatic. The real differences between &#34;I an't got nothing,&#34; &#34;I an't
+got ort,&#34; and &#34;I an't got nort,&#34;&#8212;&#34;Oo't?&#34; &#34;Casn'?&#34; &#34;Will 'ee?&#34; and
+&#34;Will you?&#34;&#8212;&#34;You'm not,&#34; &#34;You ain't,&#34; &#34;You bain't,&#34; and &#34;Thee
+a'tn't,&#34;&#8212;are hardly to be appreciated by those who speak only standard
+English. <i>Thee</i> and <i>thou</i> are used between intimates, as in
+French. <i>Thee</i> is usual from a mother to her children, but is
+disrespectful from children to their mother.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note12">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref12"><sup>12</sup></a>  On the moral aspect of cleanliness I have not touched.
+Miss M. Loane, a Queen's Nurse, in her remarkable book <i>The Next
+Street but One</i>, observes &#34;Cleanliness has often seemed to me
+strangely far from godliness. Where the virtue is highly developed
+there is often not merely an actual but an absolute shrinkage in all
+sweet neighbourly charities. If an invalid's bedroom needs scrubbing
+and there is no money to pay for the service, or if a chronic
+sufferer's kitchen is in want of a 'thorough good do-out,' if two or
+three troublesome children have to be housed and fed during the
+critical days after an operation on father or mother, do I look for
+assistance from 'the cleanest woman in the street?' Alas, no; whether
+she be wife, widow, or spinster, I pass her by, careful not to tread on
+her pavement, much less her doorstep, and seek the happy-go-lucky
+person whose own premises would be better for more water and less
+grease, but from whose presence neither husband nor child ever hastens
+away.&#34;
+</p>
+
+<a name="note13">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref13"><sup>13</sup></a>  A spot found by getting an elm-tree on the cliffs in a
+line with a beech-tree up on land.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note14">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref14"><sup>14</sup></a>  Fried mixed vegetables.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note15">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref15"><sup>15</sup></a>  Bread broth with butter, or dripping, and water instead of
+milk. A dash of skim milk is sometimes added.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note16">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref16"><sup>16</sup></a>  For herrings the lanyards may be of such a length that
+the foot of the net almost touches the sea-bottom. For mackerel, which
+is a surface and midwater fish, they are much shorter, so that the
+headrope lies just below the top of the water.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note17">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref17"><sup>17</sup></a>  I trust I make it plain that these statements imply no
+general disparagement of hospitals. Whether or no they do the best
+possible under the circumstances is not to be discussed shortly or by
+the present writer. Since penning the above, it has fallen to me to
+take a patient to the out-department of one of the great London
+hospitals. We had some time to wait, with very many others, on long
+wooden benches. I cannot express the almost unbearable depression, the
+sense of ebbing vitality, the feeling of being jammed in a machine,
+which took possession of me, who was quite well. And I wish I could
+adequately express my admiration of the visiting surgeon's manipulation
+of his delicate instruments and his management of the patient.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note18">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref18"><sup>18</sup></a>  Like a landing net, but shallower and with a shorter
+handle.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note19">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref19"><sup>19</sup></a>  Boat-nets are the same in construction as setting-nets
+(see p. 192), but upwards of a yard in diameter. Instead of a cord and
+stick, they have attached to them four or five fathoms of grass line. A
+few small flat oval corks are spliced at short intervals into the end
+of the line remote from the net, and at the extremity is a cork buoy
+about half as large as a man's head.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note20">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref20"><sup>20</sup></a>  &#34;The Hygiene of Mind,&#34; by T. S. Clouston, M.D., F.R.S.E.,
+(London, 1906). Without an extension which Dr Clouston provides, though
+not in so many words, the definition I have italicized is
+psychologically a little superficial. Mental inhibition, generally,
+needs dividing into self-control and, say, auto-control. Where one man
+may <i>self-control</i> himself by an effort of will, another man, in
+the same predicament, might <i>auto-control</i> himself instinctively,
+without a conscious effort of will. Which is the saner, and likelier to
+remain so, under ordinary circumstances and under extraordinary
+circumstances, would be most difficult to determine. Many people are
+only sane in action because they know that they are insane in impulse,
+and take measures accordingly. They keep a sane front to the world by
+legislating pretty sternly for themselves.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note21">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref21"><sup>21</sup></a> &#34;The more one sees of the poor in their own homes, the
+more one becomes convinced that their ethical views, taken as a whole,
+can be more justly described as different from those of the upper
+classes than as better or worse.&#34; (&#34;The Next Street but One.&#34; By M.
+Loane. London, 1907.)
+</p>
+
+<a name="note22">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref22"><sup>22</sup></a> &#34;When one begins to know the poor intimately, visiting the
+same houses time after time, and throughout periods of as long as eight
+or ten years, one becomes gradually convinced that in the real
+essentials of morality, they are, as a whole, far more advanced than is
+generally believed, but they range the list of virtues in a different
+order from that commonly adopted by the more educated classes.
+Generosity ranks far before justice, sympathy before truth, love before
+chastity, a pliant and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest
+one. In brief, the less admixture of intellect required for the
+practice of any virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation.&#34;
+(&#34;From their Point of View.&#34; By M. Loane. London, 1908.)
+</p>
+
+<p class="foot">
+It is difficult to see on what grounds Miss Loane implies&#8212;if she does
+mean to imply&#8212;that the poor would do well to exchange their own order
+of the virtues for the other order. Christianity certainly affords no
+such grounds, nor does any other philosophy or religion, except
+utilitarianism perhaps.
+</p>
+
+<a name="note23">&nbsp;</a>
+<p class="foot">
+<a href="#noteref23"><sup>23</sup></a> Evolution is at present the last refuge of unscientific
+minds which think they have explained a process when they have given it
+a new name, just as chemists used to call an obscure chemical action
+<i>catalytic</i> and then assume that its nature was plain.
+<i>Evolution</i> means an <i>unfolding</i>. In that sense it is an
+observed fact, though exactly how the unfolding is brought about is
+still conjectural. But it does not matter for the purposes of my
+argument whether human beings evolve by the transmission to offspring
+of acquired characteristics, or by bequeathing to them as birthright an
+environment that their fathers had to make. The material for
+constructing any theory of mental, or joint mental and physical
+evolution, is so hazy that one cannot do more than speculate. It may be
+noted, however, that acquired mental characteristics appear to be more
+transmissible, and less stable, than acquired physical characteristics;
+and that mental evolution (in the broad sense again) proceeds faster
+and collapses more readily than physical evolution.
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POOR MAN'S HOUSE***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 26126-h.txt or 26126-h.zip *******</p>
+<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br>
+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/6/1/2/26126">http://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/1/2/26126</a></p>
+<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.</p>
+
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Poor Man's House, by Stephen Sydney Reynolds
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: A Poor Man's House
+
+
+Author: Stephen Sydney Reynolds
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 25, 2008  [eBook #26126]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POOR MAN'S HOUSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Malcolm Farmer and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+A POOR MAN'S HOUSE
+
+by
+
+STEPHEN REYNOLDS
+
+"_We understand the artificial better
+than the natural. More soul, but less
+talent, is contained in the simple than
+in the complex._"--NOVALIS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London: John Lane The Bodley Head
+New York: John Lane Compy. MCMIX
+All rights reserved
+
+Turnbull and Spears, Printers, Edinburgh
+
+
+
+TO
+BOB
+AND TO
+EDWARD GARNETT
+
+
+
+
+A few chapters, chosen from the completed work, have appeared in the
+_Albany Review_, the _Daily News_ and _Country Life_. To the editors
+of those periodicals the author's acknowledgments are due.
+
+
+
+
+_PREFACE_
+
+
+The substance of "A Poor Man's House" was first recorded in a journal,
+kept for purposes of fiction, and in letters to one of the friends to
+whom the book is dedicated. Fiction, however, showed itself an
+inappropriate medium. I was unwilling to cut about the material, to
+modify the characters, in order to meet the exigencies of plot, form,
+and so on. I felt that the life and the people were so much better than
+anything I could invent. Besides which, I found myself in possession of
+conclusions, hot for expression, which could not be incorporated at all
+into fiction. "A Poor Man's House" consists then of the journal and
+letters, subjected to such slight re-arrangement as should enable me to
+draw the truest picture I could within the limits of one volume.
+
+Primarily the book aims at presenting a picture of a typical poor man's
+house and life. Incidentally, certain conclusions are expressed
+which--needless to say--are very tentative and are founded not alone on
+_this_ poor man's house. Of the book as a picture, it is not the
+author's place to speak. But its opinions, and the manner of arriving
+at them, do require some explanation; the right to hold such opinions
+some substantiation.
+
+Educated people usually deal with the poor man's life deductively; they
+reason from the general to the particular; and, starting with a theory,
+religious, philanthropic, political, or what not, they seek, and too
+easily find, among the millions of poor, specimens--very frequently
+abnormal--to illustrate their theories. With anything but human
+beings, that is an excellent method. Human beings, unfortunately, have
+individualities. They do what, theoretically, they ought not to do,
+and leave undone those things they ought to do. They are even said to
+possess souls--untrustworthy things beyond the reach of sociologists.
+The inductive method--reasoning from the particular to the
+general--though it lead to a fine crop of errors, should at least help
+to counterbalance the psychological superficiality of the deductive
+method; to counterbalance, for example, the nonsense of those
+well-meaning persons who go routing about among the poor in search of
+evil, and suppose that they can chain it up with little laws. Chained
+dogs bite worst.
+
+For myself, I can only claim--I only want to claim--that I have lived
+among poor people without preconceived notions or _parti pris_; neither
+as parson, philanthropist, politician, inspector, sociologist nor
+statistician; but simply because I found there a home and more beauty
+of life and more happiness than I had met with elsewhere. So far as is
+possible to a man of middle-class breeding, I have lived their life,
+have shared their interests, and have found among them some of my
+closest and wisest friends. Perhaps I may reasonably anticipate one
+type of criticism by adding that I have felt something of the pinch and
+hardship of the life, as well as enjoyed its picturesqueness. Since the
+book was first written, it has fallen to me, on an occasion of illness,
+to take over for some days all the housekeeping and cooking; and I have
+worked on the boats sometimes fifteen hours a day, not as an amateur,
+but for hard and--what is more to the point--badly-needed coin. It took
+the gilt off the gingerbread, but it didn't spoil the gingerbread!
+
+Would it were possible to check by ever so little the class-conceit of
+those people who think that they can manage the poor man's life better
+than he can himself; who would take advantage of their education to
+play ducks and drakes with his personal affairs. For it is my firm
+belief that in the present phase of national evolution, and as regards
+the things that really matter, the educated man has more to learn of
+the poor man than to teach him. Even Nietzsche, the philosopher of
+aristocracy, went so far as to say that _in the so-called cultured
+classes, the believers in 'modern ideas,' nothing is perhaps so
+repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy insolence of eye and hand
+with which they touch, taste, and finger everything; and it is possible
+that even yet there is more_ relative _nobility of taste, and more tact
+for reverence among the people, among the lower classes of the people,
+especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading_ demi-monde
+_of intellect, the cultured class_.
+
+S. R.
+
+SEACOMBE, 1908.
+
+
+
+
+_A POOR MAN'S HOUSE_
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+                                                   EGREMONT VILLAS,
+                                                 SEACOMBE, _April_.
+
+
+1
+
+The sea is merely grinding against the shingle. The _Moondaisy_ lies
+above the sea-wall, in the gutter, with her bottom-boards out and a
+puddle of greenish water covering her garboard strake. Her hunchbacked
+Little Commodore is dead. The other two of her old crew, George Widger
+and Looby Smith are nowhere to be seen: they must be nearly grown up
+by now. The fishermen themselves appear less picturesque and salty
+than they used to do. It is slack time after a bad herring season.
+They are dispirited and lazy, and very likely hungry.
+
+These old lodgings of mine, with their smug curtains, aspidestria
+plant, china vases and wobbly tables and chairs....
+
+But I can hear the sea-gulls screaming, even here.
+
+
+2
+
+[Sidenote: _GEORGE GONE TO SEA_]
+
+Yesterday morning I met young George Widger, now grown very lanky but
+still cat-like in his movements. He was parading the town with a couple
+of his mates, attired in a creased blue suit with a wonderful yellow
+scarf around his neck, instead of the faded guernsey and ragged
+sea-soaked trousers in which he used to come to sea. What was up? I
+asked his father, and Tony had a long rigmarole to tell me. George had
+got a sweetheart. Therefore George had begun to look about him for a
+sure livelihood. George was not satisfied with a fisherman's prospects.
+"Yu works and drives and slaves, and don't never get no forarder." So
+George had gone to the chief officer of coastguards without saying a
+word to his father and had been found fit. George had joined the Navy.
+He was going off to Plymouth that very day at dinner-time.
+
+It is like a knight of romance being equipped by his lady for the wars.
+But what must be the difficulty to a young fisherman of earning his
+bread and cheese, when all he can do for his sweetheart is to leave her
+forthwith! There's a fine desperation in it.
+
+Tony seemed rather proud. "They 'ouldn't think as I had a son old
+enough for the Navy, wude they, sir? I married George's mother, her
+that's dead, when I wer hardly olden'n he is. I should ha' joined the
+Navy meself if it hadn' been for the rheumatic fever what bent me like.
+I am. 'Tis a sure thing, you see--once yu'm in it an' behaves
+yourself--wi' a pension at the end o'it. But I'm so strong an'
+capable-like for fishing as them that's bolt upright, on'y I 'ouldn't
+ha' done for the Navy. Aye! the boy's right. Fishing ain't no job for a
+man nowadays; not like what it used to be. They'll make a man of him in
+the Navy."
+
+In the evening, after dark, I saw Tony again. He was standing outside a
+brilliantly lighted grocer's shop, his cap awry as usual, and a reefer
+thrown over his guernsey. Something in the despondency of his attitude
+haled me across the road. "Well, Tony? George is there by now?"
+
+"Iss ... I-I-I w-wonder what the boy's thinking o'it now...."
+
+The man was crying his heart out. "I come'd hereto 'cause it don' seem
+'s if I can stay in house. Went in for some supper a while ago, but I
+cuden' eat nort. 'Tisn' 's if he'd ever been away from home before, yu
+know."
+
+"Come along down to the Shore Road, Tony."
+
+It seemed wrong, hardly decent, to let his grief spend itself in the
+lighted-up street. The Front was deserted and dark, for there was rain
+in the wind, and the sound of the surf had a quick savage chop in it.
+Away, over the sea, was a great misty blackness.
+
+As we walked up and down, Tony talked between tears and anger--tears
+for himself and George, anger at the cussedness of things. He looked
+straight before him, to where the row of lamps divided the lesser from
+the greater darkness, the town noises from the chafing surf; it is the
+only time I have ever seen a fisherman walk along shore without a
+constant eye on the sea.
+
+"He's taken and gone away jest as he was beginning to be o' some use
+wi' the boats, an' I thought he wer settling down. _I_ didn' know what
+wer going on, not till he came an' told me he wer off. But 'tisn'
+that, though I bain't so strong as I was to du all the work be meself;
+'tis what he's a-thinking now he've a-lef' home an' 'tis tu late to
+come back if he wants tu. He's ther, sure 'nuff, an' that's all about
+it."
+
+In the presence of grief, we are all thrown back on the fine old
+platitudes we affect to despise. "You mustn't get down over it, Tony,"
+I said. "That won't make it a bit the better. If he's steady--woman,
+wine and the rest--he'll get on right enough. He's got his wits about
+him; knows how to sail a boat and splice a rope. That's the sort they
+want in the Navy, I suppose. _He_'ll make his way, never fear. Think
+how you'll trot him out when he comes home on leave. Why, they say a
+Devon man's proper place is the Navy."
+
+"Iss, they du. _I_ should ha' been there meself if it hadn' been for
+the rheumatics--jest about coming out on a pension now, or in the
+coastguards. I _be_ in the Royal Naval Reserve, but I ain't smart
+enough, like, for the Navy. The boy...."
+
+"He's as smart and strong as they make 'em."
+
+"Aye! he's smart, or cude be, but he'll hae to mind what he's a-doin'
+there. _They_ won't put up wi' no airs like he've a-give'd me.
+Yu've got to du what yu'm told, sharp, an' yu mustn't luke [look] what
+yu thinks, let 'lone say it, or else yu'll find yourself in chokey
+[cells] 'fore yu knows where yu are. 'Tis like walking on a six-inch
+plank, in the Navy, full o' rules an' regylations; an' he won't get fed
+like he was at home nuther, when us had it."
+
+[Sidenote: _GROG AS A SLEEPING DRAUGHT_]
+
+"Why don't you go to bed and sleep, Tony?"
+
+"How can I sleep wi' me head full o' what the boy's thinking o'it all!"
+
+More walking and he calmed down a little.
+
+"Come and have some hot grog for a sleeping draught, Tony, and then go
+home to bed."
+
+"Had us better tu?"
+
+"Come along, man; then if you go straight to bed you'll sleep."
+
+"I on'y wish I cude. The boy must be turned in by this time. 'Tis like
+as if I got a picture of him in my mind, where he is, an' he ain't
+happy--_I_ knows."
+
+When Tony went down the narrow roadway, homewards, he had had just the
+amount of grog to make him sleep: no more, no less. That father's
+grief--the boy gone to sea, the father left stranded ashore--it was bad
+to listen to. While going up town, I wondered with how much sorrow the
+Navy is recruited. We look on our sailors rather less fondly than on
+the expensive pieces of machinery we send them to sea in. I don't think
+I shall ever again be able to regard the Navy newspaper-fashion. It
+seems as if someone of mine belongs to it....
+
+Lucky George! to be so much missed.
+
+This morning, when I saw Tony on the Front, he was more than a little
+awkward; looked shyly at me, from under his peaked cap, as if to read
+in my face what I thought of him. He had slept after all, and spoke of
+the hot grog as a powerful, strange invention, new to him as a sleeping
+draught. When, in talking, I said that I have only a back bedroom and a
+fripperied sitting room, and that my old lodgings do not please me as
+they used to, he clapped me on the shoulder with a jollity intended, I
+think, to put last night out of my mind. "What a pity yu hadn't let we
+know yu cuden't find lodgings to your liking. Us got a little room in
+house where they sends people sometimes from the Alexandra Hotel when
+they'm full up. My missis 'ould du anything to make 'ee comfor'able. Yu
+an't never see'd her, have 'ee? Nice little wife, I got. Yu let us know
+when yu be coming thees way again; that is, if yu don' mind coming wi'
+the likes o' us. We won't disturb 'ee."
+
+[Sidenote: _A NOISY PLACE_]
+
+Good fellow! It was his thanks. However I shall be going home
+to-morrow. Tony Widger lives, I believe, somewhere down the Gut, in
+Under Town, a place they call the Seacombe slum. You can see a horde of
+children pouring in and out of the Gut all day long, and in the evening
+the wives stand at the seaward end of it, to gossip and await their
+husbands. Noisy place....
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+                                                         SALISBURY,
+                                                            _July_.
+
+A card from Tony Widger:
+
+    Dear Sir in reply to your letter I have let to the hotel which is
+    full for the 28th july until the 6th Aus, but I have one little
+    room to the back but you did not say about the time it would take
+    you to walk down also John to Saltmeadow have let so you can have
+    that room if you can manage or you can see when you come down their
+    are a lot of People in Seacombe or you write and let me know and I
+    will see if I can get rooms for you if you tell me about the time
+    you will be hear from yours Truly Anthony Widger.
+
+Risky; but never mind. There is always the sea. It is something to have
+the certainty of a bed at the end of a long day's tramp. Besides, I
+want to see Tony, and George too, if by chance he is at home. And there
+may be a little fishing. And--
+
+    And stepping westward seems to be
+    A kind of _heavenly_ destiny.
+
+That's the real feeling at the back of my mind. _I want_ to go west,
+towards the sunset; over Dartmoor, towards Land's End, where the
+departing ships go down into the sea.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+                                                          SEACOMBE,
+                                                     _July-August_.
+
+
+1
+
+After a hundred miles of dusty road, it is good to snuff the delicately
+salted air. The bight of the Exe, where we crossed it by steam launch,
+was only a make-believe for the sea. How wonderfully the slight
+rippling murmur of a calm sea flows into, and takes possession of one's
+mind.
+
+I stood by the shore and watched the boats, and was very peaceful. Then
+I went down the Gut to the house that I guessed was Anthony Widger's.
+Many children watched me with their eyes opened wide at my knapsack. A
+pleasant looking old woman--short, stout, charwoman-shaped--came out of
+the passage just as I raised my hand to knock the open door. "Are you
+Mrs Widger?" said I.
+
+"Lor' bless 'ee! I ben't Mrs Widger. Here, Annie! Here's a gen'leman to
+see 'ee."
+
+Mrs Widger, the afternoon Mrs Widger, is a quite slim woman
+who--strangely enough for a working man's wife--looks a good deal
+younger than she is. She has rather beautiful light brown hair and
+dresses tastefully. I am afraid she will not feel complimented if the
+old woman tells her of my mistake.
+
+Her manner of receiving me indicated plainly a suspended judgment,
+inclined perhaps towards the favourable. I was shown my room, a little
+long back room, with ragged wall-paper, and almost filled up by a huge,
+very flat, squashy bed. After a wash-over (I did not ask for a bath for
+fear of exposing the lack of one) I went down to tea.
+
+Bread, jam and cream were put before me, together with fairly good hot
+tea from a blue, smoky, enamelled tin teapot which holds any quantity
+up to a couple of quarts. Mrs Widger turned two guernseys, a hat,
+several odd socks, and a boot out of a great chintz-covered chair which
+lacked one of its arms. To my _made_ conversation she replied shortly:
+
+"Dear me!" "My!" "Did you ever...." She was taking stock of me.
+
+Presently she went to a cupboard, which is also the coal-hole, and
+brought out an immense frying-pan, black both inside and out. She
+heated it till the fat ran; wiped out it with a newspaper; then placed
+in it three split mackerel. "For Tony's tea," she explained. "He's to
+sea now with two gen'lemen, but I 'spect he'll be in house sune."
+
+Voices from the passage: "Mam! Tay! Mam, I wants my tay!"
+
+[Sidenote: _TEA-TIME_]
+
+A deeper voice: "Missis, wer's my tay? Got ort nice to eat?"
+
+It was Tony himself, accompanied by a small boy and a slightly larger
+small girl.
+
+"Hullo, sir! Yu'm come then. Do 'ee think you can put up wi' our little
+shanty? Missis ought to ha' laid for 'ee in the front room. Us got a
+little parlour, you know.--I be so wet as a drownded corpse, Missis!"
+
+The two children stood on the other side of the table, staring at me as
+if I were a wild beast behind bars which they scarcely trusted. "'Tis a
+gen'leman!" exclaimed the girl.
+
+"Coo'h!" the boy ejaculated.
+
+Tony turned on them with make-believe anger: "Why don' 'ee git yer tay?
+Don' 'ee know 'tis rude to stare?"
+
+"Now then, you children," Mrs Widger continued in a strident voice,
+buttering two hunks of bread with astonishing rapidity. "Take off thic
+hat, Mabel. _Sit_ down, Jimmy."
+
+"Coo'h! Jam!" said Jimmy. "Jam zide plaate, like the gen'leman, please,
+Mam Widger."
+
+"When you've eat that."
+
+I never saw children munch so fast.
+
+Tony took off his boots and stockings, and wrung out the ends of his
+trousers upon the hearth-rug. He pattered to the oven; opened the door;
+sniffed.
+
+"Her's got summat for my tay, I can see. What is it, Missis? Fetch it
+out----quick, sharp! Mackerel! Won' 'ee hae one, sir? Ther's plenty
+here."
+
+Whilst Mrs Widger was helping him to the rest of his food, he ate the
+mackerel with his fingers. Finally, he soaked up the vinegar with
+bread, licked his finger-tips and turned towards me. "Yu'm in the
+courting chair, sir. That's where me an' Missis used to sit when we was
+courting, en' it, Annie? Du 'ee see how we've a-broke the arm? When yu
+gets a young lady, us'll lend 'ee thic chair. Didn' know as I'd got a
+little wife like thees yer, did 'ee? Ay, Annie!"
+
+He turned round and chucked her under the chin.
+
+"G'out, you dirty cat!" cried Mrs Widger, flinging herself back in the
+chair--yet not displeased.
+
+It was a pretty playful sight, although Mrs Widger's voice is rather
+like a newspaper boy's when she raises it.
+
+
+2
+
+This morning, when I arrived downstairs, the kitchen was all of a
+caddle. Children were bolting their breakfast, seated and afoot; were
+washing themselves and being washed; were getting ready and being got
+ready for school. Mrs Widger looked up from stitching the seat of a
+small boy's breeches _in situ_. "I've a-laid your breakfast in the
+front room."
+
+Thither I went with a book and no uncertain feeling of disappointment.
+
+[Sidenote: _BREAKFAST IN THE PARLOUR_]
+
+The front room looks out upon Alexandra Square. It is, at once,
+parlour, lumber room, sail and rope store, portrait gallery of
+relatives and ships, and larder. It is a veritable museum of the
+household treasures not in constant use, and represents pretty
+accurately, I imagine, the extent to which Mrs Widger's house-pride is
+able to indulge itself. But I have had enough at Salisbury of eating my
+meals among best furniture and in the (printed) company of great minds.
+The noise in the kitchen sounded jolly. Now or never, I thought. So
+after breakfast, I returned to the kitchen and asked for what bad
+behaviour I was banished to the front room.
+
+"Lor'! If yu don't mind this. On'y 'tis all up an' down here...."
+
+
+3
+
+I went yesterday to see my old landlady at Egremont Villas. She asked
+me where I was lodging.
+
+"At Tony Widger's, in Alexandra Square."
+
+"Why, that's in Under Town."
+
+"Yes, in Under Town."
+
+"Oh, law! I can't think how you can live in such a horrid place!"
+
+On my assuring her that it was not so very horrid, she rearranged her
+silken skirts on the chair (a chair too ornamentally slight for her
+weight) and tilted up her nose. "I must get and lay the table," she
+said, "for a lady and gentleman that's staying with me. _Very_ nice
+people."
+
+[Sidenote: _ALEXANDRA SQUARE_]
+
+Under Town has, in fact, an indifferent reputation among the elect. Not
+that it is badly behaved; far from it. The shallow-pated resent its not
+having drawn into line with their cheap notions of progress. If Under
+Town had put plate-glass windows into antique buildings.... Visitors to
+Seacombe, not being told, hardly so much as suspect the existence of
+its huddled old houses and thatched cottages. The shingle-paved Gut
+runs down unevenly from the Shore Road between a row of tall lodging
+houses and the Alexandra Hotel, then opens out suddenly into a little
+square which contains an incredible number of recesses and sub-corners,
+so to speak, with many more doors in them than one can discover houses
+belonging to the doors. Two cottages, I am told, have no ground floors
+at all. Cats sun themselves on walls or squat about gnawing fish bones.
+A houdan cockerel with bedraggled speckly plumage and a ragged crest
+hanging over one eye struts from doorstep to doorstep. The children,
+when any one strange walks through the Square, run like rabbits in a
+warren to their respective doors; stand there, and stare. Tony Widger's
+house is the largest. Once, when Under Town was Seacombe, a lawyer
+lived here--hence the front passage. It has a cat-trodden front garden,
+in which only wall-flowers and some box edging have survived. Over the
+front door is a broken trellis-work porch. Masts and spars lean against
+the wall. The house is built of red brick, straight up and down like an
+overgrown doll's house, but the whole of the wall is weathered and
+toned by the southerly gales which blow down the Gut from the open sea.
+Those same winds see to it that Alexandra Square does not smell
+squalid, however it may look. At its worst it is not so depressing as a
+row of discreet semi-detached villas. It is, I should imagine, a pretty
+accurate mirror of the lives that are lived in it--poor men's lives
+that scarcely anybody fathoms. If one looks for a moment at a house
+where people have starved, or are starving.... What a gift of hope they
+must possess--and what a sinking in their poor insides!
+
+
+4
+
+This morning they told me how my little hunchbacked Commodore died. He
+had been ailing, they said; had come to look paler and more pinched in
+his small sharp face. Then (it was a fisherman who told me this): "He
+was in to house one morning, an' I thought as 'e were sleepin', an' I
+said, 'Harry, will 'ee hae a cup o' tay; yu been sleeping an't 'ee?'
+An' 'e says, 'No, I an't; but I been sort o' dreaming.' An' 'e said as
+he'd see'd a green valley wi' a stream o' water, like, running down the
+middle o' it, an' 'e thought as 'e see'd Granfer there (that us losted
+jest before 'en) walking by the stream. A'terwards 'e sat on 's
+mother's lap, like 's if 'e wer a child again, though 'e wer nearly
+nineteen all but in size; an' 'e jest took an' died there, suddent an'
+quiet like; went away wi'out a word; an' us buried 'en last January up
+to the cementry on land."
+
+So the _Moondaisy_'s luckiest fisherman packed up and went.
+
+
+5
+
+It is astonishing how hungry and merry these children are, especially
+the boys. They rush into the kitchen at meal times and immediately make
+grabs at whatever they most fancy on the table.
+
+[Sidenote: _MAN AND GEN'LEMAN_]
+
+"Yu little cat!" says their mother, always as if she had never
+witnessed such behaviour before. "Yu daring rascal! Put down! I'll gie
+thee such a one in a minute. Go an' sit down to once." Then they climb
+into chairs, wave their grubby hands over the plates, in a pretence of
+grabbing something more, and spite of the whacks which sometimes fall,
+they gobble their food to the accompaniment of incessant tricks and
+roars of shrill laughter. Never were such disorderly, hilarious meals!
+If Tony is here they simply laugh at his threats of weird punishment,
+and if he comes in late from sea, they return again with him and make a
+second meal as big as the first. Sometimes, unless the food is cleared
+away quickly, they will clamour for a third meal, and clamour
+successfully. What digestions they must have to gobble so much and so
+fast!
+
+To judge by their way of talking, they divide the world into folk and
+gentlefolk. "Who gie'd thee thic ha'penny?" Mrs Widger asked Jimmy.
+
+"A man, to beach."
+
+"G'out!" said Mabel. "Twas a gen'leman."
+
+"Well...."
+
+"Well, that ain't a _man_!"
+
+Usually, at breakfast time, the voices of Tony's small nieces may be
+heard coming down the passage: "Aun-tieAnn-ie! Aunt-ieAnn-ie!" Their
+tousled, tow-coloured little heads peep round the doorway. If we have
+not yet finished eating, they are promptly ordered to 'get 'long home
+to mother.' Otherwise, they come right in and remain standing in the
+middle of the room, apparently to view me. Unable to remember which is
+Dora and which Dolly, I have nicknamed them according to their hair,
+Straighty and Curley. What they think of things, there is no knowing;
+for they blush at direct questions and turn their heads away. So also,
+when I have been going in and out of the Square, they have stopped
+their play to gaze at me, but have merely smiled shyly, if at all, in
+answer to my greetings. Yesterday, however, they had a skipping rope. I
+jumped over it. Instantly there was a chorus of laughter and chatter.
+The ice was broken. This morning, after a moment or two's consideration
+behind her veil of unbrushed hair, Straighty came and clambered upon
+the arm of the courting chair--dabbed a clammy little hand down my
+neck, whilst Curley plumped her fist on my knee and stayed looking into
+my face with very wondering smiling blue eyes. By the simple act of
+jumping a rope, I had gained their confidence; had proved I was really
+a fellow creature, I suppose. Now, when I pass through the Square, some
+small boy is sure to call out, "Where yu going?" And my name is
+brandished about among the children as if I were a pet animal. They
+have appropriated me. They have tamed that mysterious wild beast, 'the
+gen'leman.'
+
+One boy, Jimmy--a very fair-headed, blue-eyed, chubby little chap,
+seven years old--Tony's eldest boy at home--seems to have taken a
+particular fancy to me. Whether it began with bananas, or with my
+giving him a pick-a-back to the top of the cliffs, I hardly know. At
+all events he has decided that I am a desirable friend. He has shown me
+his small properties--his pencil, and his boats that he makes out of a
+piece of wood with wing-feathers for sails and a piece of tin, stuck
+into the bottom, for centre-keel;--has told me what standard he is in
+at school; and one of the first things I hear whenever he comes into
+the house, is: "Mam! Wher's Mister Ronals?"
+
+[Sidenote: _JIMMY OUT TO TEA_]
+
+To-day, on my way to the Tuckers' to tea, I passed Jimmy's school. The
+boys were just let loose. Jimmy left a yelling group of them to come
+along with me. Nearby the Tuckers' gate, I told him where I was going,
+and said _Good-bye_. Jimmy fell behind. But whilst we were at tea, I
+repeatedly saw a white head sneaking round the laurels outside the
+window, and blue eyes peeping. Miss Tucker had him in; whereupon,
+rather shyly, with hands horribly grubby from the school slates, Jimmy
+ate much bread and butter and many cakelets, and ended up by tucking
+three apples into his blouse. He came home very pleased indeed with
+himself.
+
+Tony was almost angry. "However come'd 'ee, Missis, to let 'em go out
+to a gen'leman's to tay in thic mess?"
+
+"Stupid! How cude I help o'it?"
+
+"What did 'ee think o'it, Jimmy?"
+
+"The lady gie'd I dree apples!"
+
+Tony, though shocked, was also pleased; Jimmy delighted. Every now and
+then he draws himself up with a "Coo'h! I been out to tay wi' Mister
+Ronals!"
+
+They have a strange way, these children, of placing their hands on one,
+smiling up into one's face, and saying nothing. It has the effect of
+making one feel their separate, distinct personalities, and,
+additionally, of making one feel rather proud of the approbation of
+those small personages who think so much and divulge so little.
+
+
+6
+
+There has been no fishing. Either the sea has been too rough to ride to
+a slingstone[1] for blinn and conger, or else too calm, so that the
+mackerel hookers[2] could not sail out and therefore no fresh bait was
+to be had. It is quite useless to fish for conger with stale bait. Tony
+tells me that I ought to be here in a month's time, when he will have
+fewer pleasure parties to attend to, and will go out for mackerel,
+rowing if he cannot sail. He says there will _have_ to be a good
+September hooking season, because, though the summer has been fair, the
+fisherfolk have not succeeded in putting by enough money to last out
+the winter, should the herrings fail to come into the bay, as they have
+failed the last few years. I should like to _work_ at the mackerel
+hooking with him. Indeed, although I am looking forward to a glorious
+tramp across Dartmoor, yet I am more than half sorry that I have a room
+bespoken at Prince Town for the day after to-morrow.
+
+      [1] A heavy stone used instead of an anchor over rocks, among
+      which an anchor might get stuck and lost.
+
+      [2] After the end of July, the mackerel are mostly caught not in
+      nets, but by trailing a line behind a sailing boat.
+
+[Sidenote: _AN INOPPORTUNE REMARK_]
+
+Putting aside one or two things that are unpleasant--a few
+disagreeables resolutely faced--it is wonderful how rapidly one feels
+at home here. The welcome, the goodfellowship, is so satisfying. This
+morning, the visitor from the hotel, who has Mrs Widger's front
+room, so far presumed on the fact that we were educated men among
+uneducated--both gen'lemen, Tony would say--as to remark flippantly
+though not ungenially, "The Widgers are not bad sorts, are they? I
+say, what a mouth Mrs Widger's got!"
+
+Mrs Widger has a noticeably wide mouth; I know that perfectly well; but
+I can hardly say how indignant I felt at his light remark; how
+insulted; as if he had spoken slightingly of someone belonging to me.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+                                                       PRINCE TOWN,
+                                                          _August_.
+
+
+1
+
+When I took leave of the Widgers, there was the question of payment for
+my board and lodging. We were just finishing breakfast; the children
+had been driven out, Mrs Widger was resting awhile, and the table, the
+whole kitchen, was in extreme disorder.
+
+I asked Mrs Widger what I owed, and, as I had expected, she replied
+only: "What you'm minded to pay."
+
+"Three and six a day," I suggested.
+
+"Not so much as that," said Mrs Widger. "'Tisn't like as if us could du
+for 'ee like a proper lodging house."
+
+"Don' 'ee think, Missis," said Tony, "as we might ask 'en jest to make
+hisself welcome."
+
+It was out of the question, of course. The mackerel season has been so
+bad. Mrs Widger shot at Tony a look he failed to see. Otherwise, she
+did not let herself appear to have heard him.
+
+The discussion hung.
+
+"Say three shillings, then," I suggested again.
+
+"That 'll du," returned Mrs Widger, allowing nothing of the last few
+minutes' brain-work to show itself in her voice.
+
+[Sidenote: _HOTEL LIFE_]
+
+Mrs Widger knows what it is to have to keep house and feed several
+hungry children on earnings which vary from fairly large sums (sums
+whose very largeness calls for immediate spending) to nothing at all
+for weeks together.
+
+As I was setting out, Jimmy said to his mother: "Don' 'ee let Mister
+Ronals go, Mam 'Idger." He followed me to the end of the Gut; would
+have come farther had I not sent him back. That, and Tony's desire to
+make me welcome, brightened the bright South Devon sunshine. I kept
+within sight of the sea as long as possible. The little sailing boats
+on it looked so nimble. I have a leaning to go back, a sort of
+hunger....
+
+
+2
+
+[Sidenote: _DAWDLING v. WALKING_]
+
+I don't think I can remain here. To-morrow I shall move on, and tramp
+around the county back to Seacombe. The Moor is as splendid as ever,
+but this hotel life, following so soon on the life of Under Town....
+Though the good, well-cooked food, neither so greasy nor so starchy as
+Mrs Widger's, is an agreeable change, I sit at the table d'hote and
+rage within. I am compelled to hear a conversation that irritates me
+almost beyond amusement at it. These people here are on holiday. Most
+of them, by their talk, were never on anything else. They chirp in
+lively or bored fashion, as the case may be, of the things that don't
+matter, of the ornamentations, the superfluities and the relaxations of
+life. At Tony Widger's they discuss--and much more merrily--the things
+that do matter; the means of life itself. Here, they say: "Is the table
+d'hote as good as it might be? Is the society what it might be? Is it
+not a pity that there is no char-a-banc or a motor service to Cranmere
+Pool and Yes Tor?" There, the equivalent question is: "Shall us hae
+money to go through the winter? Shall us hae bread and scrape to eat?"
+Here, a man wonders if in the strong moorland air some slight
+non-incapacitating ailment will leave him: illness is inconvenient and
+disappointing, but not ruinous. There, Tony wonders if the exposure and
+continual boat-hauling are not taking too much out of him; if he is not
+ageing before his time; if he will not be past earning before the
+younger children are off his hands. Here, they laugh at trifles,
+keeping what is serious behind a veil of conventional manners, lest,
+appearing in broad daylight, it should damp their spirits. There, they
+laugh too, and at countless trifles; but also courageously, in the face
+of fate itself. By daring Nemesis, they partially disarm her. With a
+laugh and a jest--no matter if it be a raucous laugh and a coarse
+jest--they assert: "What will be, will be; us can't but du our best,
+for 'tis the way o'it." Here, they skate over a Dead Sea upon the ice
+of convention; but there, they swim in the salted waters, swallow great
+gulps, and nevertheless strike out manfully, knowing no more than
+anyone else exactly where the shore lies, yet possessing, I think, an
+instinct of direction. Here, comfort is at stake: there, existence.
+Coming here is like passing from a birth and death chamber into a
+theatre, where, if the actors have lives of their own, apart from
+mummery, it is their business not to show them. It is like watching a
+game from the grand stand, instead of playing it; betting on a race
+instead of running it. The transition hither is hard to make. Retired
+athletes, we know, suffer from fatty degeneration of the heart; retired
+men of affairs decay. I have walked lately at five miles an hour with
+the Widgers, and I do not relish dawdling at the rate of two with these
+people here. Better risk hell for heaven than lounge about paradise for
+ever.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+                                              UNDER TOWN, SEACOMBE,
+                                                       _September_.
+
+
+1
+
+A fine tramp from Totnes--and such a welcome back! Jimmy met me
+three-quarters of a mile up the road, very much farther than he usually
+strays from the beach. "I thought as yu was coming this way 'bout now,
+Mister Ronals. Dad's been out hooking an' catched five dozen mackerel
+before breakfast. Mam's sick. I be coming out wiv yu t'morrow morning.
+Dad couldn't go out after breakfast, 'cause it come'd on to blow. I've
+'schanged my pencil, what yu give'd me, for a knife wi' two blades." So
+anxious was he to take me in house that he scarcely allowed me time to
+go down to the Front and look at the sea and at the boats lying among a
+litter of nets and gear the length of the sunny beach.
+
+Mrs Widger hastened to bring out the familiar big enamelled teapot,
+flung the cloth over the table and began to cut bread and butter.
+"Coo'h! tay!" exclaimed Jimmy. "That's early, 'cause yu be come, Mister
+Ronals."
+
+"Be yu glad Mr Ronals 's come back?" his mother asked.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE CHILDREN_]
+
+"Iss...."
+
+"What for?" I asked jocularly.
+
+"'Cause yu gives us bananas--an' pennies sometimes."
+
+"'Sthat all yu'm glad for?" said Mrs Widger. "Pennies an' bananas?"
+
+"No vear!" said Jimmy; and he meant it.
+
+All the while, Tommy (Jimmy's younger brother, about five years old)
+was sitting up to table, looking at the jam-jar with one eye and at me
+with the other. He squints most comically, and is a more self-contained
+young person than Jimmy. Four of the children are at home; Bessie,
+Mabel, Jimmy and Tommy; George and the eldest girl are away. Bessie and
+Mabel, too, are out the greater part of the day, either at school, or
+else helping their aunts, or minding babies (poor little devils!), or
+running errands for the many relatives who live hereabout. Both of them
+are more featureless, show less of the family likeness, than the boys.
+One cannot so easily forecast their grown-up appearance. At times,
+during the day, they come in house with a rush, but say little, except
+to blurt out some (usually inaccurate) piece of news, or to tell their
+step-mother that: "Thic Jimmy's out to baych--I see'd 'en--playin' wi'
+some boys, an' he's got his boots an' stockings so wet as...."
+
+"Jest let 'en show his face in here! _He_ shan't hae no tea! He shall
+go straight to bed!" shouts Mrs Widger, confident that hunger will
+eventually drive Jimmy into her clutches.
+
+The two girls, in fact, do not seem to enter so fully as the boys into
+the life of the household, though they are always very ready to take up
+the responsibility of keeping the boys in order.
+
+"Jimmy! Tommy--there! Mother, look at thic Jimmy! Mother, Tommy's
+fingering they caakes!"
+
+"I'll gie thee such a one in a minute! Let 'lone.... Ther thee a't,
+Mabel, doin' jest the same, 's if a gert maid like yu didn't ought to
+know better."
+
+"Did 'ee ever hear the like o'it?" asks Tony. "Such a buzz! Shut up,
+will 'ee, or _I'll_ gie thee summut to buzz for! Wher's thic stick?"
+
+The children merely laugh at him.
+
+
+2
+
+[Sidenote: _TONY'S WEDDING_]
+
+At supper to-night, Tony was talking about his second wedding and about
+his children, who, dead and alive, number twelve. "Iss, 'tis a round
+dozen, though I'd never ha' thought it," he said reckoning them up on
+his fingers. "Ther be six living an' four up to the cementry, an' two
+missing, like, what nobody didn' know nort about, did they, Annie?
+Janie--that's my first wife, afore this one,--her losted three boys
+when they was two year an' ten months old, an' one year an' seven
+months, an' nine months old. An' her died herself when Mabel here was
+six months old, didn' 'er, Annie? An' yu've a-losted Rosie, an' the
+ones what never appeared in public. Our last baby, after Tommy, wer two
+boys, twinses. One wer like George an' one like Tommy most; one wer my
+child an' t'other wer yours, Annie. Six on 'em dead! Aye, Tony've a
+see'd some trouble, I can tell 'ee, an' he ain't so old as what some on
+'em be for their age, now, thru it all. But it du make a man's head
+turn like."
+
+Mrs Widger's gaze at him while he talked about the dead children was
+wonderful to see--wide-eyed, soft, unflinching--wifely and motherly at
+once.
+
+"John," Tony continued, speaking of his youngest brother who has only
+two children, "John du say as a man what's got seven or eight childern
+be better off than a man what's got on'y two, like he, 'cause he don't
+spend so much on 'em. 'Tis rot, I say! Certainly, he du spend so much
+on each o' his as us du on two o' ours p'raps; but I reckon a hundred
+pounds has to be wrenched an' hauled out o' these yer ol' rheumaticy
+arms o' mine for each child as us rears up."
+
+"Yes--'t has--gude that," said Mrs Widger.
+
+"'Tisn' that I don' du it willingly. I be willing enough. But it du
+maake a man du more'n he'd hae to du otherwise, an' it wears 'en out
+afore his time. Tony's an ol' man now, almost, after the rate, though
+he bain't but forty or thereabout, an' s'pose us has six or a dozen
+more come along, Annie...."
+
+"Gude Lord! 'Twon't be so bad as that, for sure. An' if 'tis, can't be
+helped. Us must make shift wi' 'em."
+
+Then they went on to talk about their wedding. Best remembered,
+apparently, are the _hot_ wedding breakfast (an innovation then in
+these parts), the Honiton lace that Mrs Widger's mother made her, and
+the late arrival home from the village where they were married--a trick
+which procured them quietness, whilst depriving the people in the
+Square of an excitement they had stayed up half the night to witness.
+"When us come'd home, 'twas all so dark and quiet as a dead plaace, an'
+the chil'ern asleep upstairs, an' all," said Tony.
+
+"Yes, 'twer," Mrs Widger broke in, her eyes brightening at the
+recollection of the successful trick. "But 'twer queer, like, wi' the
+childern asleep upstairs what wer to be mine, an' wasn't. I did wonder
+to meself what I wer starting on. Howsbe-ever I wer fair maazed all
+thic day. _I_ wasn' ready when Tony drove out to where us lived, not
+I."
+
+"No-o-o! Her had her sleeves tucked up like 's if her 'adn't finished
+her housework. Her wern't dressed nor nothin' to ree-ceive me."
+
+"I didn' know what I wer doing all thic day."
+
+[Sidenote: _LOVE-PLAY_]
+
+"An' the parson, _I_ had to pay for he, an' he give'd the money back to
+she 'cause her wer a nice li'I thing--bit skinny though. 'Twer a maazed
+muddle like. _I_ ought to ha' had thic money be rights."
+
+"G'out! But I did the ol' parson up here. Us didn' hae no banns put up
+to Seacombe. I told the clergyman to our home that Tony'd been livin'
+there dree days, or dree weeks, or whatever 'twas, an' _he_ didn' know
+no better. 'Twon't be the first lie I've told, says I to meself n'eet
+[nor yet] the last. I saved thee thic money, Tony."
+
+"Ah, yu'm a saving dear, ben' 'ee. Spends all my money."
+
+"Well for yu! I should like to know what yu'd do wi' it if yu hadn't
+had me to lay it out for 'ee."
+
+Tony did not wish to question that. The recollection of the wedding had
+put him in high spirits. He got up from his second supper (so long as
+food remains on the table he takes successive meals with intervals for
+conversation between them), and pirouetted round the table singing,
+
+    "Sweet Ev-eli-na, sweet Ev-eli-na!
+    My lo-ove for yu-u
+    Shall nev-ver, never die...."
+
+He dragged Mrs Widger out of her chair, whisked her across the room.
+"There!" he said, setting her down flop. "'En't her a perty li'I dear!"
+
+Once again, after another little supper, he got up and held Mrs Widger
+firmly by the chin, she kicking out at his shins the while. "Did 'ee
+ever see the like o'it? Eh? Fancy ol' Tony marryin' thic! Wouldn' 'ee
+like a kiss o'it? I du dearly. Don' I, Missis?"
+
+"G'out!" says Mrs Widger, speaking furiously, but smiling affectionately.
+"G'out, you fule! Yu'm mazed!"
+
+Tony returned to his third supper quite seriously, only remarking: "I
+daresay yu thinks Tony a funny ol' fule, don' 'ee?"
+
+[Sidenote: _BIRTH IN THE SQUARE_]
+
+That, I did not. Indeed, I begin to think them peculiarly wise. There
+is the spontaneity of animals about their play, and a good deal of the
+unembarassed movements of animals--with something very human
+superadded. One reads often enough about the love-light in the eyes of
+lovers, and sometimes one catches sight of it. Either frank ridicule,
+or else great reverence, is the mood for witnessing so delicate and
+strong, so racial a thing. Yet this love-light, seen in the eyes of a
+man and wife who have been married ten years, and have settled down
+long ago to the humdrum of married life, seems to me a far finer
+manifestation of the hither mysteries, a far greater triumph. What
+freshness, what perpetual rejuvenation they must possess! The more one
+regards such a thing, the more magnificent and far-reaching it appears.
+No philosophical bulwark against trouble can compare with it. Such love
+ceases to be a matter for novels and selected moments and certain lusty
+ages; ceases to be exceptional. It is the greatest of those very great
+things, the commonplaces. Tony tells me that when he comes in at night,
+cold from fishing, Mrs Widger always turns over to the other side of
+the bed, leaving him a warm place to creep into. Mrs Widger says that
+no matter what time Tony comes in or gets up, he never fails to make,
+and take her up, a cup o' tay. So does their love direct the prosaic
+details of living in one house together. I do not think I am wrong in
+fancying that it percolates right down through the household, and even
+contributes to the restfulness I feel here, spite of unorderly children
+and the strident voices. "Yu dang'd ol' fule!" can mean so much. Here
+it appears to be an expression of almost limitless confidence.
+
+Mrs Widger has put me this time into the front bedroom, which overlooks
+the Square and has, through the Gut, a narrow view of the sea.
+
+Tony's sister, who lives almost next door, is giving birth to a child
+this evening. I can see the light in her window--a brighter light than
+usual,--and the shadows passing across the yellow blind. Many other
+eyes are turned towards the window. There is a subdued chatter in the
+Square.
+
+
+3
+
+Little did I foresee what sleeping in the front bedroom means. Tony's
+sister gave birth to a boy about ten o'clock. On hearing that
+everything was as it should be, I went to bed, but, alack! not to
+sleep. For the subdued chatter grew into an uproar which continued till
+fully midnight. All the women in the neighbourhood seemed to have come
+this way; and they meg-megged, and they laughed, and when their
+children awoke they shouted up at the windows from outside. I heard
+snatches of childbearing adventures, astonishing yarns, interspersed
+with hard commonsense, not to say cynicism--the cynicism of people who
+cannot afford to embroider much the bare facts of existence or to turn
+their attention far from the necessities of life. "Her'll be weak," one
+woman said, "an' for a long time--never so strong as her was before.
+'Tis always worse after each one you has, 'cepting the first, which is
+worst of all, I say. But there, her must take it as it comes...."
+
+Sundry other bits of good practical philosophy I perforce listened to;
+and at last, when everybody had turned in (I imagined their pleasant
+lightheadedness as they snuggled under the bedclothes in the stuffy
+cottage rooms--the witticisms and echoes of laughter that were running
+through their heads); when, I say, everybody had turned in, an offended
+dog in the hotel yard began to howl.
+
+If it were not that the window of the back bedroom is over the
+scullery, the ash-heap and the main drain, I would ask to move back
+there.
+
+In Under Town a birth makes the stir that is due to such a stupendous
+event.
+
+
+4
+
+[Sidenote: _THE KITCHEN_]
+
+The Widger's kitchen is an extraordinary room--fit shrine for that
+household symbol, the big enamelled tin teapot. At the NW. corner is
+the door to the scullery and to the small walled-in garden which
+contains--in order of importance--flotsam and jetsam for firewood, old
+masts, spars and rudders, and some weedy, grub-eaten vegetables. At the
+top of the garden is a tumble-down cat-haunted linhay, crammed to its
+leaky roof with fishing gear. No doubt it is the presence everywhere of
+boat and fishing gear which gives such a singular unity to the whole
+place.
+
+The kitchen is not a very light room: its low small-paned window is in
+the N. wall. Then, going round the room, the courting chair stands in
+the NE. corner, below some shelves laden with fancy china and
+souvenirs--and tackle. The kitchener, which opens out into quite a
+comforting fireplace, is let into the E. wall, and close beside it is
+the provision cupboard, so situated that the cockroaches, having ample
+food and warmth, shall wax fat and multiply. Next, behind a low dirty
+door in the S. wall, is the coalhole, then the high dresser, and then
+the door to the narrow front passage, beneath the ceiling of which are
+lodged masts, spars and sails. The W. wall of the kitchen is decorated
+with Tony's Oddfellow 'cistificate,' with old almanacs and with a
+number of small pictures, all more or less askew.
+
+There is an abundance of chairs, most of them with an old cushion on
+the seat, all of them more or less broken by the children's racket.
+Over the pictures on the warm W. wall--against which, on the other
+side, the neighbour's kitchener stands--is a line of clean
+underclothing, hung there to air. The dresser is littered with fishing
+lines as well as with dry provisions and its proper complement of odd
+pieces of china. Beneath the table and each of the larger chairs are
+boots and slippers in various stages of polish or decay. Every jug not
+in daily use, every pot and vase, and half the many drawers, contain
+lines, copper nails, sail-thimbles and needles, spare blocks and
+pulleys, rope ends and twine. But most characteristic of the kitchen
+(the household teapot excepted) are the navy-blue garments and jerseys,
+drying along the line and flung over chairs, together with innumerable
+photographs of Tony and all his kin, the greater number of them in
+seafaring rig.
+
+Specially do I like the bluejacket photographs; magnificent men, some
+of them, though one strong fellow looks more than comical, seated amid
+the photographer's rustic properties with a wreath of artificial fern
+leaves around him and a broadly smiling Jolly-Jack-Tar face protruding
+from the foliage. Some battleships, pitching and tossing in fearful
+photographers' gales[3] and one or two framed memorial cards complete
+the kitchen picture gallery.
+
+      [3] Composite pictures apparently; made from a photograph of a
+      ship and of a bad painting of a hurricane.
+
+It is a place of many smells which, however, form a not disagreeable
+blend.
+
+An untidy room--yes. An undignified room--no. Kitchen; scullery (the
+scullery proper is cramped and its damp floor bad for the feet); eating
+room; sitting room; reception room; storeroom; treasure-house; and at
+times a wash-house,--it is an epitome of the household's activities and
+a reflexion of the family's world-wide seafaring. Devonshire is the sea
+county--at every port the Devonian dialect. It is probably the pictures
+and reminders of the broad world which, by contrast, make Mrs Tony's
+kitchen so very homely.
+
+
+5
+
+[Sidenote: _A DUTCH AUCTION_]
+
+Almost every evening, just now, Mrs Widger goes off to a Dutch auction
+of hardware and trinkets at the Market House. She usually brings home
+some small purchase, worth about half the money she has paid; but if
+she were to go to an entertainment at the Seacombe Hall she would be
+not nearly so well amused as by the auctioneer and the other
+housewives, and at the end of the evening she would have nothing
+whatever to show for her money. Besides, the children would never go
+off to bed quietly if they imagined that she was going to a real
+entertainment. As she did not return very early last night, Tony and I
+got our own supper--bread, cheese, a great deal of Worcester sauce, and
+a pint of mother-in-law [stout and bitter] from the Alexandra. Then we
+drew up to the fire and smoked. John, healthy and powerful fellow, had
+been arguing in the daytime on the beach, that if a youth cannot do a
+man's work at seventeen, he never will. Tony disagreed. Twenty-five to
+thirty-five, he says, is a man's prime for strength and endurance
+together. Nevertheless, he is sure that he often did more than a man's
+work long before he was seventeen, which led him to talk about his
+boyhood, when Granfer and Gran Widger had frequently not enough food in
+the house for their many children to eat. "Us had to rough it when I
+wer a boy, I can tell 'ee," says Tony. "'Twer often bread an' a scraape
+o' fat an' _Get 'long out o'it_!"
+
+[Sidenote: _TONY'S DUTIES_]
+
+At nine years old, Tony was put with old Cloade, the grocer, now dead;
+and by the time he was twelve, he was earning four shillings a week,
+not a penny of which he ever saw or had as 'spending money'; for his
+mother used to go to the shop every Saturday night and lay out all poor
+Tony's wages in groceries. The only pocket-money he ever received was a
+copper or two 'thrown back' from what he could earn by going to sea for
+mackerel early enough to return to work by half-past six in the
+morning. Besides running errands, he had to clean boots and knives and
+to scrub out and tidy up the bar, which in those days was attached to
+every Devon grocery. Then he could go home to breakfast. And if old
+Cloade was going up on land, shooting, Tony had to get up and wake him
+at half-past three and to cork bottles or something of that sort before
+the master started out for his day's sport. And again, if Tony had
+fallen foul of any of the shop assistants during the day, had cheeked
+them perhaps, or stayed overlong at meals, then, waiting till closing
+time at eight or nine in the evening, they would send him a couple of
+miles inland, to the top of the hills, with a late parcel of groceries.
+His possible working day was from 3.30 a.m. to 10.0 p.m.
+
+The chief part of his work, when he was not cleaning up or running
+errands, was the sorting of fruit and the cracking of sugar. Every nail
+of his fingers has come off more than once on account of the damage
+done them by the sugar-cracker. Better than any national event, he
+recollects the introduction of cube sugar. "When they tubs o'
+ready-cracked sugar fust come'd down to Seacombe, 'twer thought a gert
+thing--an' so 'twas."
+
+Nearly every year an attack of (sub-acute?) rheumatic fever gave him a
+painful holiday, during which he crawled about the crowded cottage at
+home on his hands and knees. The one advantage of his irregularly long
+hours was that, if work were slack, he could linger over his meals. It
+was the assistants who kept a sharp eye on his movements. Them he
+hated--and cheeked. "The more I done, the worse they treated me. An' as
+I grow'd up an' did often enough more'n a man's work, so I got to know
+it. One day I stayed home more'n an hour to breakfast, an' one on 'em
+asted me wer I'd a-been, an' I said as I'd had me half-hour to
+breakfast, an' he said as I'd had an hour an' a half, an' I told 'en
+'twern't no business o' his an' dared 'en to so much as touch me or I'd
+knock his head in, which I could easily ha' done--an' there wer the
+master standin' by! 'Fore I knowed, he gie'd me one under one yer wi'
+one hand, an' one under t'other yer wi' t'other hand; knocked me half
+silly; an' said if he had any more o' my chake he'd send me going
+thereupon. 'Iss, I said, 'an I _will_ go, an' if I can't pick up a
+livin' on the baych wi' fishin' (I 'adn't no boats then, n'eet for
+years a'ter), an' if I couldn't pick up a livin' wi' fishin', I'd go to
+sea. An' I took an' lef the shop, an' went wi'out me pay due nor nort
+further about it.
+
+"Well, I should think as I stayed away two or dree days, saying as, if
+I couldn' live _by_ the sea, I'd go off _tu_ sea. By'm-by, ol' Mr
+Cloade--I could al'ys get on all right wi' he hisself--'twer they
+assistants.... Mr Cloade come'd down to baych an' said as he'd rise me
+wages be two shillings, from four shillings to six a week. So I went
+back. But 'twern't for long, for I wer turned seventeen then, an'
+strong, an' I knowed that six shillin's a week, every penny o' which
+mother laid out in groceries--p'raps givin' me dreepence for meself
+latterly--that wern't no wage for me doing more'n a man's work, early
+an' laate, at everybody's beck an' call. 'Twern't vitty.
+
+[Sidenote: _BRUISED ORANGES AND BRUISES_]
+
+"It come'd soon a'ter.... I wer sorting oranges, an' one o' the
+assistants called like they al'ays did: 'Widger, Widger! _Widger!_
+Yer, Widger!' 'Twer al'ays, 'Widger! Widger!' in thic show--blarsted
+row! 'I wants 'ee to take thees yer parcel to Mr Brindley-Botton's
+(what used to live to Southview House) in time for lunch. Hurry up!'"
+
+Tony, in short, put a couple of the bruised oranges into his pocket,
+ran off, and delivered his parcel at Southview House. On the way back,
+he ate one of the oranges and, boyishly, threw the peel about outside
+Mr Brindley-Botton's side gate. He heard someone shouting to him
+and--but without turning his head--he shouted "Hell about it!" airily
+back. Then, as it was the dinner hour, he loitered on the Green Patch
+to play marbles with some other lads, and to share the second bruised
+orange. On returning to Cloade's:
+
+"Whu did I see but Mr Brindley-Botton's coachman wi' a little packet in
+white paper. 'Twas thic orange peel, all neatly done up, an' a li'I
+note saying as I'd a-been cheeky to him, which I hadn't, not knowingly.
+Mr Cloade, he called me into his little office, asted me what I'd been
+doing, where I went, an' where I got the oranges.
+
+"'Bought 'em,' says I.
+
+"'Twas a lie, an' I hadn't no need for to tell it, seeing I was al'ays
+free to take a bruised orange or two when I wer sorting of 'em. On'y I
+wer frightened. 'Where did you get them?' he asked.
+
+"'Up to Mrs Ashford's for a penny,' says I.
+
+"'Did you?'
+
+"'Yes, sir,' says I.
+
+"'Are you telling me a lie? I can find out, mind.'
+
+"'No, sir,' I said.
+
+"'Be you sure you ain't telling of a lie?'
+
+"Then I broked down, an' I said they was bruised ones what I'd a-took.
+Father, he wer working to Mr Cloade's then, fishing being bad, an' the
+master called he. _He_ walloped me--walloped me with a rope's end. An'
+I swore as I'd never go back no more, an' I didn't. Every time Father
+tried to make me, I up an' said as I'd go to sea.
+
+[Sidenote: _OUT DRIFTING ALL NIGHT_]
+
+"Ay! for all I'm a man now, I 'ouldn't like to work like I did
+then--more'n a man's work an' less'n a boy's pay, an' hardly a penny
+for meself. I tells John _he_ don't know what 'tis to work like I did
+then. _I_'ouldn't du it no more."
+
+But, with his father's boat, Tony did work far harder--hooking mackerel
+at dawn, in with a catch and out to sea again, or up on land hawking
+them round; out drifting all night; crabbing, lobster-potting,
+shrimping,[4] wrinkling,[5] or taking out frights,[6] wet and dry,
+rough and calm, day and night. "Aye, an' I be suffering from it now.
+Thees yer bellyache what thins me every summer an' wears a fellow out,
+don't come from nothing but tearing about then. I wer al'ays on the
+tear, day an' night, in from sea to meals an' out again 'fore I'd had
+time to bolt down two mouthfuls. Often I wer so tired that Father'd hae
+to call me a dozen times afore I cude wake up, an' then I'd cry, _cry_,
+if I wer ten minutes laate to work--when I had summut to du on land,
+that was. Half the day I wer more asleep than awake, wi' bein' out
+fishing all night. But I didn' let 'em see it. Not I! Rather'n that,
+I'd go up to the closet an' catch off there for five minutes, before
+they shude see I wern't fit to du me work. An' I never had nort o' me
+own for years, for all I done. Whether I earned two pound, or thirty
+shillings, or nothing at all, I never had so much as a penny for
+pocket-money, to call me own. I had to take it all in house--aye! an'
+tips too, when I got 'em. Father, he wern't doing much then, an' ther
+were seven younger'n me. That's where my earnings went. An' me, as did
+the work, was wearing Mother's boots an' Father's jacket."
+
+      [4] Prawning.
+
+      [5] Periwinkle gathering.
+
+      [6] Freights, _i.e._ pleasure parties.
+
+When Tony was indisputably grown up, one half of what he earned went,
+according to custom, to the boat-owner, in this case his father,
+frequently had be thu to pay for repairs and new gear. That went on for
+years after he was married--'hauling an' rowing an' slaving an' pulling
+me guts out wi't!'--until, in fact, the present Mrs Widger insisted on
+his buying boats of his own.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE DEAD NOT WHOLLY SO_]
+
+Our talk shifted to Tony's first wife, who died (and Tony almost died
+too) as the result of the landlord's taking up the drains, and leaving
+them open, in the height of a hot summer. Tony told me about her people
+and her native place, a fishing village along the coast. He showed me
+photographs of her, and a framed, pathetically ugly, imitation cameo
+memorial, which is getting very dirty now. I knew he loved her very
+much. He nearly went out of his mind when she died, leaving him with
+four young children. The untidy little kitchen, with its bright fire,
+its deep shadows and its white clothes hung along the line; Tony's
+drooping figure, bent over the hearth in an old blue guernsey: the
+contrasting redness of his face, and the beam of light from a cracked
+lamp-shade falling across his wet, memory-stuck blue eyes.... The
+kitchen seemed full of the presence of the long-dead woman whom Tony
+was still grieving for in some underpart of his mind. "Iss, her was a
+nice woman," he said, "a gude wife to me; a gude wife: I hadn't no
+complaint to make against she."
+
+The one shabby sentence hit into me all his sorrow, that which remains
+and that which has sunk into time.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The Mrs Widger that is, returned from the Dutch auction with an
+elaborate badly-plated cruet. "Al'ays using up my saxpinces what I has
+to slave for," said Tony.
+
+"G'out! 'Tis jest what us wants."
+
+"You won't never use it."
+
+"We'll hae it out on thy birthday--there! Will that zatisfy thee?"
+
+"Not afore then? I wer born at the end o' the year, an' that's why I
+al'ays gets lef' behind."
+
+"Not a day before thy birthday! What'll yu be saying if I buys sauces
+to put in all they bottles?"
+
+"Cut glass, is it?"
+
+"No! What d'yu think?"
+
+"What a woman 'tis! Gie yer Tony a kiss then."
+
+"G'out yu fule!"
+
+The wise fool took a kiss. We had a second supper and hot grog. We were
+merry. But when I said _Good night_, I saw in Tony's eyes a recognition
+that I had understood (so he felt, I think) some part of what he
+seldom, if ever, brings up now to talk about.
+
+Only a yarn about a man's first wife.... If so, why did I go to bed
+feeling I had been privileged beyond the ordinary? Wives die every day;
+worn out, most of them. There came into my mind's eye with these
+thoughts a picture of the open sea; yet hardly a picture, for I was
+there in the midst of it. On the waves and low-lying clouds, and
+through the murk, was the glimmer of a light which, I felt, would make
+everything plain, did it but increase. For a moment it flickered
+up--and there, over the stormy sea, I saw death as a kindly illusion. I
+do not understand the wherefore of my little vision, nor why it made my
+heart give one curious great thump....
+
+A cats' courtship beneath my window broke it off.
+
+
+6
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "MOONDAISY"_]
+
+Five or six years ago, when I was ill and left Seacombe, as I thought,
+for good, I did not relish selling the _Moondaisy_. I was too fond
+of her. So I gave her to the two men who had asked for the first and
+second refusals of her, and neither of whom possessed a small sailing
+boat. But I reckoned without those superficial beach jealousies which
+overlie the essential solidarity of the fishermen. Neither man used her
+much. Neither man looked after her. She was a bone of contention that
+each feared to gnaw. While the poor little craft lay on the beach, or
+in the gutter above the sea-wall, the mice ate holes into her old sail
+and her gear was distributed half-way over Under Town.
+
+Granfer, however, had in his cottage an old dinghy sail that fits the
+_Moondaisy_. Her yard and boom were in his linhay, the sheet and
+downhaul in Tony's. One oar, the tholepins, and the ballast bags have
+not yet been found. I bent on the sail, spliced the sheet to the boom;
+borrowed tholepins from Uncle Jake,[7] ballast bags and a mackerel line
+with a very rusty hook from Tony, an oar from John--and, at last, put
+to sea.
+
+      [7] Granfer's brother, Tony's uncle.
+
+The wind--westerly, off land--was too puffy for making the sheet fast.
+I held it with one hand and tried to fish with the other. In order not
+to stop the way of the boat and risk losing the lead on the sea-bottom,
+I wore her round to lew'ard, instead of tacking to wind'ard. A squall
+came down, the sail gybed quickly, and the boom slewed over with a
+jerk, just grazing the top of my head. Had that boom been a couple of
+inches lower, or my head an inch or two higher.... I should have been
+prevented from sailing the _Moondaisy_ home, pending recovery from
+a bashed skull. Everything aboard that was loose, myself included,
+scuttled down to lew'ard with a horrid rattle. A malicious little gush
+of clear green water, just flecked with foam, spurted in over the gun'l
+amidships. I wondered whether I could have swum far with a cracked
+skull: the _Moondaisy_'s iron drop-keel would have sunk her, of
+course. Why I was fool enough to wear the boat round so carelessly, I
+don't know.
+
+Anyhow, I wound up the mackerel line; my catch, nil. Such an occurrence
+makes one very respectful towards the fisherman who singlehanded can
+sail his boat and manage five mackerel lines at once--one on the thwart
+to lew'ard and one to wind'ard; a bobber on the mizzen halyard and two
+bobbers on poles projecting from the boat. He must keep his hands on
+five lines, the tiller and the sheet; his eyes on the boat's course,
+the sea, the weather and the luff of the sail. Probably I know rather
+more of the theory of sailing than he does; but, when a squall blackens
+the sea to wind'ard, whilst I am thinking whether to run into the wind
+or ease off the sheet; whilst by doing neither or both, I very nearly
+capsize, or else stop the boat's way and lose my mackerel leads on the
+bottom--he, almost without thinking, does precisely what is needful,
+and another mackerel is hooked long before I should have brought the
+boat up into the wind again.
+
+[Sidenote: _FISHERMEN'S SKILL_]
+
+The greatest charm of sailing lies in this: that it is the art of
+making a boat move by dodging, by taking advantage of, a score of
+possible dangers. Except when running before the wind, it is the
+capsizing-power of the wind which propels the boat. The fisherman is an
+artist none the less because his skill seems partly inborn; because he
+sails his boat airily and carelessly, yet grimly--for life and the
+bread and cheese of it. The 'poor fisherman' for whom appeals to
+charity are made, as if he were a hardworking, chance-fed, picturesque
+but ignorant and helpless creature, is more than a trader, more than a
+skilled labourer in a factory. To a peculiar extent he sells himself as
+well as his skill and his goods. He lives contingently on his own life.
+
+
+7
+
+All that day the wind out in the Channel was blowing fresh from the
+sou'west, as we could see by the blackness of the horizon and the
+saw-edged sea-line beyond the outer headlands. During the afternoon, a
+ground-sea crept into the bay, silently rolling in like an unbidden
+unannounced guest who will not name his business. And when, at the turn
+of the tide, the breeze in-shore also backed to the sou'west, a busy
+lop was superposed on the long heaving swell.[8] About half-past seven,
+the Widgers were gathered together near their boats.
+
+      [8] A _lop_ is a short choppy sea raised by the immediate action
+      of a breeze. A _swell_ consists of the long heaving waves which
+      follow, and sometimes precede, a storm. The diverse action of
+      different sorts of waves on a shingle beach is interesting. Short
+      seas (_i.e._ short from crest to crest), even when they are very
+      high, have not nearly the force or _run_ of a long, though much
+      lower ground-swell; that is they neither run so far up the beach
+      nor so greatly endanger the boats. All kinds of waves possess
+      more run at spring than at neap tides. A lop on a swell at spring
+      tide is therefore the most troublesome of all to the fishermen.
+
+"What time be it high tide?" asked Granfer. "'Bout ten, en' it?"
+
+"Had us better haul the boats up over?" said Tony. "Tides be dead, en't
+they?"
+
+"No-o-o," replied Uncle Jake. "They 'en making."
+
+"'Tis goin' to blow, I tell 'ee," said Granfer. "See how brassy the
+sun's going down. Swell coming in too. Boats up be boats safe."
+
+"Hould yer bloody row," said John. "What be talking 'bout? Plenty o'
+time to haul up if the sea makes."
+
+"All very well for yu," Tony protested, "living right up to Saltmeadow.
+If the sea urns up to the boats in the night yu won't be down to lend a
+hand, no, not wi' yer own boats. 'Tis us as lives to the beach what has
+to strain ourselves to bits hauling your boats up over so well as our
+own."
+
+"Let 'em bide, then!"
+
+"Looks dirty, I say," said Granfer. "Might jest so well haul up as bide
+here talking about it. _I_ shan't sleep till I knows the boats be all
+right."
+
+"Thee't better lie awake then. An't got no patience wi' making such a
+buzz afore you wants tu." With that, John shouldered his coat and
+strode homewards.
+
+[Sidenote: _JOHN WIDGER_]
+
+The rest of us pulled the boats up, John's included, till their stems
+touched the sea-wall, and we placed the two sailing boats, John's and
+Tony's, close beside the steps, handy for hauling up over if need
+should be.
+
+Tony and Granfer went in house. Uncle Jake watched them go with an
+ironical smile on his wrinkled old face. "Don't like the looks o' this
+yer lop on a ground-swell," he said. "There! Did 'ee see how thic sea
+licked the baych? Let one o' they lift yer boat.... My zenses! 'Tis all
+up wi' it, an' I should pick it up in bits, up 'long, for
+firewood.--Well, John's gone home along...."
+
+John is the youngest, handsomest and most powerfully built of the
+Widgers; the most independent, most brutal-tongued and most logical,
+though not, I fancy, the most perceptive. The inborn toughness, the
+family tendency to health and strength, which made fine men of the
+elder Widgers in spite of their youthful exposure and privations, has,
+in the case of John who underwent fewer hardships, resulted in the
+development, unimpeded, of a wonderful physique. "Never heard o' John
+being tired," says Uncle Jake.
+
+Premature toil did not bend him; what he is the others had it in them
+to be, and by their labour helped to make him. Because his spirit has
+never been so buffeted, let alone broken, by hard times, he is also the
+most self-reliant. And like the majority of lucky men, he takes fate's
+forbearance as his due and adds it to his own credit. Fair-haired,
+blue-eyed, his clean-shaven face deeply and clearly coloured; a
+combination of the Saxon bulldog type with the seafaring man's
+alertness; his heavy yet lissome frame admirably half-revealed by the
+simplicity of navy-blue guernsey and trousers,--it is one of the sights
+of Seacombe to see him walk the length of the Front with his two small
+boys. He lacks, however, the gift of expressing himself, except when he
+is angry--and then in a torrent of thrashing words. He communicates his
+good-will by smiling all over his face with a tinge of mockery in his
+eyes and the bend of his long neck; whether mockery at oneself or at
+things in general is not evident. (It is mainly, I think, by smiling at
+one another that we remain the very good friends we are.) In any
+discussion, his "Do as yu'm minded then!" is his signal for making
+others do as _he_ is minded. The advantages possessed by him--health,
+strength, clear-headedness, and good looks--he knows how to use, and
+that without scruple. He is never hustled by man or circumstance;
+seldom gives himself away; and seldom acknowledges an obligation. What
+one might reasonably expect him to do in return for help or even
+payment, he carelessly, deliberately, leaves undone, and performs
+instead some particularly nice action when it is least of all
+anticipated. His opinion is respected less because it is known, than
+because it isn't known, and by playing in the outer world with a crack
+football team he adds to his prestige here. "What du John say?" is
+often asked when it doesn't matter even what John thinks. Without
+gratitude for it, unconsciously perhaps, he exacts from others a sort
+of homage, which is certainly not rendered without protest. "There's
+more'n one real lady as John could ha' married if he'd a-been liked," I
+heard Granfer say over his beer one day. "The way they used to get he
+to take 'em out bathing in a boat.... Put 'en under the starn-sheets, I
+s'pose--he-he-he-he-he! But they real ladies du tire o' gen'lemen
+sometimes. Some on 'em had rather have a strong fellow like John. He
+married out o' the likes o' us, as 'twas. Her what he married used to
+eat wi' the gen'leman's family what her come'd yer with; sort o'
+companion-nurse her was."
+
+[Sidenote: _A NICE DISTINCTION_]
+
+Once, when the _Moondaisy_ was mine, John charged me sixpence for
+putting me ashore from the steamer, after he had been earning money
+with my boat that very same day. There is no meanness in his face, and
+I wondered who had taught him so to distinguish between the borrowing
+of a private boat and the use of a craft that was on the beach for
+hire--a perfectly sound distinction. Probably it was some
+commercial-minded lodger or beach-chatterer, from whom he picked up the
+opinion that nowadays, to get on, you must run with the hare and hunt
+with the hounds--a precept which he quotes with cynical gusto but
+carries out only so far as suits his feelings. He aims at being
+businesslike, but the businesslike side of his character is the more
+superficial. Pride will not allow him to boggle over bargains. "Take
+it, or leave it," is his way. Most up-to-date in what he does do, he is
+no pioneer, and follows a lead grudgingly when innovations are in
+question. Most progressive outwardly, he is the most conservative at
+heart. A reader of his daily paper, he speaks the broadest Devon of
+them all; scrupulously groomed after the modern way, and a smoker of
+cigarettes (he was laughed out of a pipe I've heard say), he still
+wears the old-fashioned seaman's high-heeled shoes. Tobacco is his
+obvious, his humane, weakness. What his other weaknesses are, I don't
+know. He strikes one as master of his fate, never yet wrecked, nor
+contemplating it. Did such a misfortune occur ... who knows what would
+happen? He is now, in his youth, so full of strength.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+About ten o'clock, Tony, who was snoozing in the courting chair (Mrs
+Widger had gone on to bed) woke up with a "How about they boats?" I
+went out to look.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE HIGH TIDE WAVES_]
+
+The sea was covered with that pallid darkness which comes over it when
+the moon is hidden behind low rain-clouds. Out of the darkness, the
+waves seemed to spring suddenly, without warning at one's very feet.
+Every now and then, when a swell and a lop came in together, their
+combined steady force and quick energy swept right up the beach,
+rattling the pebbles round the sterns of the boats. For the better part
+of an hour I waited. Then, after a sea had thrown some shingle right
+into a boat, I called Tony.
+
+"'Tis past high water, en' it?" he said sleepily.
+
+"Thee't better come out an' see for thyself!"
+
+He dragged himself up and out. "'Tis al'ys like thees yer wi' the likes
+o' us. 'Tis a life o'it!"
+
+"Aye," he said, "the say's goin' down now sure 'nuff. Better git in
+house again. Raining is it?"
+
+"God! Look out!"
+
+A sea lifted Tony's and John's sailing boats; was sweeping them down
+the beach. We rushed, one to each boat, and hung on. Another sea swept
+the pebbles from under our feet--it felt as if the solid earth were
+giving way.
+
+"Those was the high tide waves," said Tony. "If us hadn' a-come out
+both they boats 'ould ha' been losted. Yu've a-saved John his--all by
+chance. Aye! that's like 'tis wi' us, I tell thee. Yu never knows.--Be
+'ee going to bed now?"
+
+I stayed out a little while longer: the loss of boats means so much to
+men whose only capital they are. Just after Tony had gone in, the
+clouds parted and the moonlight burst with a sudden glory over the sea.
+In the moonglade, which reached from my feet to the far horizon, the
+waters heaved and curled, most silvery, as if they were alive. That was
+the wistful gentle sea from which, but a moment or two before, we had
+wrested back our property--that sea of little strivings within a large
+peace. I thought at the time that there was surely a God, and that as
+surely He was there. For which reason, I was glad, when I came in
+house, that Tony had gone on to bed.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+This morning John asked me: "Whu's been moving my boat?"
+
+"The sea, last night."
+
+"Oh...."
+
+"I'm going to make a salvage claim on your insurance company."
+
+"H'm?"
+
+"Happened to be out here and hung on, or else she'd have been swept
+down the beach."
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"That's it--while yu were snug."
+
+"Have 'ee got a cigarette on yu?--Match?--Thank yu."
+
+
+8
+
+[Sidenote: _MRS PINN_]
+
+When I came into the kitchen early last evening, there was an old woman
+sitting bolt upright in the courting chair. At least, I came to the
+conclusion that she really was old after a moment or two's
+watchfulness. Her flowered hat, her shape--though a little angular and
+stiff,--her gestures and her bright lively damson-coloured eyes were
+all youthful enough. But one could see that her inquiet hands, which
+were folded on her lap, had been worn by many a washing-day. Her skin,
+though wrinkled, was taut over the outstanding facial bones, as if the
+wrinkles might have opened out and have equalized the strain, had age
+not hardened them to brown cracks--and the tan of her complexion had
+old age's lack of clearness. As so often happens when the teeth remain
+good in spite of receding gums, her mouth was tightly stretched
+semicircular-wise around them, and the lips had become a long, very
+long, expressionless line, shaded into prominence, as in a drawing, by
+a multitude of lines up and down, from chin and nose;--a Simian jaw,
+remindful of the Descent of Man. All the accumulated hand-to-mouth
+wisdom of generations of peasantry seemed to lurk behind the old
+woman's quick eyes; to be defying one.
+
+I was introduced to her--Mrs Pinn, Mrs Widger's mother. She was bound
+to shake my proffered hand; she did it, half rising, with a comic
+mixture of respect and defiance; then sat back in the courting chair as
+if to intimate, 'I knows how to keep meself to meself, I du!'
+
+I went outdoors, leaving them to talk; helped Tony haul up the beach
+his lumpy fourteen-foot sailing boat, the _Cock Robin_, and returned
+with him to supper.
+
+"Hullo, Gran Pinn!" he roared. "Yu here! Didn' know I'd got a new mate
+for hauling up, did 'ee? Have her got 'ee yer drop o' stout eet? Us
+two'll take 'ee home if yu drinks tu much."
+
+"Oh yu...." screeched Mrs Pinn with facetious rage followed by a swift
+collapse into company manners again.
+
+"Thees yer be my mother-in-law, sir."
+
+"Mr Whats-his-name knaws that, an' I knaws yu got he staying with
+'ee--there!"
+
+"Well then, gie us some supper then."
+
+Mrs Pinn--'twas to be felt in the air--had been hearing all about me.
+Beside her glass of stout and ale, she looked a little less prim and
+defiant. But she was still on company manners. She sat delicately, on
+the extreme edge of a chair, by the side of, not facing, her plate of
+bread, cheese and pickles; approached them; mopped up, so to speak, a
+mouthful and a gulp; then receded into mere nodding propinquity. Her
+supper was a series of moppings-up. Me she kept much in her eye, and to
+my remarks ejaculated "Aw, my dear soul!" or "Did yu ever?" I said with
+feeble wit, in order to grease the conversation, that stout and bitter,
+being called _mother-in-law_, was just the thing for Mrs Pinn.
+
+"Aw, my dear life!" she exclaimed, taking a mouthy sip. "What chake to
+be sure!"
+
+It was Mrs Widger who, with a glint of amusement in her eyes, came
+tactfully to my rescue.
+
+[Sidenote: _MY NIGHTCAP_]
+
+About ten o'clock, Mrs Widger took down two glasses and the sugar
+basin, and set the conical broad-bottomed kettle further over the fire.
+Mrs Pinn glanced at the top shelf of the dresser where my whiskey
+bottle stands. Her bright eyes kept on returning to that spot. I should
+have liked to ask Mrs Pinn to take a glass, but knew I could not afford
+to let it be noised abroad that 'there's a young gen'leman to Tony
+Widger's very free with his whiskey.' I dared not make a precedent I
+should have to break; the breaking of which would give more
+disappointment than its non-creation. Equally well, I knew that it was
+no use going to bed without something to make me sleep.... I told Tony
+I would go out and look at the weather.
+
+"Yu must 'scuse me 'companying of 'ee 'cause I got me butes off. My
+veet _du_ ache!"
+
+On my return, the bright eyes were still travelling to and fro, from
+bottle to glasses. I yawned, Tony yawned noisily, Mrs Widger
+capaciously. Mrs Pinn was herself infected. "'Tis time I was home....
+Oh, Lor'!" she yawned.
+
+She went; and when I asked Tony to share my customary nightcap, it was
+with ill-hidden glee that he replied as usual: "Had us better tu?"
+
+His native politeness prevented him from saying anything, however, and
+Mrs Widger showed not a sign of having observed the little victory, so
+meanly necessary, so galling in every stage to the victor.
+
+Tony declares that he will really and truly start mackerel hooking
+to-morrow morning--"if 'tis vitty," and "if the drifters an't catched
+nort," and "if 'tis wuth it," and "if he du."
+
+
+9
+
+A creaking and shaking in the timbers of the old house, very early this
+morning, must have half awakened me; then there was a muffled rap on my
+door. "Be 'ee goin' to git up?"
+
+"Yes.... 'Course.... What time is it?"
+
+The only answer was a _pad-pad-pad_ down the stairs. I looked out over
+the bedclothes. The window, a grey patch barred with darker grey, was
+like a dim chilly ghost gazing at me from the opposite wall. By the
+saltiness of the damp air which blew across the room and by the grind
+of the shingle outside, I could tell that the wind was off sea. The sea
+itself was almost invisible--a swaying mistiness through which the
+white-horses rose and peeped at one, as if to say, "Come and share our
+frolic. Come and ride us."
+
+[Sidenote: _MACKEREL LINES_]
+
+Tony, sleepy and sheepish in the eyes, was pattering about the kitchen
+in his stockings (odd ones), his pants and his light check shirt. The
+fire was contrary. We scraped out ashes; poked in more wood and paper.
+Soon a gush of comfortable steam made the lid of the kettle dance. The
+big blue tin teapot was washed out, filled and set on the hob. The
+cupboards and front room were searched for cake. Tony went upstairs
+with a cup o' tay for the ol' doman and came down with a roll of
+biscuits. (Mrs Widger takes the biscuits to bed with her as maiden
+ladies take the plate basket, and for much the same reason.)
+
+Faint light was showing through the north window of the kitchen. "Coom
+on!" said Tony. "Time we was to sea." He refilled the kettle, hunted
+out an old pair of trousers, rammed himself into a faded guernsey and
+picked up three mackerel lines[9] from the dresser. He took some salted
+lasks from the brine-pot, blew out the lamp--and forth we went. After
+collecting together mast, sails and oars from where they were lying,
+strewn haphazard on the beach, we pushed and pulled the _Cock Robin_
+down to the water's edge, and filled up the ballast-bags with our
+hands, like irritable, hasty children playing at shingle-pies. "A li'l
+bit farther down. Look out! Jump in. Get hold the oars," commanded
+Tony. With a cussword or two (the oars had a horrid disposition to jump
+the thole-pins) we shoved and rowed off, shipping not more than a
+couple of buckets of water over the stern.
+
+      [9] The fishermen's line is very different from the tackle
+      makers' arrangements. It varies a little locally. At Seacombe,
+      the upper part consists of 2-3 fathoms of stoutish conger line,
+      to take the friction over the gunwale, and 5-6 fathoms of finer
+      line, to the end of which a conical 'sugarloaf' lead is attached
+      by a clove hitch, the short end being laid up around the standing
+      part for an inch or so and then finished off with the strong,
+      neat difficue (corruption of _difficult_?) knot. A swivel, or
+      better still simply an eyelet cut from an old boot, runs free,
+      just above the lead, between the clove hitch and difficue knot.
+      To the eyelet is attached the 'sid'--_i.e._, two or three fathoms
+      of fine snooding;--to the sid a length of gut on which half an
+      inch ofclay pipe-stem is threaded, and to the gut a rather large
+      hook. The bait is a 'lask,' or long three-cornered strip of skin,
+      cut from the tail of a mackerel. The older fishermen prefer a
+      round lead, cast in the egg-shell of a gull, because it runs
+      sweeter through the water, but with this form the fish's bite is
+      difficult to feel on account of the jerk having to be transmitted
+      through the heavy bulky piece of lead.
+
+      The lines are trailed astern of the boat as it sails up and down,
+      where the mackerel are believed to be. When well on the feed they
+      will bite, even at the pipe clay and bare hook, faster than they
+      can be hauled inboard. River anglers and even some sea fishers
+      are disposed to deny the amount of skill, alertness and knowledge
+      which go to catching the greatest possible number of fish while
+      they are up. It is often said that the mackerel allows itself to
+      be caught as easily by a beginner as by an old hand. One or two
+      mackerel may: mackerel don't. In hooking, as opposed to fishing
+      fine with a rod, the sporting element is supplied by fish, not
+      _a_ fish; by numbers in a given time, not bend and break. The
+      tackle brought to the sea by the superior angler, who thinks he
+      knows more than those who have hooked mackerel for generations,
+      is a wonder, delight, and irritation to professional fishermen:
+      it is constructed in such robust ignorance of the habits, and
+      manner of biting, of mackerel, and it ignores so obstinately the
+      conditions of the sport. Likewise the fish ignore _it_.
+
+[Sidenote: _DAWN AT SEA_]
+
+Tony scrambled aboard over the starboard bow, his trousers and boots
+dripping. "'Tis al'ays like that, putting off from thees yer damn'd ol'
+baych. No won'er us gits the rhuematics." He hung the rudder, loosed
+the mizzen. I stepped the mast, hoisted the jib and lug, and made fast
+halyards and sheets. Our undignified bobbing, our impatient wallowing
+on the water stopped short. The wind's life entered into the craft. She
+bowed graciously to the waves. With a motion compounded of air and
+water, wings and a heaving, as if she were airily suspended over the
+sea, the _Cock Robin_ settled to her course. Spray skatted gleefully
+over her bows and the wavelets made a gurgling music along the
+clinker-built strakes of her.
+
+Tony put out the lines: tangled two of them, got in a tear, as he calls
+it, snapped the sid, bit the rusty hook off, spat out a shred of old
+bait, brought the boat's head too far into the wind, cursed the
+flapping sail and cursed the tiller, grubbed in his pockets for a new
+hook, and made tiny knots with clumsy great fingers and his teeth.
+"An't never got no gear like I used tu," he complained, and then,
+standing upright, with the tiller between his legs and a line in each
+outstretched hand, he unbuttoned his face and broke into the merriest
+of smiles. "What du 'ee think o' Tony then, getting in a tear fust
+start out? Do 'ee think he's maazed--or obsolete? But we'll catch 'em
+if they'm yer. Yu ought to go 'long wi' Uncle Jake. He'd tell 'ee
+summut--and the fish tu if they wasn't biting proper!"
+
+By the time the lines were out, the dun sou'westerly clouds all around
+had raised themselves like a vast down-hanging fringe, a tremendous
+curtain, ragged with inconceivable delicacy at the foot, between which,
+and the water-line, the peep o' day stared blankly. The whitish light,
+which made the sea look deathly cold, was changed to a silvery sheen
+where the hidden cliffs stood. From immaterial shadows, looming over
+the surf-line, the cliffs themselves brightened to an insubstantial
+fabric, an airy vision, ruddily flushed; till, finally, ever becoming
+more earthy, they upreared themselves, high-ribbed and red, bush-crowned
+and splashed with green--our familiar, friendly cliffs, for each and
+every part of whom we have a name. The sun slid out from a parting of
+clouds in the east, warming the dour waves into playfulness.
+
+    'Twas all a wonder and a wild delight.
+
+As I looked at Tony, while he glanced around with eyes that were at
+once curiously alert and dreamy, I saw that, in spite of use and habit,
+in spite of his taking no particular notice of what the sea and sky
+were like, except so far as they affected the sailing of the boat,--the
+dawn was creeping into him. Many such dawns have crept into him. They
+are a part of himself.
+
+[Sidenote: _A TENDERHEART BY NATURE_]
+
+"Look to your lew'ard line!" he cried, "they'm up for it!"
+
+He hauled a mackerel aboard, and, catching hold of the shank of the
+hook, flicked the fish into the bottom of the boat with one and the
+same motion that flung the sid overboard again; and after it the lead.
+Wedging the mackerel's head between his knees, he bent its body to a
+curve, scraped off the scales near its tail, and cut a fresh lask from
+the living fish. He is a tenderheart by nature, but now: "That'll hae
+'em!" he crowed.
+
+The mackerel bit hotly at our new baits.[10] Before the lines were
+properly out, in they had to come again. Flop-flop went the fish on the
+bottom-boards as we jerked them carelessly off the hooks. Every moment
+or two one of them would dance up and flip its tail wildly; beat on the
+bottom-boards a tattoo which spattered us with scales; then sink back
+among the glistening mass that was fast losing its beauty of colour,
+its opalescent pinks and steely blues, even as it died and stiffened.
+
+      [10] Undoubtedly, if the mackerel are only half on the feed, a
+      fresh lask is better than any other bait, better than an equally
+      brilliant salted lask. It is the shine of the bait at which the
+      fish bite, as at a spinner, but probably the fresh lask leaves
+      behind it in the water an odour or flavour of mackerel oil which
+      keeps the shoal together and makes them follow the boat.
+
+Suddenly the fish stopped biting, perhaps because the risen sun was
+shining down into the water. The wind dropped without warning, as
+southerly winds will do in the early morning, if they don't come on to
+blow a good deal harder. The _Cock Robin_ wallowed again on the water.
+"We'm done!" said Tony. "Let's get in out o'it in time for the early
+market. There ain't no other boats out. Thees yer ought to fetch
+'leven-pence the dizzen. We've made thees day gude in case nort else
+don't turn up."
+
+While I rowed ashore, he struck sail, and threw the ballast overboard.
+Most pleasantly does that shingle ballast plop-rattle into the water
+when there is a catch of fish aboard. We ran in high upon a sea.
+Willing hands hauled the _Cock Robin_ up the beach: we had fish to
+give away for help. The mackerel made elevenpence a dozen to Jemima
+Caley, the old squat fishwoman who wears a decayed sailor hat with a
+sprig of heather in it. "Yu don' mean to say yu've a-catched all they
+lovely fish!" she said with a rheumy twinkle, in the hope of getting
+them for tenpence.
+
+"'Levenpence a dozen, Jemima!"
+
+"Aw well then, yu must let I pay 'ee when I sold 'em. An't got it now.
+Could ha' gived 'ee tenpence down."
+
+With a mackerel stuck by the gills on the tip of each finger, I came in
+house. The children were being got ready for school. When I returned
+downstairs with some of the fishiness washed off, Mrs Widger was
+distributing the school bank-cards and Monday morning pennies. (By the
+time the children leave school, they will have saved thus, penny by
+penny, enough to provide them with a new rig-out for service--or Sunday
+wear.) There was a frizzling in the topsy-turvy little kitchen.
+
+[Sidenote: _A DARING RASCAL_]
+
+"Mam! Vish!"
+
+"Mam! I wants some vish. Mam 'Idger...."
+
+"Yu shall hae some fish another time."
+
+"No-o-o!"
+
+"Go on!"
+
+"Well, jam zide plaate then."
+
+Jimmy's finger was in the jampot.
+
+"Yu daring rascal!" shrieks Mam Widger. "Get 'long to school with 'ee!
+Yu'll be late an' I shall hae the 'spector round. Get 'long--and see
+what I'll hae for 'ee when yu comes back."
+
+"Coo'h! Bulls' eyes! Ay, mam? Good bye, Dad. Good bye, Mam. Bye, Mister
+Ronals. Gimme a penny will 'ee?"
+
+"God damn the child--that ever I should say it--get 'long! _I'll_ hae a
+bull's eye for 'ee. Now go on."
+
+A tramp of feet went out through the passage.
+
+Mrs Widger shovelled the crisp mackerel from the frying-pan into our
+plates. Tony soused his with vinegar from an old whiskey bottle. We
+lingered over our tea till he said: "Must go out an' clean they ther
+boats--the popples what they damn visitors' children chucks in for to
+amuse theirselves, not troubling to think us got to pick every one on
+'em out be hand, an' looking daggers at 'ee when you trys to tell 'em
+o'it so polite as yu can. Ay, me--our work be never done."
+
+"No more ain't mine!" snapped Mrs Widger, moving off to her washtub.
+
+
+10
+
+For the last two or three days there has been a large flat brown-paper
+parcel standing against the wall on the far side of my bed. I have
+wondered what it was.
+
+This evening, after we had all finished tea, while Tony was puffing
+gingerly at a cigarette (he is nothing of a smoker) with his chair
+tilted back and a stockinged foot in Mrs Widger's lap, Jimmy said, as
+Jimmy usually says: "Gie us another caake, Mam 'Idger." He laid a very
+grubby hand on the cakelets.
+
+"Yu li'l devil!" shouted his mother. "Take yer hands off or I'll gie
+'ee such a one.... Yu'd eat an eat till yu busted, I believe; an yu'm
+that cawdy [finical] over what yu has gie'd 'ee...."
+
+Tony took up the poker and made a feint at Jimmy, who jumped into the
+corner laughing loudly. With an amazing contrast in tone, Mrs Widger
+said quietly: "Wait a minute an' see what I got to show 'ee, if yu'm
+gude."
+
+[Sidenote: _ROSIE'S PHOTOGRAPH_]
+
+She went upstairs with that peculiar tread of hers--as if the feet were
+very tired but the rest of the body invincibly energetic,--and returned
+with the flat parcel. She undid the string, the children watching with
+greedy curiosity. She placed on the best-lighted chair an enlargement
+of a baby's photograph, in a cheap frame, all complete. "There!" she
+said.
+
+"What is ut?" asked Tony. "Why, 'tis li'l Rosie!"
+
+"Wer did 'ee get 'en?" he continued more softly. "Yu an't had 'en
+give'd 'ee?"
+
+"Give'd me? No! Thic cheap-jack.... But 'tisn' bad, is it?"
+
+"What cheap-jack?"
+
+"Why, thic man to the market-house--wer I got the cruet."
+
+"O-oh! I didn' never see he.... What did 'ee pay 'en for thic then?"
+
+"Never yu mind. 'Twasn't none o' yours what I paid. What do 'ee think
+o'it?"
+
+"'Tisn' bad--very nice," remarked Tony, bending before the picture,
+examining it in all lights. "Iss; 'tisn' bad by no means. Come yer,
+Jimmy an' Tommy. Do 'ee know who that ther is?"
+
+"Rosie!" whispered Jimmy.
+
+"What was took up to cementry," added Tommy in a brighter voice.
+
+"Iss, 'tis our li'l Rosie to the life (mustn' touch), jest like her
+was."
+
+A moment's tension; then, "A surprise for 'ee, en' it?" Mrs Widger
+enquired.
+
+"My ol' geyser!"
+
+The children's riot began again. "Our Rosie...." they were saying. Mam
+'Idger, slipping out of Tony's grasp, carried the picture off to the
+front room. She was sometime gone.
+
+Wordsworth's _We are Seven_ came into my mind:
+
+    "But they are dead; those two are dead!
+    Their spirits are in heaven!"
+      'Twas throwing words away; for still
+      The little maid would have her will,
+    And said, "Nay, we are seven!"
+
+I knew, of course, intellectually, that the poem records more than a
+child's mere fancy; but never before have I felt its truth, have I been
+caught up, so to speak, into the atmosphere of the wise, simple souls
+who are able to rob death of the worst of its sting by refusing to let
+the dead die altogether, even on earth. Rosie is dead and buried. I
+perceive also--I perceived, while Tony and the children stood round
+that picture--that Rosie is still here, in this house, hallowing it a
+little. The one statement is as much a fact as the other; but how much
+more delicately intangible, and perhaps how much truer, the second.
+
+
+11
+
+[Sidenote: _ROSIE'S DEATH_]
+
+While we waited for Tony to come in to supper, Mrs Widger told me about
+Rosie's death. "It must be awful," she said, "to lose a child fo them
+as an't got nor more. I know how I felt it when Rosie was took. Nothing
+would please me for months after but to go up to the cementry, to her
+little grave. 'Most every evening I walked up after tea--didn' feel as
+if I could go to bed an' sleep wi'out. Tony had to fend for hisself if
+he wanted his supper early. Ther wasn't no reason, but it did ease me,
+like, to go up there, an' it heartened me a little for next day's work.
+'Twas a sort o' habit, p'raps. What broke me of it was my bad illness.
+[When the twins, 'what nobody didn' know nort about,' were born.] At
+first, I used to think o' Rosie, when I were lyin' alone upstairs, most
+'specially at night time if Tony wer out to sea an' it come'd on to
+blow a bit. I used to think, if ort happened to Tony.... Our room to
+the top o' the house, sways when it do blow. I don't trouble me head
+about Tony when he's to sea ordinary times--expects 'en when I sees
+'en--but then I wer weak, like, an' full o' fancies. An' after I got
+about again I wer much too weak to go to cementry: I used to faint
+every time I come'd downstairs. Howsbe-ever, I did come down again, an'
+Tony used to go out and get me quinine wine and three-and-sixpenny port
+an' all sorts o' messes, to put me on me legs wi'out fainting. 'Twas
+thic illness as broke me o' going up to Rosie's grave."
+
+"You walk up now on Sunday evenings...." I hazarded, recollecting that
+then the children run wild for a couple of hours and come in tired and
+dirty to cry for their mam.
+
+"Yes...." said Mrs Widger.
+
+I saw that I had trespassed into one of the little solitary tracts of
+her life.
+
+"One day," she continued, backing the conversation with an imperfectly
+hidden effort, "when Dr Bayliss come to see me, Tony was asleep in the
+next bed, snoring under the clothes after a night to sea. Dr Bayliss
+didn' say nort, 'cept he said: 'Your husband's a fisherman, isn't he,
+Mrs Widger?' But I saw his shoulders a-shaking as he went out the door,
+an' that evening he sent me a bottle o' port wine out o' his own
+cellar, an' it did me a power o' gude. Tony--he was that ashamed o'
+hisself, though I told 'en 'twasn't nothing for a doctor to see
+'en...."
+
+[Sidenote: _FRANKNESS AND SMUT_]
+
+At that moment Tony returned. He really was ashamed of the doctor
+finding him in bed, whether as a breach of manners or of propriety was
+not plain. Possibly the latter. He has an acute sense of decency,
+though its rules and regulations are not the same as those of the
+people he calls gentry. Our conversation here would hardly suit a
+drawing-room. Tony, if he comes in wet, thinks nothing of stripping
+down to his shirt. But, curiously enough, one of his chief complaints
+about the people who hire boats, is their occasionally unclean
+conversation. "The likes o' us 'ould never think of saying what they
+du. Me, I didn' know nort about half the things they say till I wer
+grow'd up an' learnt it from listening to the likes o' they. Yu'd
+hear bad language wi' us an' plain speaking, but never what some o'
+they talks about when they got no one to hear 'em 'cept us they hires,
+an' they thinks us don't matter." Tony is right, I believe. Most of
+the impropriety I used to hear at school, university, and in the
+smoking room, though often little but a reaction against silly
+conventions, a tilt against whited sepulchres,--was well-named _smut_.
+It was furtive, a distortion of life's facts and inimical therefore to
+life. Impropriety here, on the other hand, is a recognition of life's
+facts, an expression of life, a playful ebullition.
+
+Tony, when he came in, enquired of Mam 'Idger what she had done with
+the picture. "Did Rosie die in the summer?" I asked, remembering how
+the children will run out to the milkman with a dirty can unless a
+sharp eye is kept upon them, and how also the larder is fixed up over
+the main drain.
+
+"Her died late in the autumn with convulsions from teething," Mrs
+Widger replied. "An' her didn't ought to ha' died then but for Dr
+Brown. When her was took ill, proper bad, I sent one of the maidens for
+Dr Bayliss, but he was out to the country for they didn' know how long.
+So off I sends the maid to Dr Brown, an' he sends back a message as he
+cuden' attend Dr Bayliss's patients wi'out Dr Bayliss asked him.
+Certainly 'twas late; but my blood jest boiled, an' I took Rosie into
+Grannie's an' goes up myself. Rosie didn' belong to no doctor. Her'd
+never had one. Howsbe-ever, Dr Brown says to me the same as he'd told
+the maid, that he cuden' come. An' then he says, 'My good woman, I
+_won't_ come!' Jest like that! My flare was up; I wer jest about to let
+fly my mind at 'en--an' I remembered Rosie lying in convulsions to
+Grannie's, an' flew out o' his house like a mad thing. Rosie wer all
+but dead. Her was gone when Dr Bayliss come'd next morning."
+
+"Aye!" added Tony. "That wer it. Some doctors be kind, an' some don't
+trouble nort about the likes o' us when they got visitors to run a'ter.
+I don' say they treats the likes o' us worse'n other people; I don'
+know: oftentimes they'm so kind as can be; but when they don't behave
+like they ought to, other people has the means to make 'em sorry for
+it, an' us an't. They knows that. Us can't do nort an' that's the way
+o'it. Rosie didn' never ought to ha' died."
+
+"No-o-o!" said Mrs Widger.
+
+One can see the tigress in most women, in every mother, if one waits
+long enough. I saw it in Mrs Widger then. If she ever has the whip-hand
+of Dr Brown....
+
+
+12
+
+This mackerel hooking, which is a two-man job though Tony could and
+would do it by himself were I not here, has most fortunately raised me
+out of the position of a mere lodger, a household excrescence,
+tolerated only for the sake of certain shillings a week. It has
+provided me with a niche of my own, which I occupy--at sea the mate on
+a mackerel hooker, on shore a loafer 'ready to lend a hand,' and in the
+house a sort of male Cinderella. It is far pleasanter, I find, to be a
+small wheel in the machine than to remain seated on a mound of pounds,
+shillings and pence--beflunkeyed, as if in a soulless hotel!
+
+[Sidenote: _THE EARLY CUP O' TAY_]
+
+Tony cannot fill his spare time by reading: it makes his long-sighted
+eyes smart. On account of that, and of nights at sea, with rest taken
+when and where possible, he has developed an amazing talent for
+'putting it away'; that is, for sleeping. He can turn out perfectly
+well at any hour, if need be, but at ordinary times he is most content
+to follow somebody else's first. I on my part, sleeping indifferently
+well, wake usually before dawn, and greatly dislike waiting for an
+early cup o' tay.
+
+About half-past four I jump out of bed, creep downstairs and chop wood.
+That warms me. Then with a barbaric glee, I scrape out the ashes,
+sending clouds of dust over the guernseys and boots that have been set
+near the fire to dry. No matter; being light and fire-dry, it will
+brush off the one and shake out of the other. People who never light
+fires at dawn can have no idea of the exhilaration to be obtained from
+a well-laid, crackling, flaming fire.
+
+Tony appears at the door, half-dressed, yawning and stretching his arms
+on high. "Yu an't been an' made tay, have 'ee?" he says with delighted
+certainty. The cups are filled. He takes up Mam 'Idger's cup and
+returns with the paper roll of 'Family Biscuits.' We forage for
+tit-bits, feed standing, yawn again, and go out to 'see what to make
+o'it.'
+
+Unless the sea is broken by the wind, there is about it just before
+dawn a peculiar creeping clamminess. It seems but half awake, like
+ourselves. It has no welcome for us. "Can't you wait," it seems to say,
+"till I begin to sparkle?"
+
+Tony looks out over. "Had us better tu?" he asks with a shiver.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Shove her down then. There's macker out there!"
+
+By the time the sun is rising (it never rises twice the same) south of
+the easternmost headland, Tony has worked himself into a tear over
+self-tangling lines, and has been laughed out of it again. We are
+perhaps a mile or two out, and if the mackerel are biting well, we are
+hauling them in, swiftly, silently, grimly; banging them off the hook;
+going _Tsch!_ if they fall back into the sea; cutting baits from fish
+not dead. If, however, they are not on the feed, we sing blatant or
+romantic or sentimental songs (it is all one out there), and laugh with
+a hearty sea-loudness. And if the mackerel will not bite at all we
+invent a score of reasons and blame a dozen people and things. But
+there we are--ourselves, the sea, and the heavenly dawn--the sea
+heaving up to us, and ourselves ever heaving higher, up and over the
+lop. It exalts us with it. We hardly need to talk. A straight look in
+the face, a smile.... We are in the more immediate presence of one
+another. Did we lie to each other with our tongues, the greater part of
+our communications would yet be truth.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE PRICE OF FISH_]
+
+We sail or row home, turn the mackerel out on the beach, count them
+back into the box, wash the blood off them, and stoop low, turning them
+over and over, whilst we haggle for our price. The other day, with the
+exuberance of the sea still upon me, I slapped old Jemima Caley's rusty
+shoulder and lo! she rose her price one penny.
+
+"Damme!" she said, "I'll gie 'ee ninepence a dozen if I has to go wi'
+out me dinner for't! They _be_ fine fish."
+
+"_Sweet_ fish, Jemima!"
+
+"Lor' bless 'ee, yes!"
+
+But she hawked them at twopence-halfpenny or threepence a pair
+according to the customer. And now, her wry sly smile, peeping from
+underneath her battered hat-brim, meets me at every back-street corner.
+
+Soap and water, the buzz of the children, their mother's loud voice,
+and mackerel for breakfast.... It is all quite prosaic and perfectly
+commonplace, it is far from idyllic; yet it would need the touch of a
+poet to bring out the wonder, the mystery, of it all: to light up the
+door of the soul-house through which we pass to and fro, scarce
+knowing.
+
+Tony comes in early to dinner after a morning's frighting. His object
+is to get an hour or so for sleep before the visitors come out from
+their later lunch. Mam 'Idger says we are lazy; that she 'don't gie way
+to it, she don't!' (She did a couple of days ago.) When the
+after-dinner tea is finished, Tony makes a start for 'up over!' Mrs
+Widger enquires if I have some writing to do--and asks also if I would
+like to be awakened before tea-time!
+
+Never does sleep at night come so graciously as that afternoon snooze,
+while the sound of the sea and the busy noises of the square float
+gently in at the windows; float higher and higher; float right away.
+About half-past two, Tony goes down to take somebody out for a sail or
+to paint his boats. I frequently do not hear him.
+
+
+13
+
+Is there not more than one signification to the words "And I, if I be
+lifted up, will draw all men unto Me?" There are times when the mind is
+lifted up by a master-emotion, arising one hardly knows how, nor
+whither leading; a feeling that takes charge of one, as a big wave is
+said to take charge of a boat when it destroys steerageway; an emotion
+so powerful that it does but batten on all which might be expected to
+clash with it. These are the periods when day and night are enveloped
+in one large state of mind, and life ceases to be a collection of
+discrete, semi-related moods. These are the dawns of the soul, the
+spring seasons of the spirit. The world is created afresh.
+
+Everything, and nothing, is prosaic. 'Tis _all according_. But it is
+startling indeed how suddenly sometimes the earth takes on a new
+wonderfulness, and Saint Prosaic a new halo. What, to put it in the
+plainest manner possible, am I doing here? Merely fishing and sailing
+on the cheap (not so very cheaply); roughing it--pigging it, as one
+would say--with people who are not my people and do not live as I have
+been accustomed to do. Yet, as I know well _all_ the time, this change
+from one prosaic life to another has brought about a revelation which,
+like great music, sanctifies things, makes one thankful, and in a sense
+very humble; incapable of fitting speech, incapable of silence.
+
+
+14
+
+[Sidenote: _UNDER TOWN_]
+
+Astonishment at, and zest in, these Under Town lives; the discovery of
+so much beauty hitherto unsuspected and, indeed, not to be caught sight
+of without exceptional opportunity, sets one watching and waiting in
+order to find out the real difference of their minds from the minds of
+us who have been through the educational mill; also to find out where
+and how they have the advantage of us. For I can feel rather than see,
+here, the presence of a wisdom that I know nothing about, not even by
+hearsay, and that I suspect to be largely the traditional wisdom of the
+folk, gained from contact with hard fact, slowly accumulated and handed
+on through centuries--the wisdom from which education cuts us off,
+which education teaches us to pooh-pooh.
+
+Such wisdom is difficult to grasp; very shy. My chance of observing it
+lies precisely in this: that I am neither a sky-pilot, nor a district
+visitor, nor a reformer, nor a philanthropist, nor any sort of
+'worker,' useful or impertinent; but simply a sponge to absorb and, so
+far as can be, an understander to sympathize. It is hard entirely to
+share another people's life, to give oneself up to it, to be received
+into it. They know intuitively (their intuitions are extraordinarily
+acute) that one is thinking more than one gives voice to; putting two
+and two together; which keeps alive a lingering involuntary distrust
+and a certain amount, however little, of ill-grounded respectfulness.
+(Respectfulness is less a tribute to real or fancied superiority, than
+an armour to defend the poor man's private life.) Besides which, these
+people are necessary to, or at least their intimacy is greatly desired
+by, myself, whereas their own life is complete and rounded without me.
+I am tangential merely. They owe me nothing; I owe them much. It is I
+who am the client, they the patrons.
+
+[Sidenote: _CLASS DISTINCTIONS_]
+
+We are told often enough nowadays that capital fattens on labour,
+naturally, instinctively, without much sense of wrong-doing, and has
+so fattened since the days when Laban tried to overreach Jacob. What
+we are not so often told is that the poor man not less instinctively
+looks upon the gen'leman as legitimate sport. 'An 'orrible lie'
+between two poor people is fair play from a poor man to a wealthier,
+just as, for instance, the wealthy man considers himself at liberty to
+make speeches full of hypocritical untruth when he is seeking the
+suffrage of the free and independent electors or is trying to teach
+the poor man how to make himself more profitable to his employer. It
+is stupid, at present, to ignore the existence of class distinctions;
+though they do not perhaps operate over so large a segment of life as
+formerly, they still exist in ancient strength, notwithstanding the
+fashionable cant--lip-service only to democratic ideals--about the
+whole world kin. There is not one high wall, but two high walls
+between the classes and the masses, so-called, and that erected in
+self-defence by the exploited is the higher and more difficult to
+climb. On the one side is a disciplined, fortified Gibraltar, held by
+the gentry; then comes a singularly barren and unstable neutral zone;
+and on the other side is the vast chaotic mass. In Under Town, I
+notice, a gentleman is always _gen'leman_, a workman or tramp is
+_man_, but the fringers, the inhabitants of the neutral zone, are
+called _persons_. For example: "That _man_ what used to work for the
+council is driving about the _gen'leman_ as stays with Mrs Smith--the
+_person_ what used to keep the greengrocery shop to the top of High
+Street afore her took the lodging house on East Cliff." It is, in
+fact, strange how undemocratic the poor man is. (Not so strange when
+one realises that far from having everything to gain and nothing to
+lose by a levelling process, he has a deal to lose and his gains are
+problematical.) I am not sure that he doesn't prefer to regard the
+gen'leman as another species of animal. Jimmy and Tommy have a name of
+their own for the little rock-cakes their mother cooks. They call them
+_gentry-cakes_ because such morsels are fitted for the--as Jimmy and
+Tommy imagine--smaller mouths of ladies and gentlemen. The other
+afternoon Mabel told me that a boat she had found belonged not to a
+boy but to a _gentry-boy_. Some time ago I begged Tony not to _sir_
+me; threatened to punch his head if he did. It discomforted me to be
+belaboured with a title of respect which I could not reasonably claim
+from him. Rather I should _sir_ him, for he is older and at least my
+equal in character; he has begotten healthy children for his country
+and he works hard 'to raise 'em vitty.' Against my book-knowledge he
+can set a whole stock of information and experience more directly
+derived from and bearing upon life. I don't consider myself unfit to
+survive, but he is fitter, and up to the present has done more to
+justify his survival--which after all is the ultimate test of a man's
+position in the race. At all events, he did cease _sir-ing_ me except
+on ceremonial occasions. At ordinary times the detested word is
+unheard, but it is still: "Gude morning, sir!" "Gude night, sir!" And
+sometimes: "Your health, sir!" At that the matter must rest, I
+suppose, though the _sir_ is a symbol of class difference, and to do
+away with the symbol is to weaken the difference.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE WORD "LIKE"_]
+
+But at the same time, I am lucky enough to possess certain advantages.
+I have, for instance, managed to preserve the ability to speak dialect
+in spite of all the efforts of my pastors and masters to make me talk
+the stereotyped, comparatively inexpressive compromise which goes by
+the name of King's English. Tony is hard of hearing, catches the
+meaning of dialect far quicker than that of standard English, and I
+notice that the damn'd spot _sir_ seldom blots our conversation when
+it is carried on in dialect. Finally there is the great problem of
+self-expression. There, at any rate, I am well to windward.
+
+The cause of the uneducated man's use of the word _like_ is
+interesting. He makes a statement, uses an adjective, and--especially
+if the statement relates to his own feelings or to something
+unfamiliar--he tacks on the word _like_, spoken in a peculiarly
+explanatory tone of voice. What does the word mean there? Is it merely
+a habit, a 'gyte,' as Tony would say? And why the word _like_?
+
+When a poet wishes to utter thoughts that are too unformulated, that
+lie too deep, for words--
+
+    Break, break, break,
+      On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
+    And I would that my tongue could utter
+      The thoughts that arise in me--
+
+he has recourse to simile and metaphor. Take, for example, the
+transience of human life, a subject on which at times we most of us
+have keen vague thoughts that, we imagine, would be so profound could
+our tongues but utter them.
+
+Blake's Thel is a symbol of the transience of life.
+
+    O life of this our Spring! why fades the lotus of the water?
+    Why fade these children of the Spring, born but to smile and fall?
+
+"Thel, the transient maiden, is.... What is Thel?" says Blake, in
+effect. Thel cannot be described straightforwardly. "What then is Thel
+_like_?"
+
+    Ah! Thel is like a watery bow, and like a parting cloud,
+    Like a reflection in a glass, like shadows on the water,
+    Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infant's face,
+    Like the dove's voice, like transient day, like music in the air.
+
+[Sidenote: _DIALECT_]
+
+Shakespeare, in a corresponding difficulty, uses one convincing simile:
+
+    Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore
+    So do our minutes hasten to their end;
+    Each changing place with that which goes before,
+    In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
+
+Drummond of Hawthornden exclaims:
+
+    This Life, which seems so fair,
+    Is like a bubble blown up in the air
+    By sporting children's breath....
+
+Bacon speaks more boldly and concisely. He forsakes simile for
+metaphor, leaving the word _like_ to be understood.
+
+    The World's a bubble, and the Life of Man
+    Less than a span....
+
+Were Tony to try and express himself by the same means, he would say:
+"The world's a bubble, like, and the life of man less than a span,
+like."
+
+_Like_, in fact, with the poor man as with the poet, connotes simile
+and metaphor. The poor man's vocabulary, like the poet's, is quite
+inadequate to express his thoughts. Both, in their several ways, are
+driven to the use of unhackneyed words and simile and metaphor; both
+use a language of great flexibility;[11] for which reason we find that
+after the poet himself, the poor man speaks most poetically. Witness
+the beautiful description: "All to once the nor'easter springed out
+from the land, an' afore us could down-haul the mainsail, the sea wer
+feather-white an' skatting in over the bows." New words are eagerly
+seized; hence the malapropisms and solecisms so frequently made fun of,
+without appreciation of their cause. _Obsolete_ has come hereto from
+the Navy, through sons who are bluejackets. Now, when Tony wishes to
+sum up in one word the two facts that he is older and also less
+vigorous than formerly, he says: "Tony's getting obsolete, like." A
+soulless word, borrowed from official papers, has acquired for us a
+poetic wealth of meaning in which the pathos of the old ship, of
+declining years, and of Tony's own ageing, are all present with one
+knows not what other suggestions besides. And when _obsolete_ is fully
+domesticated here, the _like_ will be struck off.
+
+      [11] The flexibility and expressiveness of dialect lies largely
+      in its ability to change its verbal form and pronunciation from a
+      speech very broad indeed to something approaching standard
+      English. For example, "You'm a fool," is playful; "You'm a fule,"
+      less so. "You're a fool," asserts the fact without blame; while
+      "Thee't a fule," or "Thee a't a fule!" would be spoken in temper,
+      and the second is the more emphatic. The real differences between
+      "I an't got nothing," "I an't got ort," and "I an't got
+      nort,"--"Oo't?" "Casn'?" "Will 'ee?" and "Will you?"--"You'm
+      not," "You ain't," "You bain't," and "Thee a'tn't,"--are hardly
+      to be appreciated by those who speak only standard English.
+      _Thee_ and _thou_ are used between intimates, as in French.
+      _Thee_ is usual from a mother to her children, but is
+      disrespectful from children to their mother.
+
+[Sidenote: _THOUGHTS AND MIND PICTURES_]
+
+In short, every time Tony uses _like_, he is admitting, and explaining,
+that he has expressed himself as best he could, but inadequately
+notwithstanding. He has felt something more delicately, thought upon
+something more accurately, than he can possibly say. He is always
+pathetically eager to make himself plain, to be understood. One knows
+well that touching look in the eyes of a dog when, as we say, it all
+but speaks. Often have I seen that same look, still more intense, in
+Tony's eyes, when he has become mazed with efforts to express himself,
+and I have wished that as with the dog, a pat, a small caress, could
+change the look into a joyfulness. But it is just because I am fond of
+him that I am able to feel with him and to a certain extent to divine
+his half-uttered thoughts; to take them up and return them to him
+clothed in more or less current English which, he knows, would convey
+them to a stranger, and which shows him more clearly than before what
+he really was thinking. That seems to be one of my chief functions
+here--thought-publisher. Evidently grateful, he talks and talks,
+usually while the remains of a meal lie scattered on the table. "Aye!"
+he says, at the end of a debauch of _likes_. "I don' know what I du
+know. Tony's a silly ol' fule!"
+
+He does not believe it; nor do I; for I am often struck with wonder at
+the thoughts and mind-pictures which we so curiously arrive at
+together.
+
+
+15
+
+The old feudal class-distinctions are fast breaking down. But are we
+arriving any nearer the democratic ideal of _Liberte_, _Egalite_,
+_Fraternite_? In place of the old distinctions, are we not setting up
+new distinctions, still more powerful to divide? There is to-day a
+greater social gulf fixed between the man who takes his morning tub and
+him who does not, than between the man of wealth or family and him who
+has neither. New-made and pink, the 'gentleman' arises daily from his
+circle of splashes, a masculine Venus from a foam of soap-suds. (About
+womenfolk we are neither so enquiring nor so particular.) For the cults
+of religion and pedigree we have substituted the cult of soap and
+water, and 'the prominent physician of Harley Street' is its high
+priest. Are you a reputed atheist? Poor man! doubtless God will
+enlighten you in His good time. Are you wicked? Well, well.... Have you
+made a fortune by forsaking the official Christian morality in favour
+of the commercial code? You can redeem all by endowing a hospital or
+university. But can they say of you that somehow or other you don't
+look quite clean? Then you are damn'd!
+
+The cottage where the heroine of the 'nice' book lives is always
+spotlessly clean. A foreigner who adopts the bath-habit, is said to be
+just like an Englishman. It is the highest praise he can earn, and will
+go further in English society than the best introductions.
+
+[Sidenote: _CLEANLINESS_]
+
+Cleanliness is our greatest class-symbol. In living with people who
+have been brought up to different ways of life, a consideration
+of cleanliness is forced upon one; for nothing else rouses so
+instantaneously and violently the latent snobbery that one would fain
+be rid of. Religiously, politically, we are men and brothers all. Yet
+still--there _are_ men we simply cannot treat as brothers. By what term
+of contempt (in order to justify our unbrotherliness) can we call them?
+Not _poor men_; for we have _Poor but honest_ too firmly fixed in our
+minds, and we would all like a colonial rich rough diamond of an uncle
+to appear suddenly in our family circle. Hardly _men of no family_; for
+men of no family are received at court. Not _workmen_; for behold the
+Carlylese and Smilesian dignity of labour! Not _the masses_; for the
+masses are supposed to be our rulers. What then can we call these
+people with whom we really cannot associate on equal terms? Why,
+call them THE GREAT UNWASHED. O felicitous phrase! O salve of the
+conscience! That is the unpardonable social sin. At the bottom of our
+social ladder is a dirty shirt; at the top is fixed not laurels, but a
+tub! The bathroom is the inmost, the strongest fortress of our English
+snobbery.
+
+Cleanliness as a subject of discussion is, curiously enough, considered
+rather more improper than disease. Yet it has to be faced, and that
+resolutely, if we would approach, and approaching, understand, the
+majority of our fellow-creatures.
+
+Chemically all dirt is clean. Just as the foods and drinks of a good
+dinner, if mixed up together on a dish, would produce a filthy mess, so
+conversely, if we could separate any form of dirt into the pure solid,
+liquid and volatile chemical compounds of which it is composed, into
+pretty crystals, liquids and gases, exhibited in the scientific manner
+on spotless watch-glasses and in thrice-washed test-tubes,--we might
+indeed say that some of these chemicals had an evil odour, but we could
+not pronounce them unclean. Prepared in a laboratory, the sulphuretted
+hydrogen gas which makes the addled egg our national political weapon,
+is a quite cleanly preparation. Dirt is merely an unhappy mixture of
+clean substances. The housewife is nearest a scientific view of the
+matter when she distinguishes between 'clean dirt' and 'dirty dirt,'
+and does not mind handling coal, for instance, because, being clean
+dirt, it will not harm her. Cleanliness is a process by which we keep
+noxious microbes and certain poisons outside our systems or in their
+proper places within. (It has been shown that we cannot live without
+microbes, and that there exist normally in some parts of the body
+substances which are powerfully poisonous to other parts.) Rational
+cleanliness makes for health, for survival. It is, ultimately, an
+expression of the Will to Live.
+
+[Sidenote: _DIRT_]
+
+Far, however, from being rational, our notions on cleanliness are in
+the highest degree superficial. We make a great fuss over a flea;
+hardly mention it in polite company; but we tolerate the dirty housefly
+on all our food. We eat high game which our cook's more natural taste
+calls muck. We are only just beginning to realise the indescribable
+filthiness of carious teeth, than which anything more unclean, a few
+diseases excepted, can scarcely be found in slums. Even in this great
+age of pseudo-scientific enlightenment, we do not have a carious tooth
+extracted until it aches, though we have a front tooth cleaned and
+stopped on the first appearance of decay. What the eye doth not see....
+Yet we presume to judge men by their deviation from our conventional
+standards of cleanliness.
+
+My lady goes to the doctor for her headaches and _crises de nerfs_.
+"Dyspepsia and autotoxaemia," says the doctor. "Try such-and-such a diet
+for a month, then go to Aix-les-Bains." But how would my lady be
+ashamed did he tell her plainly: "Madam, though I observe that you
+bathe frequently, your cleanliness, like your beauty, is only
+skin-deep. You are fair without and foul within. Your alimentary canal
+is overloaded and your blood is so unclean that it has poisoned your
+nervous system. Eat less, take more exercise and drink plenty--of
+water. Try to be as clean as your gardener." It has been remarked that
+the labourer who sweats at his work is, in reality, far cleaner than
+the bathing sedentary man, for the labourer has a daily sweat-bath,
+whereas the other only washes the outside of him: the cleanliness of
+the latter is skin-deep, and of the former blood-deep. Once stated, the
+fact is obvious. Moreover, the labourer has the additional advantage of
+being self-cleansing, whereas the sedentary man, for his inferior kind
+of cleanliness, requires a bath and all sorts of apparatus. No doubt,
+in time we shall learn to value both kinds of cleanliness, each at its
+worth. The Martians of fiction, when in a fair way to conquer the
+earth, succumbed before earthly microbes to which they were
+unaccustomed, against which they had not acquired immunity. If by
+antiseptics they could have kept these microbes at bay, they would have
+done well, but if, like mankind, they had possessed self-resistance
+against them (that is, if they had been self-cleansing) it would have
+been still better. There is no paradox in saying that, practically, it
+is very difficult for a healthy person to be genuinely unclean; and
+that ideally, in the surgeon's eyes, we are, all, rich man and tramp,
+so unclean that there is little to choose between us, and every one of
+us requires a comprehensive scrubbing in an antiseptic tub.
+
+[Sidenote: _DISADVANTAGES_]
+
+But just as the habit of aiding nature by eating predigested food is
+bad, so too rigid a habit, too great a need of cleanliness is a
+positive disadvantage in the struggle for existence. Harry Stidston
+says fleas are loveable little creatures. I have had to learn to put up
+with one or two sometimes. Tommy makes his mother undress him in the
+middle of dinner to find one. In other words, Harry Stidston can do his
+work and live under conditions which would put me to flight, and I have
+a like advantage over Tommy. Again, Tony can do with an occasional bath
+and can eat his food with fishy hands, while I am a worm and no man
+without my daily bath, or at least a wash-over, and, except at sea,
+turn against the best of food if I can smell fish on my fingers. The
+advantage is Tony's. It is good to be clean, but it is better to be
+able to be dirty.
+
+The upshot is half-a-dozen--maybe unpleasant--truths, without
+recognition of which the latter-day citadel of snobbery cannot be
+stormed, nor the poor man and his house appreciated at their worth;
+namely:--
+
+    1. _Ideally_: We are all so unclean that there is little to
+       choose between us.
+
+    2. _Scientifically_: Cleanliness, as practised, is
+       conventional and irrational.
+
+    3. Blood-cleanliness is better than skin-cleanliness.
+
+    4. To be self-cleansing is better than to be cleansed by outside
+       agents.
+
+    5. It is hard for a healthy, active person to be really unclean.
+
+    6. _Practically_: The need of cleanliness is a weakness.
+
+According to the orthodox standards, this house of Tony's is by no
+means so clean as the rose-embowered cottage of romance. It was not
+hygienically built. The children gain health by grubbing about outside,
+then come in house and demonstrate their healthy appetite by grabbing.
+I could wish at times that they were a little more conscious of their
+noses. We cannot, try how we will, get wholly rid of fleas, because
+fleas flourish in beaches, boats and nets. There are several things
+here to turn one's gorge, until prejudices are put aside and the matter
+regarded scientifically. For, as one may see, the effective cleanliness
+of this household strikes a subtle balance between more contending
+needs than can be fully traced out. If, for instance, Mrs Widger came
+down earlier and scrupulously swept the house, her temper would suffer
+later on in the day. If she did not sometimes 'let things rip,' and
+take leisure, her health, and with it the whole delicate organisation
+of the household, would go wrong. Of a morning, I observe she has
+neck-shadows. Horrid! Perhaps, but being a wise woman, pressed always
+for time, she postpones her proper wash until the dirty work is done.
+Were we to kill off the wauling cats which make such a mess of the
+garden, the neighbourhood would lose its best garbingers. Baked dinner
+is never so tasty as when the tin, hot from the oven, is placed upon a
+folded newspaper on the table. Tony and the children tear fish apart
+with their fingers. It does not look nice, but that is the reason why
+they never get bones in their throats, for, as a fish-eating
+instrument, sensitive fingers are much superior to cutlery and plate,
+and so on....
+
+I used to think that I was pigging it here. Now I do not.[12]
+
+      [12] On the moral aspect of cleanliness I have not touched. Miss
+      M. Loane, a Queen's Nurse, in her remarkable book _The Next
+      Street but One_, observes "Cleanliness has often seemed to me
+      strangely far from godliness. Where the virtue is highly
+      developed there is often not merely an actual but an absolute
+      shrinkage in all sweet neighbourly charities. If an invalid's
+      bedroom needs scrubbing and there is no money to pay for the
+      service, or if a chronic sufferer's kitchen is in want of a
+      'thorough good do-out,' if two or three troublesome children have
+      to be housed and fed during the critical days after an operation
+      on father or mother, do I look for assistance from 'the cleanest
+      woman in the street?' Alas, no; whether she be wife, widow, or
+      spinster, I pass her by, careful not to tread on her pavement,
+      much less her doorstep, and seek the happy-go-lucky person whose
+      own premises would be better for more water and less grease, but
+      from whose presence neither husband nor child ever hastens away."
+
+
+16
+
+[Sidenote: _JIMMY COMES HOOKING_]
+
+The dawns are later now. We do not need to get up quite so early, and
+usually, just as we are drinking our cup o' tay, we hear a pattering of
+naked feet on the staircase. Jimmy, the Dustman still in his eyes,
+appears at the door. He has an air of being about to do something
+important. He picks out his stockings and old grey suit from the
+corners where they were left to dry. He does not ask to have his boots
+laced up nor complain of their stiffness. Then with his coat
+exceedingly askew on his shoulders, he demands: "Tay! please."
+
+"What do _yu_ want? Git up over to bed again."
+
+"I be comin' hooking wiv yu."
+
+"Be 'ee? Yu'll hae to hurry up then."
+
+When the sea is not too loppy nor the wind too cold, Jimmy goes with
+us. The soft-mouthed mackerel need hauling up clear of the gunwale with
+a long-armed swing, beyond Jimmy's power to give, and therefore as a
+rule he is not at first allowed to have a line; for fish represent
+money and mackerel caught now will be eaten as bread and dripping in
+the winter. Jimmy sits huddled up on the lee side for'ard. He becomes
+paler, looks plaintively, and sighs a big sigh or two.
+
+"What's the matter, Jim-Jim? Do 'er feel leery?"
+
+If Jimmy volunteers a remark, nothing is the matter. But if he
+merely answers "No-o-o!" he means _yes_, and in order to stave off
+sea-sickness he must be given a line.
+
+[Sidenote: _EDUCATION EVILS_]
+
+Then is Jimmy 'proper all right.' Then does he brighten up. "How many
+have us catched?" he asks. The sight of him fishing in the stern-sheets
+re-assures me as to his future, about which I am sometimes fearful,
+just as some men are depressed by a helpless baby because they foresee,
+imaginatively, the poor little creature's life and all possible
+troubles before it. When I watch Jimmy in house, rather naughty
+perhaps, or when I hear Bessie, fresh from the twaddle that they put
+into her head at school, saying, "If Dad'd earn more money, mother, us
+could hae a shop an' he could buy me a pi-anno;" or when, as I am out
+and about with the boats, a grubby small hand is suddenly slipped into
+mine and a joyful chirping voice says, "What be yu 'bout?"--then, and
+at a score of other times, I am fearful of what they may be led to do
+with Jimmy; fearful lest they may put the little chap to an inland
+trade where he is almost bound to become a lesser man than his father,
+be removed from the enlarging influence of the sea, and have it given
+him as the height of ambition to grow up a dram-drinking or
+psalm-smiting, Sunday-top-hatted tradesmen. Then I desire savagely to
+have the power of a God, not that I might direct his life--he can sail
+his own boat better than I,--but that I might keep the ring clear for
+him to fight in, and prevent foul play. What indeed would I not do to
+remove some of the guilt of us educated men and women who force our
+ideas on people without asking whether they need them, without caring
+how maimed, stultified and potent for evil the ideas become in process
+of transmission, without seeing that for the age-old wisdom of those
+whom we call the uneducated we are substituting a jerry-built
+knowledge--got from books--which we only half believe in ourselves? New
+lamps for old! The pity of it! The farce!
+
+But when I watch Jimmy fishing, I grow confident that the sea has its
+grip on him; that it will drag him to itself as it dragged his father
+from the grocery store; that whatever happens, it will always be part
+of his life to keep trivialities, meannesses and education from quite
+closing in around him.
+
+
+17
+
+[Sidenote: "_THE FISHER FATHER AND CHILD_"]
+
+    _The Fisher Father and Child_
+
+    As I pulled the boat across a loppy sea--
+    The bumping and splashing boat,
+    With the sail flapping round my head,
+    And the pile of mackerel amidships ever growing larger and lovelier
+        in the light--
+    And the sun rose behind the cliffs to eastward, and the sky became
+        lemon-yellow
+    (A graciously coloured veil twixt the earth and all mystery beyond),
+    And the wavelets sparkled and darted like ten thousand fishes at play
+        in the ambient dawn,--
+    It seemed that the sky and the sea and the earth gathered themselves
+        together,
+    And became one vast kind eye, looking into the stern of the boat,
+    At the father and boy.
+
+    Navy-blue guernsey, and trousers stained by the sea, scarce hiding
+        the ribbed muscles;
+    Tan-red face, the fresh blood showing through;
+    Blue eyes, all of a flash with fishing and the joy of hauling 'em in;
+        now on the luff of the sail (out of habit, there being hardly a
+        sail-full of air), now to wind'ard, and again smiling on the
+        child;
+    Big pendulous russet hands, white in the palms from salt water, and
+        splashed with scales--
+    Hands that seem implements rather, appearing strangely no part of the
+        man, but something, like the child, that has grown away from
+        him and has taken a life of its own--
+    Strong for a sixteen-foot sweep, delicate to handle the silken snood of
+        a line--
+    A man that the winds and the spray have blown on, gnarled and bent to
+        the sea's own liking,
+    The Father!
+
+    And the boy--
+    Like delicate dawn to the sunset was the child to his father--
+    A sturdy slight little figure, as straight as the mast,
+    A grey and more gently coloured figure, glancing round with the
+        father's self-same gestures softened, and with childish
+        trustful sea-blue eyes;
+    Pattering with naked feet on the stern-sheets, and hauling the fish
+        with a wary cat-like motion....
+    O splendid and beautiful pair!
+    O man of the sea! O child growing up to the sea!
+    You have given yourselves to the waters, and the waters have given
+        of their spirit to you,
+    And I know when you speak that the sea is speaking through you,
+    And I know when I look at the sea, 'tis the likeness of your souls,
+    And I know that as I love you, I am loving also the sea--
+    O splendid and beautiful portions of the sea!
+
+
+18
+
+[Sidenote: _MRS FINN'S PROFESSIONS_]
+
+Mrs Pinn has put aside her respectful defiance, has ceased addressing
+me as _sir_, and turns out to be a most jolly old woman, possessed of
+any amount of laughing _camaraderie_. She frankly explains the change
+thus: "I used to think yu was reeligious. Yu du look a bit like a
+passon [parson] sometimes. Do 'ee know 't?--No, not now; be blow'd if
+yu du! Yu'm so wicked as the rest of 'em, _I_ believe, but yu ben't
+like they ol' passons. I'll 'llow yu'm better'n they." My own
+recollection, however, runs back to the evening when she brought her
+damped-down washing round, and I turned the mangle for her. It is
+hardish work. 'Tis a wonder how she, an old woman, can do it when, if
+births are scarce, she is reduced to taking in washing for a week or
+two. Tony calls her the Tough Old Stick. Excellent name! I can picture
+her in her cottage up on land, bringing up her long family with much
+shouting, much hard common sense, some swearing and a deal of useful
+prejudice. Now, in her second youth--not second childhood--she is
+mainly a lace-worker and midwife. One night, Tony and myself broke into
+her cottage, locked the door behind us and helped ourselves to what
+supper we could find--which was pickled beetroot and raw eggs. Grannie
+Pinn climbed in upon us through the little window, and afterwards, to
+gain breath, she sat down to her lace pillow. Her dexterity was
+marvellous. She _threw_ the bobbins about. I could not follow them with
+my eyes. She makes stock patterns only; refuses to be taught fresh
+patterns at her time of life, and cannot read them up for herself
+because she has never learned to read. The butterfly is her
+masterpiece. Working from early morning till evening's gossip-time, she
+can earn no less than nine pennies a day. What the lace-selling shop
+makes out of her, the lace-selling shop does not state.
+
+As a midwife, no doubt, she earns more. She must be full of tonic
+sayings. I am told that when her patients are dying, she takes away the
+pillow 'so that they can die more proper like,' and also in order that
+they may get the dying over quicker. What scenes the Tough Old Stick
+have must been present at! Yet she is spryer by far than those who keep
+clear of tragedy. When I ask her to tell me truly how many patients she
+has killed off in her professional career, her eyes glitter and she
+bursts out: "Aw, yu! What chake yu got, to be sure!"
+
+She has her share of professional pride, but nevertheless I should like
+to know how many corpses she really has laid out for burial--and what
+she thought the while.
+
+Usually she comes in just before supper-time:
+
+"Ain't yu gone yet? I know; yu got some mark or other to Seacombe. Come
+on! which o' the young ladies is't? Out wi' it! Which on 'em is't?"
+When I tell her that she is the best girl in Seacombe and that I won't
+give her the chuck until she finds me a mark as youthful as herself and
+a hundred times as rich, she says:
+
+"Then yu'm done! her won't hae nort still, 'cause I an't got nort, an'
+a hundred times nort be nothing--he-he-he! I knaws thiccy."
+
+The jokes, 'tis true, are poor. But the Tough Old Stick's enjoyment
+franks them all. You may fling a stinging fact in her face; tell her,
+if you like, that she could find plenty of marks for herself because,
+being old, she will have to die soon and then the poor fellow would be
+free again. "I know't!" she says, and flings you back another stinging
+fact. Admirable Old Stick! She never flinches at a fact, howsoever
+grisly it be.
+
+Above all, she revels in a little mild blasphemy; hardly
+blasphemy--imaginary details, say, about hell, in the manner of Mark
+Twain. "Aw, my dear soul!" she exclaims. "How yu du go on! Aw, my dear
+soul! Yu'm going to hell, sure 'nuff yu be!"
+
+[Sidenote: _AGNOSTICISM_]
+
+But her horror is only a pretence. She does not take such matters
+seriously. Indeed, few things have surprised me so much as the
+thoroughgoing agnosticism that prevails here. Uncle Jake is the
+religious member of the Widger family. For the rest, religion is the
+business of the clergy who are paid for it and of those who take it up
+as a hobby, including the impertinent persons who thrust hell-fire
+tracts upon the fisherfolk. "Us can't 'spect to know nort about it,"
+says Tony. "'Tain't no business o' ours. May be as they says; may be
+not. It don't matter, that I sees. 'Twill be all the same in a hunderd
+years' time when we'm a-grinning up at the daisy roots."
+
+Nevertheless, he is not atheistical, nor even wholly fatalistic. When
+his first wife was lying dead, he saw her in a dream with one of her
+dead babies in her arms, and he is convinced that that meant something
+very spiritual, although what it meant he does not care to enquire. The
+agnosticism refers not so much to immortality or the existence of a
+God, as to the religions, the nature of the God, the divinity of
+Christ, and so on.
+
+"Us don' know nort about that, n'eet does anybody else, I believe, an'
+all their education on'y muddles 'em when they comes to weigh up thic
+sort o' thing."
+
+[Sidenote: _SPARROWISM_]
+
+If the sparrows themselves had been acquainted with 'Are not two
+sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall to the
+ground without your Father,' their attitude towards religion might have
+resembled Tony's--a mixture of trust and _insouciance_, neither of
+them driven to any logical conclusion and both tempered by fatalism.
+"When yu got to die, yu got tu," says Tony, and it makes little
+difference to him whether the event has been decreed since the
+beginning of time, or whether it is to be decreed at some future date
+by a being so remote as God. The thing is, to accept the decree
+courageously.
+
+The children go to Sunday School, of course; it is convenient to have
+them out of the way while Sunday's dinner is being cooked and the
+afternoon snooze being taken. Besides, though the Sunday School
+teaching is a fearful hotch-potch of heaven, hell and self-interest,
+the tea-fights concerts and picnics connected with it are well worth
+going to. But the household religion remains a pure _sparrowism_,
+and an excellent creed it is for those of sufficient faith and courage.
+
+Of how the Sunday School teaching is translated by the children into
+terms of every day life, we had a fine example two or three weeks ago.
+Jimmy came home full of an idea that 'if you don' ast God to stop it,
+Satant 'll have 'ee,' and Mrs Widger asked him: "What's the difference
+then between God an' Satant?"
+
+"Ther ain't nort."
+
+"Yes, there is. What does God du?"
+
+"God don't do nort unless yu asks Him."
+
+"An' what does Satant du?"
+
+"Oh--I know!--Satant gets into yer 'art, an' gives 'ee belly-ache an'
+toothache."
+
+Not many days afterwards, Tommy was being sent to bed for getting his
+feet wet. "Yu daring rascal! I'll knock yer head off if yu du it again.
+Yu'll die, yu will! An' what'll yu du then?"
+
+"Go to heaven, o' course."
+
+"An' what do you think they'll say to 'ee there? Eh?"
+
+Tommy was puzzled.
+
+"You can ask 'em to send us better weather." I suggested.
+
+"Tell 'ee what I'll do," said Tommy with a prodigiously wise squint.
+"I'll take up a buckle-strap to thiccy ol' God, if 'er don't send
+better weather, an' then yu won't none on 'ee get sent to bed for wet
+feet!"
+
+
+19
+
+At a corner near here, there is a very blank cottage wall, and in
+the centre of it a little window. Behind the closed window, all
+day and every day, sits an old woman at her lace pillow. Some
+portraits--Rembrandt's especially--give one the impression that a
+shutter has suddenly been drawn aside; that behind the shutter we are
+allowed to watch for a moment or two a face so full of meaning as to
+be almost more than human. The same impression is given me by the old
+lace-maker in the window when I pass to and fro, and catch sight of
+her face so still, her hands so active, her bobbins so swift and,
+because of the intervening glass, so silent. How nervously the hands
+speed with the bobbins, how very deliberately with the pins that make
+the pattern! How hardly human it is!
+
+One evening, however, the window was open, children stood round in a
+group, and I heard the small click of the bobbins through the still
+air. The children were laughing, delighted with the old woman's
+swiftness. She that had been a picture, was become a living being.
+
+No doubt, she is working at her lace pillow now. She has several mouths
+to feed. I wonder does she earn as much as Grannie Pinn?
+
+
+20
+
+[Sidenote: _CONGERING_]
+
+This long time I have wished to go congering all night, but have been
+unable to do so for want of a mate. It is more than one man's work to
+haul a boat up the beach in daytime, let alone the middle of the night
+or at early dawn. If the _Moondaisy_'s old crew was here....
+
+Ah! those were days--when George and the Little Commodore and the Looby
+and myself used to row out with a swinging stroke at sundown to
+Elm-beech-tree[13] and Conger Pool. The choosing of the mark; the
+careful heaving of the sling-stone; the blinn, skate, pollack,
+spider-crabs, and conger eels, we used to catch; the fights with the
+conger in the dark or by the light of matches or of an old lantern that
+blew out when it was most wanted; the absurd way the crew turned up
+their noses at my nice tomato sandwiches and gobbled down stringy
+corned beef; their quiet slumber round the stern seats and my solitary
+watch amidships over all the lines, and at the sea-fire trailing in the
+flood-tide; their crustiness when I awoke them to shift our mark and
+their jubilation when a whopper was to be gaffed; the utter
+peacefulness of the night after they had gone to sleep again; our merry
+row home and hearty beaching of the boat; the cup of hot tea.... It is
+all clean gone. George is in the Navy and the Little Commodore is under
+a glass box of waxen flowers up on land. Did I bring back a catch
+alone, perhaps the old boat would be stove in.
+
+      [13] A spot found by getting an elm-tree on the cliffs in a line
+      with a beech-tree up on land.
+
+Tony, however, has been saying that, on the rough ground a mile or so
+out, good-sized conger can be caught by day. On Saturday, therefore, I
+collected gear from the Widger linhays, borrowed a painter and anchor,
+and, the wind being easterly, I luffed the _Moondaisy_ out a mile
+and a half south-east. There I dropped anchor.
+
+Tony had given me two mackerel for bait, one fresh and the other
+somewhat otherwise; that is to say it was merely fishmonger
+fresh--quite good enough for eating but hardly good enough for conger
+who, though they have a reputation for feeding on dead men, will only
+touch the freshest of bait. With the fresh mackerel I caught one large
+conger (it ripped in the sail a hole that took Mam Widger an hour to
+mend) and two dog-fish. Nothing at all would bite at the stale
+mackerel. The easterly sea was making a little and skatting in over the
+bows. Besides which, the _Moondaisy_ began to drag her anchor. My
+hand to jaw-and-tail fight with the conger had made me a little
+unsteady; had made my muscles feel as if they might string up with
+cramp; which is not good for stepping a heavyish mast and sailing a
+boat. So I stepped the mast and set sail, to make sure, and ran
+homewards with the wind almost abeam.
+
+We decided to save the conger for Sunday's dinner.
+
+Mrs Widger made a most savoury stew of it, and when Tony came in as
+usual, asking, "Be dinner ready, Missis?" she placed the stew on the
+table.
+
+Tony's face fell.
+
+"Be this my dinner, Annie?"
+
+"Iss, for sure."
+
+"_Thees?_"
+
+[Sidenote: _HOT BAKE_]
+
+"What d'yu think then?"
+
+"_Thees!_ Wer's yer baked spuds?"
+
+"Do' ee gude to hae a change. Ther's some cold taties to the larder if
+you likes to get 'em."
+
+"_Thees!_ Why, I wish thees yer conger hadn't never been catched!"
+
+"G'out!--Now then, you childern...."
+
+Tony picked over the fish, going _Tsch!_ for every bone his fingers
+came across.
+
+"Thee't look so sulky as an ol' cow," said Mam Widger.
+
+"Well, what do 'ee think? Thees yer.... Did 'ee ever see the like
+o'it?"
+
+Presently it occurred to him to peep inside the oven. His face
+brightened. "I know'd her 'ouldn't du me out o' me Sunday dinner. Bring
+it out, Missis. Sharp! Gie thiccy stuff to the cat. Baked spuds! What's
+Sunday wi'out baake? 'Tain't no day at all! I couldn' ha' put away an
+hour after thic."
+
+For the remainder of the meal, when Tony was not eating, he was
+singing; and several times he chucked Mam Widger under the chin, and
+she retorted: "G'out, yu cupboard-loving cat!"
+
+
+21
+
+This is the recipe for baked dinner:
+
+Turn out the children and turn on the oven. Into the middle of a large
+baking tin place a saucer piled up with a mixture of herbs (mainly
+parsley), one sliced onion and breadcrumbs, the whole made sticky with
+a morsel of dripping. Round about the saucer put a layer of large
+peeled potatoes, and on top of all, the joint. Set the baking tin on
+the hob and into it pour just enough warm water to run over the rim of
+the saucer. Soon after the water boils, transfer the whole to a fairly
+quick oven. When the meat is brown outside, slow the oven down. Serve
+piping hot from the oven, placing the tin on a folded newspaper and the
+joint, if large, on a hot plate.
+
+To dish up hot bake in the ordinary way would be to let the nature out
+of it. The smell is a wonderful blend, most hunger-provoking. True, the
+joint, unless pork or veal, is apt to be a little tough, but the taties
+are a delicious shiny brown, their soft insides soaked through and
+through with gravy. Bake is a meal in itself. Pudding thereafter is a
+work of supererogation--almost an impertinence.
+
+Mrs Widger's cookery, though sometimes a little greasy for one who does
+no great amount of manual labour and undergoes no excessive exposure,
+is far from bad.
+
+[Sidenote: _FOOD_]
+
+Food reformers; patrons of cookery schools where they try, happily in
+vain, to teach the pupils to prepare dishes no working man would
+adventure on; physical degenerates who fear that unless the working man
+imitates them, he will become as degenerate as they are, and quite
+unfit to do the world's rough work--forget that whereas they have only
+one staple food, if that, namely bread, the poor man has several staple
+dishes which he likes so well that he is loth to touch any other.
+
+One day we did have at my suggestion a rather fanciful supper. Tony
+tasted, ate, and cleared the dish. Then he asked: "An't 'ee got nort to
+make a meal on, Missis? no cold meat nor spuds?" He believes in the
+theory that good digestion waits on appetite rather than on digestible
+or pre-digested foods; that the meal which makes a man's mouth water is
+the best to eat; and that solid foods give solid strength. And if the
+same dish can make his mouth water nearly every day in the week, how
+much more fortunate is he than fickle gourmets!
+
+When I first came here, I used periodically to run after the
+flesh-pots. I used to sneak off to tea at a confectioner's. Now I
+seldom feed out of house--simply because I don't want to. We start the
+day about sunrise with biscuits and a cup of tea which I make and take
+up myself. (Mam Widger and Tony look so jolly in bed, her indoor
+complexion and white nightgown beside his blue-check shirt and
+magnificently tanned face, that I've dubbed them 'The Babes in the
+Wood.') For breakfast, we have fried mackerel or herrings, when they
+are in season; otherwise various mixtures of tough bacon and perhaps
+eggs (children half an egg each) and bubble and squeak.[14] Sometimes
+the children prefer kettle-broth,[15] but they never fail to clamour for
+'jam zide plaate.' Bake, hot or cold, and occasionally (mainly for me,
+I think) a plain pudding, or on highdays a pie, make up the dinner that
+is partaken of by all. But before the pudding is eaten, Tony and myself
+are already looking round to see that the kettle is on a hot part of
+the fire, and when the children are gone off to school, Mam Widger
+throws us out a cup o' tay each, with now and then a newly baked
+gentry-cake. Tony, who would like meat or a fry of fish for tea, has
+usually to content himself with bread and butter. The children go off
+to bed with a biscuit or a small chunk of cheese, and we may eat the
+same with pickles, or else fried or boiled fish if there is any in the
+house.... Supper, in fact, is the meal of many inventions, including
+all sorts of crabs, little lobsters, and such unsaleable fish as
+dun-cow [dog-fish], conger, skate or weever, together with
+dree-hap'orth, or a pint, of stout and bitter from the Alexandra. Just
+before turning in, Tony and myself have a glass of hot grog.
+
+      [14] Fried mixed vegetables.
+
+      [15] Bread broth with butter, or dripping, and water instead of
+      milk. A dash of skim milk is sometimes added.
+
+[Sidenote: _DRINK_]
+
+From such a list of our fare, it would seem as if we over-ate ourselves
+as consistently as the _en pension_ visitors at the hotels. (Mrs
+Widger, who has done a good deal of waiting, frequently tells us how
+manfully the visitors endeavour to eat their money's worth at the
+_tables d'hote_). Tony's appetite--his habit of pecking at the food
+after a meal is over and the way he, and the children too if they have
+the chance, mop up pickles and Worcester sauce--is a continual joy to
+me. We do not drink much alcohol. On the other hand, the children are
+curiously discouraged from drinking cold water. Skim milk, tea, stout,
+ale, or even very dilute spirit is considered better for them--a
+prejudice which dates probably from the days before a pure water
+supply. Since, however, I who am known to possess a contemptible
+digestion, have been seen to drink down several glasses of cold water
+daily, and to take no hurt, the ban on it has been more or less
+removed.
+
+The above-mentioned goodies are distributed, it is true, over a good
+many days in the year, and I fancy that my being here drives up the
+scale of living somewhat. At all events, we do not go short. Waste on
+the one side, mainly arising from small eyes being bigger than small
+stomachs, is more than counterbalanced by a wonderful ability to
+swallow down gristle, rinds and hard bits without apparent harm.
+Granfer, indeed, says that he 'wouldn't gie a penny a pound for tender
+meat that don't give 'ee summut to bite at.' The children clamour
+always for 'jam zide plaate.' Without that or the promise of it, they
+often refuse to eat anything. They do not believe me when I tell them
+that they have more food than ever I did at their age; that I had to
+eat a piece of bread and a potato for each slice of meat; that jam and
+butter together was not thought good for me except on birthdays and
+Sundays. "G'out!" they say. "Ye lie!" Sometimes their mother is
+irritated into calling them 'cawdy li'l devils.' It does seem almost a
+pity that they have not had any of the discipline of starvation. The
+Yarty children who go half the day, and only too often whole days, on
+empty stomachs, are certainly as happy as ours: they never cry because
+dinner is not so good as they expect, and if we give them half a pie
+their earth is straightway heavenly. Tony thinks now and then how hard
+it will go with his children if the money runs short, as it has done
+and may easily do again. "I mind the time," he says, "when I used to
+come in hungry and kneel down beside me mother wi' me head across her
+lap, crying! Her crying too; mother 'cause her hadn't got nort to eat
+in house, and me 'cause her didn't get nort, and 'cause her cuden't get
+nort, not even half an ounce o' tay, not havin' no money in house to
+get it with. An' then I used to go out an' try an' earn something,
+twopence maybe, just to stay us on."
+
+And that it is which has helped to make Tony the man he is.
+
+
+22
+
+[Sidenote: _A SUDDEN STORM_]
+
+Seldom does one catch the exact moment of an abrupt change in nature.
+Yesterday, however, I watched a wonderful thing--the oncoming of a
+sudden storm.
+
+Uncle Jake had been holding forth on the beach. "Us ain't had no
+equinoctial gales thees year, not proper like us used to. This season's
+going to break up sudden and wi' thunder, an' when it du, look out! I'd
+rather be here now than out in the offing, for all the sea's so calm.
+Ah!" pointing to a dinghy that was shoving off the beach, "they bwoys
+'ould laugh in me faace if I was to go an' say, 'Don' go. 'Tisn't fit.'
+But _I_ knows."
+
+I left him gazing seaward over the stern of his drifter, and walked up
+to the Western Cliffs. The air, scarcely a breath from the north-east,
+was oppressive in the extreme; very warm, too, for autumn. The sea was
+almost unruffled; the sky to westward magnificently heaped up with what
+Uncle Jake calls wool-packs. A fog crept over all the southern horizon,
+dimming with its misty approach the eastern headlands and making the
+sea like a dulled mirror. I felt, rather than heard, distant thunder.
+
+The fog lifted. It hung low in the sky, a sulky blue cloud. Beneath it,
+the sea, still unruffled, was of a dense blue that, so it seemed, would
+have been black altogether but for its transparency and the refracted
+light within it.
+
+Going on, I walked for some distance beneath a semi-arch of the
+wind-bowed lichenous thorns that grow upon the cliff-edge.
+
+Without any warning--maybe there was a little hum in the air--a
+leafless bough, like a withered arm with its sinews ragged out, bent
+over across my path. The sea gulls screamed and screeched; they flocked
+out from the cliff-ledges, and with still wings they towered up into
+the sky. Every twig and leaf began to play a diabolic symphony. Where
+the hedge ended I was blown back upon my heels.--It was more than half
+a gale of wind from the south-east.
+
+The horizon was become clear; jagged like a saw. Divergent strings,
+marvellously interlaced on the water, streamed in with the wind,
+broadened into ribands fluttering over green-grey patches. The whole
+sea trembled, as if life were being breathed into it. White spots,
+curling wavelets, dotted it; then broke abroad as white-horses in full
+mad landward career. The whistle in the grass rose louder and shriller;
+the boughs bent further and let fly their autumn foliage horizontally
+into the wind; the gulls screeched wildly and more wildly; the chafing
+of the surf below took possession of the air....
+
+[Sidenote: _UNCLE JAKE ON FOOLS_]
+
+I saw the dinghy put about and run for shore.
+
+When I got back, Uncle Jake was still watching.
+
+"Ah!" he said. "Ah! Ah! I don't like they centre-keel boats wi' bumes
+[booms]. They'm all right for fine weather, but.... Ah! They'm goin' to
+gybe if they ain't careful. There! Did 'ee see? Why don't they ease
+their sheet off more? If the wind catches thic sail the wrong side....
+Did 'ee see that? Thic bume was all but coming over. Gybe, gybe, yu
+fules! Yu'm capsized if yu du, wi' thic heavy bume. Look'se! Have 'em
+got their drop-keel up, I wonder? Not they! They thinks that's the same
+as extra ballast. 'Twon't make no difference if a sea takes charge of
+'em. Ah! did 'ee see the leach o' the sail flutter? Nearly over! Let
+'em gybe, if they'm set on it. 'Twill upset they.--O-ho! They'm goin'
+to haul down an' row for it. Best thing the likes o' they can du. They
+calls me an ol' fule for joggin' along in my ol' craft while they has
+drop-keels and bumes, all the latest. I've a-know'd thees yer sea for
+fifty year an' more, an' I say, I tell thee, that two oars be better
+than two reefs any day. Le'but the seas take charge o' one o' they
+boats running afore the wind.... All up! They spins like a top, an'
+gybes.... 'Tis all up! Howsbe-ever, they'm saafe now, if they don't
+sheer broadside coming ashore. But _they_ won't learn their lesson; not
+they. They maakes fun o' us as knows.
+
+"There! the wind be softening now. I've a-know'd they thunder-puffs
+come down on 'ee like a hurricane. If they lasted long.... 'Tis blowin'
+out in the Channel still. The horizon's black--see? 'Twill back, an'
+blow from the nor'east to-night, in here, but 'twill be east to
+south-east in the Channel, an' wi' thees flood tide runnin' up against
+it, yu'll see the say make!"
+
+
+23
+
+It did blow during the night; it must have been rough out in the
+Channel; then the wind dropped to a light breeze. But before ever Tony
+and myself were out of doors we heard the heave and thump of the long
+easterly swell.
+
+We hauled the _Cock Robin_ down to the water's edge, put in five bags
+of ballast ("Doesn't look 's if it's blow'd itself out," said Tony) and
+a spare oar--and stood and looked.
+
+"Be it wuth it?" he questioned.
+
+"Not much wind now, is there?"
+
+"Can the two o'us shove off in thees yer swell? Can ee see any o' the
+other boats shoving down?"
+
+"No...."
+
+"There won't be much frighting to-day, for sure. Must make the day gude
+if us can. Yer's a calm. Jump in quick. Shove! Shove, casn'! Row. Lemme
+take an oar. Keep her head on. _Pull_--thic west'ard oar!"
+
+[Sidenote: _PLUCK--_]
+
+We were fairly afloat outside the surf-line, both of us very red in the
+face. We upsailed--and away. After a few minutes' worry, deciding
+whether the mainsail and mizzen without the foresail would be enough,
+on a sea so much bigger than the wind, and looking for the _Cock
+Robin's_ chronic leak, the bouncing, tumbling and splashing, the
+heave up and the mighty rushes down, put us both in high spirits. We
+decided to hoist the foresail after all. "Let her bury her head if her
+wants to!"
+
+Accordingly, I went for'ard to hook the foresail's tack to the bumkin
+[short iron bowsprit]. The thimble was too small. As I sat on the bow
+and leaned out over, my hand all but dipped into the waves. A stream of
+water did once run up my sleeve. Looking round and seeing Tony smile, I
+yelled back aft: "What be smiling 'bout, Tony?" He replied: "I was
+a-gloryin' in yer pluck."
+
+Which was very pleasant to hear--for a moment.
+
+My position on the bow of the boat was absolutely safe, and I knew it.
+There was no risk at all, except of a bruise or a wetting. My toe was
+firmly hooked under the for'ard thwart, and short of my leg breaking, I
+could not have lost my hold. Besides, even had I fallen overboard, I
+could easily have swum round while Tony 'bouted the boat. Tony was
+deceived. There was no pluck.
+
+His words set me thinking, and I had to recognise, rather bitterly,
+that what I call pluck did not form a great part of my birthright. I
+find myself too apprehensive by nature; imagine horrid possibilities
+too keenly; and indeed would far rather hurt myself than think about
+doing so. I suppose I have a certain amount of courage, for I am
+usually successful in making myself do what I funk; but I like doing it
+none the better for that. And up to the present, I have not failed
+badly in tight corners. On the contrary, I find (like most nervy
+people) that actual danger, once arrived, is curiously exhilarating;
+that it makes one cooler and sharper, even happy. One has faced the
+worst in imagination, and the reality is play beside it.
+
+[Sidenote: _AND COURAGE_]
+
+In the dictionary, _courage_ is defined as 'The quality which enables
+men to meet danger without fear.' _Pluck_ is merely defined as courage.
+There is, or ought to be, an essential difference between the meaning
+of the two words. Courage is a premeditated matter, into which the
+will enters, whilst pluck is an unpremeditated expression of the
+personality, an innate quality which, so to speak, does not need to be
+set in operation by the will. Courage rises to the occasion; pluck is
+found ready for it. Would it not, therefore, be more correct to say
+that _pluck_ is the quality which enables men to meet danger without
+fear: and that _courage_ is the quality which enables men to meet
+danger with fear overcome? The greatest courage might go farther than
+the greatest pluck, but for occasions on which either can be used,
+pluck, the more spontaneous, is also the superior. Most of us are
+irregularly, erratically plucky; one man with horses, who funks the
+sea; another man at sea who is afraid of horses. One man who fears live
+fists may think nothing of watching by the dead. Another who stands up
+pluckily in a fight, refuses to go near a corpse. One of the pluckiest
+men I know 'don't like dogs.' Pluck runs in streaks, but courage, to
+whatever degree a man possesses it, runs through him from top to
+bottom.
+
+All the churches in the world may talk about sin and virtue, and make
+most admirable and subtle distinctions. We know very well in our hearts
+that pluck and courage are the great twin virtues, and that cowardice
+is the fundamental sin. The perfectly plucky and courageous man would
+never sin meanly; he would have no need to do so. He, and not the beefy
+brute or the intellectual paragon, would be Superman. The Christ, it
+often seems to me, keeps his hold on the world, and will keep it, not
+because he was God-man or man-God, not because he was born normally or
+abnormally, not because he redeemed mankind or didn't, not because he
+provided a refuge for souls on their beam-ends, but because, of all the
+great historic and legendary figures, he is the one who convinces us
+that he was never afraid. In him, as we picture him, courage and pluck
+were the same thing, and perfect.
+
+But the present point is, or points are: How many men whose pluck and
+courage I have admired so much, have deceived me as I deceived Tony?
+And what combination of pluck and courage is it which enables these
+fishermen to follow their constantly dangerous occupation with equable
+mind; which, indeed, enables so many working men to follow their
+dangerous trades? For it is one thing to approach danger by way of
+sport, and another to work for a livelihood _in_ danger.
+
+One's analytics fail. It is, however, stupid merely to say, "Ah, they
+are inured to it. Familiarity has bred contempt." Seafaring men realise
+the dangers of the sea a good deal better than anyone else. Familiarity
+with the sea does not breed contempt; the older the seaman the more
+careful he is. I have met old seamen, heroes in their day, whom one
+would almost call nervous on the water. And in any case, what a state
+of mind it is--to be _inured_ to danger! to be on familiar terms with
+the possibility of death! to be able to flout, to play with, to live
+on, that which all men fear!
+
+
+24
+
+[Sidenote: _LUSCOMBE_]
+
+I have been up the coast to have dinner and a chat with my old
+coastguard friend, Ned Luscombe, the man who taught me knots and
+splices during the night watches when I was a visitor here years ago.
+To go to his house now is very pleasant. For a long time after their
+first baby died on the day they entered a new house, before even the
+beds were up, it seemed as if Mrs Luscombe, a gentle, delicate woman,
+'with the deuce of a will of her own,' Luscombe says, was going to
+decline and die too. The new baby, which was to have killed her, has
+put new life into her instead. They are touchingly proud of it, and
+very happy altogether. I do like to see married couples happy.
+
+Luscombe himself is rather an extraordinary man; short, vivacious and
+solid; full of generous impulses, yet very well able to look after his
+own interests. It was he who dared the neighbourhood, and caused his
+wife to invite often to their house a crippled girl that had been raped
+by a scoundrel and then given the cold-shoulder by everyone else.
+Something of a sea-lawyer, he is one of the sharpest-brained--I don't
+say deepest-thinking--men I have ever come across. Hardly educated at
+all as a boy, he races through books (he read my Cary's _Dante_ in a
+week), extracts the main gist of them, and is always learning some new
+thing, from shorthand to cooking, though he has no need to do much but
+behave himself for a pension. Almost harshly honest, he yet brings out
+with pride a large edition of Pope that he 'nicked' from the
+second-hand bookstall of a heathen Chinee at Singapore. That little
+episode will not make a very big blot, I imagine, on the Book of
+Judgment. If I remember aright, the British Navy was then occupied in
+protecting land or concessions that the nation itself had 'nicked' from
+the heathen.
+
+Luscombe's opinion on books, men and things, unless it has been
+borrowed from a newspaper, is always well worth hearing. His light of
+nature, by which he judges, is exceptionally powerful.
+
+While we were smoking in his front room--furnished with a curious
+mixture of cheap English things and beautiful Eastern curios--a steward
+from one of the great liners came in. He began talking about the
+behaviour in a gale of a rich snobbish Jew and the behaviour of Jews
+generally on shipboard, and was inclined to take up the high, superior,
+patriotic attitude that Jews, not being Englishmen, were necessarily a
+nuisance in a storm. "Well," said Luscombe, "all I know is, when a man
+tells me he's never been afraid of anything anywhere, I tells him to
+his face, 'You'm a damn'd liar!' One day, in a pub at Plymouth, there
+was a man--a bluejacket too--boasting he'd never known what fear was,
+and I up and asked him, 'Eh, chum? Did you say _Never_?'
+
+"'Never!' he says. 'Never in me life!'
+
+"'You'm a liar then,' says I.
+
+"'We'll see,' says he--goodish-sized chap.
+
+"'You'm a bloody liar,' says I, 'and what's more, you ain't truthful.'
+
+"So we squared up there and then, and the bung and his men hyked us out
+into the street and we was having our scrap out when the police came
+up. He ran! 'Eh, Mr Liar!' I yelled after him. 'Did you say you was
+never afraid?'
+
+"If I hadn't wasted time doing that, I shouldn't have got caught
+either. Very nearly landed me in chokey, that did. We was shipmates
+afterwards, me and that man, and very good friends. He's a warrant
+officer now."
+
+[Sidenote: _LOWER DECK TO QUARTER-DECK_]
+
+Thence the conversation passed naturally to promotion from the ranks.
+"I don't believe in it, not as a general rule," said Luscombe.
+"Officers ought to be officers, and men ought to be men, and a ship's
+always more comfortable when both keep their places. Rankers as
+officers are apt to be bullies: that we all know jolly well. And
+besides that, the likes of us can't keep our kecker up the same as
+gen'lemen, and therefore I says we ain't fit for the quarter-deck, not
+yet awhile. Tisn't that the lower deck ain't so brave as the
+quarter-deck, because it is; only it can't keep it up so long; it gets
+discouraged like, when 'tis a long job, specially when 'tis one of
+those waiting-an-doing-nothing jobs. We ain't bred up to it, and our
+fathers wasn't, and there's no good to be got out of trying to pretend
+'tisn't so."
+
+We argued on. Luscombe would not yield an inch of his position. I can't
+say offhand how far history bears him out, but I fancy that he is right
+to this extent: the lower deck has less flexibility of mind. It cannot
+view a depressing situation from so many sides at once. It is not, for
+instance, so quick to see the underlying humour of an emergency; not so
+ready to appreciate the so-called irony of fate. It cannot so easily
+turn round and laugh at itself and its predicament. So, though the
+lower deck's courage may be fully as great as, or greater than, that
+of the upper deck, it is applied more constantly, with less mental
+diversion, and therefore it tires sooner. Hence, it _may_ not be
+so effective.
+
+The argument undoubtedly has a true bearing on that sort of promotion
+which, in the prevailing educational cant, is called giving every poor
+boy (by free education, scholarships and other lures) his chance of
+climbing to the top of the ladder--as if success in life were one great
+tall ladder instead of many ladders of varying builds and heights. In
+attempting to justify modern educational policy, its victims are egged
+on too fast into a field of commercial, intellectual, or emotional
+stress for which they lack the fundamental grit, or rather for which
+the fundamental grit they do possess is not adapted, nor can be adapted
+in a generation. Their spirit, fine and valuable for the old purpose
+perhaps, is not suited to the new. Therefore, of good workmen _in
+posse_ we make bad clerks and shopmen _in esse_; of good clerks
+detestable little bureaucrats or mean-minded commercial men, and so on.
+Possible wives and mothers we turn into female creatures. And Merrie
+England swarms with makeshift folk and breakdowns.
+
+Happily nature, heredity, sometimes intervenes, and at adolescence the
+sharp boy, the pride of the examination room, develops into quite a
+nice commonplace young man, like the missionaries' nigger boy, and is
+saved, if he be not already committed to an unsuitable career.
+Otherwise, what mental deformity and slaughter! It was well said that
+education--what is called education--was the cruellest thing ever
+forced upon the poor. Mam Widger agrees. She knows her two boys are
+above the average in brains, but she says: "I'd far rather for them to
+fend for themselves an' make gude fishermen like their father or gude
+sailors like their uncles, than for 'em to be forced on by somebody
+else to what they ain't fitted for. 'Tis God helps them as helps
+themselves, they du reckon, but I can't see as he helps them as is
+pushed."
+
+
+25
+
+Uncle Jake allows us fine weather for the Regatta. "But when it du
+break up, after this yer logie [dull, hazy, calm] spell, look out!" he
+says. "Iss; look out!"
+
+[Sidenote: _WINKLING_]
+
+The day before yesterday, we were having a yarn together on the Front.
+"Must go t'morrow an' pick Jemima Cayley some wrinkles [periwinkles],"
+he said. "I got a lot o' work to do wi' my taties up to my plat
+[allotment], but I promised Jemima her should hae 'em for Regatta, an'
+her shall, if I lives to get 'em. Her says my wrinkles be twice so
+heavy as anybody else's what her has--an' so they be, proper gert
+gobbets! They t'other fellows don' know where to go for 'em, but I
+du--master wrinkles, waiting there for Jake to pick 'em. On'y I ain't
+goin' to tell they beer-barrels where 'em be. Not I!--Wude yu like to
+come? Nobody goes where I goes."
+
+"Where's that?"
+
+"Ah! Down to Longo. Yu'll see, if yu comes."
+
+"Haven't yu got a mate for it then?"
+
+[Sidenote: _UNCLE JAKE_]
+
+"_Mate!_ I'd rather go be myself than wi' some o' they bladder-headed
+friends o' brewers. _They_ don' like wrinklin' wi' Jake; makes 'em blow
+too much when they has to carry a bushel o' wrinkles, like I've a-done
+often, over the rocks an' up the cliff, two or dree miles home. They
+Double-X Barrels can't du that. Lord! can't expect 'em to.--_We'll_ go
+in the _Moondaisy_ t'morrow, an' then if we can't sail home, we can
+row, an' if it comes on a fresh wind, we'll haul her up to Refuge Cove
+an' go'n look how my orchards be getting on."
+
+It is good to hear Uncle Jake talk about the work that nobody else will
+do. (The exposure alone would be too much for many of them.) His face
+wrinkles up within its grey picture-frame beard, his keen yet wistful
+eyes open wide, and he draws up that youthful body of his--clad in
+faded blue jumper and torn trousers--on which the head of a venerable
+old man seems so incongruously set. He is the owner of a big drifter
+which hardly pays her expenses; he feels that taking out pleasure
+parties is no work for a fisherman--'never wasn't used to be at the
+beck an' call o' they sort o' people when I wer young';--and therefore
+he picks up a living, laborious but very independent, between high and
+low tide mark for many miles east and west of Seacombe. Nobody learns
+exactly when or where he goes, nor what little valuables are in the old
+sack that he carries. He seldom sleeps for more than two hours on end;
+has breakfast at midnight, dinner in the early morning, and tea-supper
+only if it happens to be handy; and he feeds mainly on bread, cheese,
+sugar and much butter, with an occasional feast of half a dozen
+mackerel at once, or a skate or a small conger. Singularly
+straightforward in all his dealings, a little of the old West-country
+wrecking spirit yet survives in him, and he enjoys nothing better than
+smuggling jetsam past the coastguards. Social position saves no one
+from hearing what Uncle Jake thinks. His tongue is loaded with scorn
+and sarcasm, but his heart holds nothing but kindness. He will jeer and
+taunt a man off the Front, and give him money round the corner or food
+in house. His nicknames are terrible--they stick. Few would care to
+turn and fight such an old man, and if they did he would almost
+certainly knock them into the dust or throw them into the sea. He is
+childless; and, since her illness several years ago, his wife, an
+untidy woman with beautiful eyes, has been scatterbrained and more
+trouble than use, a spender of his savings. He nursed her himself for
+many months. He does most of the housework now. He may remark on his
+wife, if he knows you very well, but about the childlessness he never
+talks.
+
+At eight in the morning we made sail with the wind just north of east.
+The little _Moondaisy_ was full of sacks, old boots and gear. Past
+Refuge Cove we sailed, past Dog Tooth Ledge, and across the out-ground
+of Landlock Bay, which holds the last long stretch of pebble beach for
+some miles down. Uncle Jake pointed to the western end of it. "If ever
+yu'm catched down here by a sou'wester, yu can al'ays run ashore, just
+there--calm as a mill-pond no matter how 'tis blowing. Yu can beach
+there when yu can't beach to Seacombe for the roughness o' the sea.
+Aye, I've a-done it! But yu can't get out o' Landlock Bay, though I
+mind when you could climb up the cliff jest to the east'ard o' thic
+roozing [landslip]. Howsbe-ever, 'tis a heavy gale from the south-east
+on a long spring tide as'll drive 'ee out o' thic cave there where the
+beach urns up. Now yu knows that: 'tisn't all o'em does."
+
+Similar bits of lore or reminiscence did he give me about every few
+yards of the coastline. Most merrily had the easterly wind and a
+following sea brought us down. Now we drew near the rocks, where at
+high tide the land drops sheer to the water. In the dry sunshine, such
+a sparkle was on the waves, such a shimmer on the high red cliffs, that
+it was hard to follow Uncle Jake when he said, as if he revered the
+place, "_'Tis_ an ironbound show! _'Tis_ a shop! Poor devils, what gets
+throwed up here! But I know where ther's some fine copper bolts waiting
+for me. I'll hae 'em! I've had some on 'em, an' I'll hae the rest when
+they rots out o' the timbers. Year '63 that wreck was--lovely vessel,
+loaded wi' corn. I mind it well. _'Twas_ a night!"
+
+[Sidenote: _AN IRONBOUND SHOW_]
+
+We ran the _Moondaisy_ ashore at Brandey-Keg Cove--a little beach
+running up into a deep gloomy cave where the smugglers used to store
+their cargoes and haul them up over the cliff. "Us can walk down to
+Lobster Ledge an' west from there to Tatie Rock. I knows where they
+master gobbets be, if nobody an't had 'em--an' nobody an't. They don'
+like this iron-bound shop. They leaves it to Jake. But they wuden't, if
+they know'd what was here."
+
+I ate some of my breakfast while Uncle Jake was changing his boots and
+shifting his outer clothing. He would accept only one of my small
+cheese sandwiches. "I got some bread and butter here," he said, but I
+'took partic'lar notice,' as Tony puts it, that he ate none of the
+bread and butter. And he refused to take a second sip of my tea because
+his sensitive nose detected that there had been whiskey in the bottle.
+
+As we walked along the rocks, he placed above high-tide mark what bits
+of wreckage he could find, and kept a sharp look-out for any rabbits
+which might have fallen over the cliff. The only two we found, however,
+had been partially eaten by sea-gulls and rats. "Let 'em hae 'em an'
+welcome," said Uncle Jake. "The winter's coming. I can't think how they
+poor gulls lives when all the sea round about is a hustle o' froth. I
+al'ays feeds 'em when I can. Don't yu think that _they_ gets hungry
+tu?"
+
+At Lobster Ledge--a jumble of peaked rocks with pools between--he left
+his sack conspicuously on the top of a high stone, and hopped--seemed
+to hop--down to a pool. "They'm here!" he cried. I heard them
+clatter-clatter into his old cake tin, and then a tin-full rattle into
+his sack. On those rocks, where few can step at all without great care,
+he raced about, bent down double, and jumped and glided as actively as
+an acrobat--a veritable rock-man. "Come here!" he called. "Jest yu turn
+over thic stone. Ther's some there. My senses, what gobbets they be! If
+they ther fuddle-heads what goes nosing about Broken Rocks, on'y
+know'd...."
+
+Underneath the stone, clinging to it and lying on the bed of the pool,
+were so many large winkles that instead of picking them out, I found it
+quicker to sweep up handfuls of loose stuff and then to pick out the
+refuse from the winkles. When Uncle Jake came across an unusually good
+pocket he would call me to it and hop on somewhere else. There was an
+element of sport in catching the dull-looking gobbets so many together.
+I soon got to know the likely stones--heavy ones that wanted coaxing
+over,--and discovered also that the winkles hide themselves in a green,
+rather gelatinous weed, fuzzy like kale tops, from which they can be
+combed with the fingers. They love, too, a shadowed pool which is
+tainted a little, but not too much, by decaying vegetable matter. Uncle
+Jake likes the stones turned back and then replaced 'as you finds 'em.'
+
+[Sidenote: _WHAT GOBBETS THEY BE!_]
+
+I emptied my baler, holding perhaps a quart, into the ballast-bag. How
+one's back ached! How old and rheumaticy had one's knees suddenly
+become! Uncle Jake feels nothing of that, for all his sixty-five years.
+He still skipped from pool to pool. He flung me a lobster. "There! put
+that in your bag for tay. Tide's dead low. The wind's dying away: sun's
+burnt it up. Shuden' wonder if it don't come in sou'west, an' if it du
+we'll hae a fair wind home along.--Well, how du 'ee like it? Eh?"
+
+"All right."
+
+"Ah! yu ought to be down here in the winter, like I been, when you got
+to put your hands wet into your pockets to get 'em warm enough to feel
+the gobbets--aye, to hold 'em! Then carry 'em five mile home on your
+back to make 'ee warm again."
+
+So we went on: grab, grab, grab! clatter-clatter! rattle! We talked
+less and worked harder, because we were tired. The tide crept up. The
+wind veered to south-east and strengthened. "'Tis time to be off out of
+thees yer," said Uncle Jake. "The lop'll rise when the flid tide makes.
+Yu may know everything there is to know about fishing, but," he added
+grimly, "if yu don' know when to be off, 'twill all o'it be no gude to
+'ee some day. Blast thees wind! We'll hae to row home now, or ratch out
+a couple o' miles to fetch in."
+
+We shouldered our sacks for the half-mile walk to the _Moondaisy_.
+Walk.... Scramble! Uncle Jake seemed to glide from rock to rock, but
+with two or three stone weight awkwardly perched on my shoulder, the
+wet running down my neck and an arm going numb, I slithered down the
+weed-covered slopes in a very breakneck fashion. I rather felt for the
+bladderheads who refuse to go wrinkling far from home.
+
+[Sidenote: _CAUGHT BY THE TIDE_]
+
+Afloat again, we used the winkles for ballast in place of shingle. The
+lop _had_ made, and was against us. We rowed up Landlock Bay to the
+western side of Dog Tooth Ledge. Uncle Jake made an exclamation and
+stood up. "What's that? Whoever's that? There! down there to Lobster
+Ledge! A gen'leman an' lady, looks so. How did us come to miss they?
+Look! They'm sittin' down, the fules!--Hi, yu! Hi! Hi!--They'm catched.
+When yu see the water washing over the Dog's Tooth, yu can't get round
+the ledge wi'out swimming.--Hi, yu! Hi!--They'm in for a night o'it
+sure, till the tide falls, if we don' take 'em round to Refuge Cove.
+Ther's nowhere there where they be, to get upon land.--Hi! Hi!
+Yu!--They'm mazed. An' her an't got no stockings on nuther.--Hi! hi!
+Hurry up!--Can't bide here all day. The flid and the sea's making
+fast."
+
+They came on at a leisurely pace. The Dog's Tooth was continuously
+awash. Spray broke on it. "D'yu know," said Uncle Jake when they were
+near enough, "that yu'm catched by the tide? Yu'm in for a night o'it
+on this yer beach, wi'out yu swims round the ledge or lets we row yu to
+the lane in Refuge Cove. Yu can't get up on land herefrom."
+
+"Oh...." said the man. "We'd better come on board your boat then."
+
+It took Uncle Jake nearly half-an-hour to row the three-quarters of a
+mile across the tide-rip on the ledge and into Refuge Cove. I carefully
+refrained from doing anything to lead them to suppose that they were
+aboard other than a fishing boat. It was Uncle Jake's expedition: his
+the prospective reward. When I helped the man ashore, he put some
+coppers into my hand. "There's threepence for the old man's tobacco,"
+he said with an air of great benevolence. I was too surprised to speak:
+I pushed off and then burst into a laugh.
+
+"What did 'er give 'ee?"
+
+"Threepence. _Threepence!_ For your tobacco!"
+
+"Thank yu. I don't use tobacco. Yu'd better keep thic donation. They'd
+ha' catched their death o' cold there all night, an' there ain't no
+other boats down here along, nor won't be. That's what they reckons
+their bloody lives be worth, an' that's what the lives of the likes o'
+they _be_ worth, tu! Dreepence! My senses...."
+
+We roared with laughter. It put heart into us for our stiff row home
+against wind, wave and tide. When I went for'ard to place the cut-rope
+ready, Uncle Jake had to call me aft again: spite of his strength the
+boat was being beaten to leeward.
+
+It was nearly four o'clock when we had hauled up and were carrying the
+winkles on our backs down one of the untidy little roadways into Under
+Town. No dinner or high-tea was waiting for Uncle Jake. The house was
+unswept. How draggled the little bits of fern in the old china pots
+looked! The fire was out; the hearth piled up with ashes; and on the
+table stood a basin of potatoes in water, most of them unpeeled.
+
+Uncle Jake came to a standstill, acutely alive in the midst of a
+domestic deadness. He raised himself upright beneath his load of
+winkles. "That's what I got to put up wi'," he said. "An't had a bite
+since breakfast at four by the clock this morning, 'cept thic sandwich
+o' yours. Tis a wonder how I du put up wi' it. I don' know for sure."
+
+[Sidenote: _MEASURING UP_]
+
+"Thees is what I got to put up wi'!" he repeated when Mrs Jake came in
+from a neighbour's.
+
+"I forgot," she said with a gay high-pitched little laugh which had in
+it a tang of acquiescent despair--the echo of a mind that has ceased
+fighting anything, even itself.
+
+"Forgot! Yu forgets!" Then in a softer tone: "Gie us the quart cup."
+
+He emptied my winkles out upon the stone floor, knelt down, and
+measured them back into the ballast-bag: "one--two--three--four, that's
+one--five--six--seven--eight, that's two pecks--nine--ten--half a peck
+over; good for you, skipper!" He had four pecks himself, together with
+several small lobsters which he threw out to me.
+
+"But you'll eat those...."
+
+"No, I shan't. Don't want 'em. Take 'em in home for yer tay."
+
+Then he hunted out of an inside breast-pocket a screw of newspaper, and
+from it took a half-crown piece:
+
+"That's your share."
+
+"But...."
+
+"Go on! If you hadn' a-come I should ha' been the poorer by more'n
+that, an' that's what one o' they beery bladderheads would ha' had if
+they'd a-come--on'y I won't hae 'em 'long wi' me. Better yu to hae it
+than one o' they, to gie to the brewer. I wishes 'ee to take it. Yu've
+earned it, an' thank yu for your help. _I_ done all right out
+o'it."
+
+
+26
+
+The Regatta has gone off well. The day was fine, the wind nor'west and
+not too squally. There was a brave show of bunting; very many people
+and several bands came down to the short Front; and there were races on
+the water, in the water, and, in the evening, on land. The sea
+sparkled. The place was all of a flutter. Uncle Jake, irritated by the
+invasion of his beach, became most scornful over the abundance of high
+starched collars, and the kid gloves of the shop-assistants. Some of
+the young Seacombe braves collected round to tease him and, if
+possible, to work him into one of his famous passions. But they dared
+not so much as nudge him; he is too earnest, too vigorous. He lashed
+them off with his tongue. And when a dinghy capsized through trying to
+sail off the wind in a squall, it was the old man who was quickest at
+the water's edge with a punt, and first on the spot, although a
+four-oared boat raced out to the rescue.
+
+[Sidenote: _REGATTA_]
+
+Some of the Widgers won races, I believe. One takes no great note of
+prizes: they are too small. The Regatta is not primarily an affair of
+the fisherfolk; to take any great part in it would be to neglect their
+own work; and when they do race, they have a neat method of defeating
+the patronage of the townsfolk who provide prize-money in order that
+they and the visitors may enjoy the spectacle of fishermen (in fisher
+phrase) pulling their insides out for nort. The prize-money is pooled
+and divided among all the competitors. In consequence, the races are
+rowed and sailed with great dignity, and many of the visitors excite
+themselves halfway to delirium over the extreme--the make-believe
+closeness of the finishes. It is not very sporting perhaps, but
+indulgence in the sporting spirit is for those who can afford it. The
+Seacombe fisherfolk can't.
+
+A confounding number of the Widger family and its connexions arrived by
+boat, road and rail. Two or three grand teas were provided one after
+the other. Mrs Widger--looking really very young, alert, and
+pretty--packed the children off to the beach with gentry-cakes in their
+hands. Well she did so, for every chair in the kitchen was occupied by
+some relative, and the display of best clothes was most alarming. Worst
+of all, one party had brought the family idiot--a simpering, lollopy
+creature, stiff in the wrong places, who could not feed himself
+properly. With a vigorous tapping of the forehead, he was pointed out
+to me. "He's a little deeficient, you know, sir--something lacking."
+The idiot, finding himself the centre of attraction, fairly crowed with
+delight. "Ou-ah!" he went. "Ou-ah! ou-ah!"
+
+On the pretext that a boat wanted hauling up, I escaped, with a piece
+of bread and jam in my hand, like the children.
+
+A man of slightly unsober dignity accosted me in the Gut, and asked if
+Jim somebody-or-other was within. "Him and me don't speak, nor eet
+meet," he explained. "I won't hae nort to do wi' he, nor enter the
+house where he is, for all we be related.--Come an' have a drink 'long
+wi' me, sir; now du; I asks 'ee.--'Tis safer, yu know, for us not to
+meet."
+
+For the second time I lied, and escaped.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE VETERANS' RACE_]
+
+Uncle Jake ran up from the beach. "Yer!" he said, "there's a race to
+Saltmeadow, a veteran's race, for men over fifty. Yu come wi' me, an'
+I'll go in for it--an' beat the lot, I will. I knows I can." Off we
+went, Uncle Jake in a high excitement. At the centre of the big oblong
+ring, two clean-built jumpers, men in the heyday of their strength,
+were making a local record for the high jump. Uncle Jake shouted out
+praise and sympathy to them. We found our way to where the veterans
+were grouped together, encouraging each other to enter with much foul
+language--which made them feel young again, no doubt. What a lot they
+were! some aged to thinness, others become fat and piggish. Only Uncle
+Jake appeared quite sound in wind and limb. He took off his boots and
+stockings, walked into the ring with a fine imitation of the athlete's
+swagger combined with a curious touch of shyness. "Go it Uncle Jake!"
+they shouted. At the end of the first lap, he found himself so far
+ahead that he threw his old round sailor's cap high into the air and
+caught it, and he skipped along to the winning-post like a young lamb.
+A great cheer was echoed from cliff to cliff. Uncle Jake has not spoken
+his mind all his life for nothing. Seacombe does not unanimously like
+him, but it has the sense to be rather proud of him. A veterans' race
+is usually a sad spectacle, a grotesque _memento mori_: for Uncle
+Jake 'twas a triumph.
+
+The next great sight of the evening was to watch the fishermen from
+other villages put off to their boats. Most of them were 'half seas
+over,' some nearly helpless. They were thrown aboard from the punts and
+had their sails hoisted for them; or, if they did it themselves, it was
+with most comic jerks. The gods, who undoubtedly have a tenderness for
+drunkards--why not?--must have looked after them, for no news has come
+of any accident.
+
+On returning in house, I met Tony with several of his men relatives. He
+drew me aside. "Maybe I'll come home drunk to-night, but I promise 'ee
+I won't disturb 'ee, an' if yu hears ort--well, yu'll know, won' 'ee?"
+
+For some reason not easily to be fathomed his kindly warning made me
+feel ashamed of my own sobriety, ashamed that I dared not 'go on the
+bust' with him. I firmly believe that it does a man good to 'go on the
+bust' occasionally. It develops fellow-feeling. And besides, who has
+the right to cast a stone at a man for snatching a little jollity when
+he may, be it alcoholic or not? The truth is, that Tony, who has no
+craving for drink, was prepared to plunge into the fastest current of
+the life around him, and to take his chance, whilst I, for niggardly,
+self-preservative, prudential reasons, was not.
+
+However, he came home quite sober.
+
+
+27
+
+[Sidenote: _THE SQUARE'S AWAKENING_]
+
+Up-country, next week, I shall greatly miss my window overlooking
+Alexandra Square. I have lived (rebelliously) in suburban streets where
+only clattering feet, tradesmen's carts and pitiful street singers
+broke the monotony; in a Paris _chambre a garcon, au sixieme_, where
+the view was roofs and the noise of the city was attenuated to a
+murmur; in country houses which looked out on sweeps of hill, down,
+vale and sea, so changeable and lovely that they were dreamlike and as
+a dream abide in the memory.... Here I have quick human life just below
+my window, and--up the Gut--a view of the sea unbroken hence to the
+horizon; a patch of water framed on three sides by straight walls and
+on the fourth by the sky-line; a miniature ocean across which the
+drifters sail to the western offing, and the little boats curvet to and
+fro, and
+
+    The stately ships go on
+    To their haven under the hill.
+
+There is always, here, a sound of the sea. When, at night, the Square
+is still, it seems to advance, to come nearer, to be claiming one for
+its own.
+
+But the Square, though still at night compared with daytime, is never
+dead, never absolutely asleep. Fishermen returning from sea crunch on
+the gravel. Lights in the windows (most of the people seem to burn
+night lamps) give it a cosy appearance; the cats make one think that
+fiends are pouring out of hell, through a hole in the roadway. Peep o'
+day is the stillest time of all. The cats seat themselves on walls.
+Sparrows chirp sleepily. Some rooks and a hoary-headed jackdaw come
+down from the trees nearby, quarter the roadway for garbage, and fly
+away croaking. Busy starlings follow. If the weather is hard and fish
+offal scarce on the beach, the gulls will pay us a supercilious visit.
+About six o'clock the children begin singing in bed, and soon
+afterwards one hears the familiar conversation of families getting up.
+"Edie! what for the Lord's sake be yu doing? Yu'll catch your death o'
+cold. Johnnie, if yu don't make haste, I'll knock your head off, I
+will!" A child or two may cry, but on the whole their merriment does
+not seem greatly damped by their mothers' blood-curdling threats. I
+hear also, but not very often, the shrill wailing monotone, the weep
+dissolved in a shout, of a woman upbraiding her man for the previous
+night.
+
+The children being dressed, but not washed (it is useless to wash the
+average child very long before sending it off to school), they run out
+to the beach to see what there is to be seen and to inspect the
+ash-buckets for treasure. An ash-bucket is Eldorado to them. If nothing
+is happening, are they at a loss for something to do? By no means. They
+come in house, fetch out tin cans, and beat them in a procession round
+the Square.
+
+The milkmen arrive, then several greengrocers. One would think that
+Under Town lived on vegetables. The explanation is that the
+greengrocers can come here, and, in tidying up their carts, can throw
+their refuse upon the roadway, as they would not be allowed to do in
+'higher class' streets. They swear genially at the housewives, and are
+forgiven.
+
+So the work and gossip of the day goes on, with a slight quieting down
+in the afternoon and an incredible amount of conversation after work,
+in the evening.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE ALEXANDRA BACK-DOOR_]
+
+On Sundays, the great fact of best clothes lends a different and, to my
+mind, a less pleasant--a harder--tone to the children's voices. But
+their merriment cannot wholly be suppressed. Did those who dislike the
+Salvation Army wish to illustrate its shortcomings, they could find a
+biting satire ready-made by the children of Under Town. A fat small boy
+comes round here, who has attentively studied the meetings; who can
+copy the canting, up-and-down, gentle-explosive, the _Behold I am
+saved, ye sinners_! tone to a nicety. He marches at the head of a
+band of serious infants who bear rags, tied to sticks and parasols, as
+banners. Every now and then he circles them to a standstill for an
+harangue about blood, fire and Jesus. (It is the gory part which
+delights him.) Then the procession re-forms, imitating brass
+instruments as unbroken voices can, and singing a Salvation hymn. They
+are earnest, the children; except Tommy Widger, whose irrepressible
+spirit causes him to march in the rear with a mocking dance and an
+infinitely grotesque squint. He is a pagan. He can turn the children's
+serious imitation into roaring Aristophanic farce. He represents the
+healthful laughing element of an age wherein rest from sorrow is too
+much sought in fever. He infects us all with jollity.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+The back-door of the Alexandra, which opens on the Gut, is my home
+comedy. It is strangely fascinating; sad in a way, but very human; for
+nothing on earth, except one or two of the very great things of life,
+is so democratic as the back-door of a public house. Soon after
+breakfast, or even before, the tradesmen sneak round for their
+pick-me-ups. Then the housewives go for their jugs of ale and stout.
+Some people never enter the Alexandra except by the back way. They
+march down the Gut as if on important business; then, in the twinkling
+of an eye, they are gone within. One worn little woman, who wears a
+loose cape and a squalid sailor hat, walks up and down the Gut till it
+is completely clear, then jumps into the door, and closes it very
+quietly. When she comes out again it is as a rabbit comes from a
+bolt-hole when a ferret is just behind. She runs five yards, stands
+still, looks up and down, and tries very hard to walk home
+unconcernedly. Sunday evenings, she hangs about outside until the bar
+is opened. With the turn of the key, in she goes. Once a servant,
+gossiping with her sailorman, kept the little woman outside for fully
+ten minutes after the lock was shot back. Poor little woman, how great
+her craving must be!
+
+Last week, I saw a policeman standing at the top of the Gut. Up he
+looked; down he looked; Seacombe was orderly. Stepping as if to arrest
+a malefactor, he marched down the Gut.... Where was the policeman? A
+battered billycock and a rakish pipe looked round the corner, then
+withdrew. The battered billycock knew where the policeman was. The
+price of a glass, and billycock would have been there too.
+
+I was glad; for a few days before that the same policeman had arrested
+a man by flinging him halfway across the street into the mud. It was
+only a tramp. His witnesses, being poor people, dared not volunteer to
+give evidence on his behalf, and would not have been believed had they
+done so. He was sentenced to fourteen days: drunk and incapable,
+abusive moreover. A drunkard cannot legally be arrested unless he is
+also incapable or disorderly. It used to be a trick of the police to
+shadow a harmless _Weary Willie_ until he happened to stumble, or even
+to butt him down themselves. He then becomes drunk and incapable within
+the meaning of the act, for, if the magistrate should doubt, is there
+not dirt on his clothes? Obviously, circumstantially, he was incapable.
+_He_, of course, must be a poor man. The trick is not safe with
+tradesmen. These things are commonplaces amongst the poor.
+
+But billycock hat will not forget!
+
+
+28
+
+[Sidenote: _MACKEREL DRIFTING_]
+
+Yesterday morning early there was a great excitement along the beach.
+Drift-boats could be seen in the offing. "I tell thee what 'tis," they
+said, "the whiting be in an' us chaps an't been out to look for 'em. Us
+don't du nort nowadays like us used tu." Later on, however, we heard
+that the Plymouth drifters had been out after an autumn shoal of
+mackerel, had caught some thousands and had made good prices. The
+season for mackerel drifting here usually ends with July or August, but
+good October mackerel, mixed with herring, have occasionally been
+caught. Tony, John and myself decided to put to sea. When the other
+boats saw our fleet of nets being hauled aboard (in a furious hurry),
+they fitted out too.
+
+We shoved off just before dark. The wind was strongish WSW.--off land,
+that is--so that inshore the sea was almost calm, except for the swell
+running in from outside. What it was like outside the white horses and
+the wind-streaks showed. Hardly had we gone half a mile before we heard
+the queer clutching noise which meant that a strong puff of wind had
+compelled Tony to let the sheet fly. The squall past, he hauled it in
+again, put his legs across the stern and hung on. We sailed eight miles
+from land in ten minutes under the hour--speed, that, for a
+twenty-two-foot open boat with its mainsail reefed! Where we downhauled
+to shoot the nets, the sea, unsheltered by cliffs and headlands,
+was--as Tony beautifully put it--'rising all up in heaps.' Whilst I was
+trying to keep the boat before the wind, for net-shooting, a great
+comber plopped over the stern right upon my back. The sky was weird.
+Great wind-drifts of rain-cloud constantly spread out from the west,
+and wolves, higher up in the sky, were driving across the moon. We
+heated tea, but did not try to sleep. Tony and John kept up a curious
+dialogue. "What do 'ee think o' it, then?"
+
+"'Tisn't vitty. I said so all along."
+
+[Sidenote: _HAULING INBOARD_]
+
+"If a skat o' rain comes--and 'tis raining on land, seems so--the
+wind'll back out to sou'west, an' us'll hae to rin for it. A perty
+lop'll get up tu, an' we'm more'n a mile from land."
+
+"Us'll haul in be 'leven. No gude hanging on out here. If the wind
+_du_ back...."
+
+I have never heard them talk so much about the weather. And all the
+while, the sky drove into splendid cloud-forms, all windy, nearly all
+rainy. We lost the Eddystone light, then lost the Seacombe light and
+recovered the former, as a storm drifted along shore. From time to time
+we thought the wind was backing a bit.
+
+Supper, for me, had to be crammed down on a rather queasy stomach.
+"We'm all ways to once!" Tony remarked. The wind did definitely back a
+point or two. "Only let it once die away," said Tony in the tone of _I
+told you so_; "then yu'll see how it can spring from the sou'west when
+'tis a-minded."
+
+One minute I wished myself home, safe in bed, and thought with
+grotesque grief of some unfinished work. Next minute, I knew that I
+would not have missed the night out there for any consideration. The
+grey, slightly sheeny boil of the sea around us; the sweeping savagery
+of the sky; the intimacy of the waters....
+
+But we were all relieved when eleven o'clock came. The watchfulness was
+a strain.
+
+When one is steering instead of hauling, the getting-in of nine
+forty-fathom nets seems interminable. One net, two nets, three nets--a
+third of nine,--four, five--more than half the fleet,--six--two-thirds
+of nine,--seven, eight--nine all but one;--and so on, with an
+occasional wave coming inboard, until the very last square buoy comes
+bobbing towards the boat; hand over hand, buoy by buoy, net by net,
+holding fast when the pull of the tide is too strong, and pausing
+irritably to pick out the fish. We stepped the great mast, shifted all
+the ballast to wind'ard. John came aft to steer, and seated himself on
+the counter, a strangely powerful, statuesque figure in his wet
+oilskins. "Have 'ee got the sheet in yer hand?" Tony called out from
+the bows.
+
+John did not trouble to reply.
+
+"Have 'ee got the sheet in yer hand, John?"
+
+"No, I an't! What the hell do 'ee want the sheet for? Wind's abeam."
+
+"Might want it bad," said Tony.
+
+[Sidenote: _A REMBRANDTESQUE PICTURE_]
+
+We left it fast however; and with the same, an elemental passion took
+possession of my mind; ousted all else. I had been anxious about the
+sheet, had thought John foolhardy. Now I didn't care. I could have
+cried out aloud for joy as the brave old craft rose to the seas with a
+marvellous easy motion and the waves came skatting in over the bows.
+Before long, I was on my knees with the baler; John was getting every
+inch out of the wind, and Tony was standing abaft the nets with the
+sheet dangling through his hand. By the light of the riding-lamp on the
+mizzen mast (its glass patched with an old jam cover), they in their
+angular wet oil-skins--the rain was pelting--and the rich wet brown of
+the boat's varnish, made a wonderful Rembrandtesque picture. I hardly
+know how long we were sailing home; it slipped my mind to take the
+time. About two o'clock I was halfway down the beach with Tony cursing
+above me and John doing the same below. Someone had 'messed up' our
+capstan wire. While Tony was putting that right in the dark--and
+pinching his fingers severely--the boat washed broadside on and began
+to fill. We had only five dozen fish. They sold badly.
+
+In time, and with practice, I could, I believe, do most that these
+fishermen do except one thing: I doubt I could stand the racket of my
+own thoughts. Tony and John would go out to-night, to-morrow, every
+night. But I have slept so dead (not from bodily tiredness) that, the
+door being bolted against the children, they were unable to waken me
+for dinner, and in the end Tony told them to 'let the poor beast bide.'
+Of what nature was that passion, so exultant and so tiring? Are these
+fishermen so used to it that they 'don't take much note o'it'? For they
+feel it. I have seen it in their faces. One can always tell. The eyes
+widen and brighten; hasty movements become so desperately cool. If what
+was an episode in my life, is part and parcel of theirs, how much the
+better for _them_!
+
+
+29
+
+To-day the sea passion, or whatever it is, came again.
+
+While I was asleep, the wind backed and freshened. Balks of wood from a
+naval target kept washing in. Balks make winter firing when coal is
+dear and money scarce. Boats had been bringing them in all the morning,
+till the sea became too rough. Tony had none however. In the afternoon
+he complained bitterly:
+
+"They all got some wude but me, an' us an't got enough in house for the
+winter nuther." Just then we saw a large piece washing along on the
+flood tide over the outside of Broken Rocks. "Get a rope--grass rope,
+mind. Down with her. The _Cock Robin_! Quick. Jump aboard. Take oars.
+Hurry up casn'? Get hold thic oar. Look out!"
+
+[Sidenote: _OUT AFTER FLOTSAM_]
+
+No time to wait for a smooth. Tony shoved the _Cock Robin_ into a surf
+we should not otherwise have thought of facing. As it turned out, we
+got off better than we usually do in only a moderate sea, though we
+should have capsized to a certainty had the boat sheered. 'Twas, "Look
+out! Damme, look out! Here's a swell coming! Get her head to it or we'm
+over. Gude for us!" Some of the waves, rising and topping in the
+shallow water over the rocks, seemed to make the _Cock Robin_ sit
+upright on her stern, like a dog begging, and the higher the seas rose
+the more we gloried in them. Sufficient for the moment was the wave
+thereof. We swore at each other in a sort of chant. I had to repress an
+impulse to jump overboard and swim to the balk, instead of trying to
+work up to it with a boat that had, every other moment, to be turned
+bows on to the sea. The slightest error of judgment on Tony's part, and
+we should indeed have swum for it. I had such a curious feeling of
+being _in_ the sea--as much a part of it as the waves themselves--that
+the affair ceased to be a struggle. It became a glorious great big
+game. Yet for work we were so cool that, though we towed our balk
+ashore and shoved off after another, we hardly got wet above the knees.
+
+We were beside ourselves, and all ourselves. Where does that exultant
+feeling, that devil-beyond-oneself, come from? From what depth of human
+personality does it uprise, whirling, like those primitive
+passions--sex, hunger, rage, fear--which may be boxed up awhile by the
+will, but which, once unloosed, sweep the will aside and carry one off
+like froth in a gale, until physical exhaustion sets in and allows the
+will to re-assert itself? One understands the evolution of the
+primitive self-preservative and race-preservative passions. How has
+this latent daredevilry become so implanted in us that it rises from
+the bottom depths of one's nature; and how has it become ordinarily so
+hidden?
+
+Above all what is the effect of this passion on seafaring men? To say
+that familiarity breeds contempt is--even if it be correct--to beg the
+question. What is the effect of that familiarity? It might be said that
+they are the subjects of a sub-acute, persistent form of the
+daredevilry which uprose in me unexpectedly and acutely. But again, the
+sub-acute lifelong form of it is likely to have the greater influence
+on a man's self, on his morale and his character. Hence, I believe, the
+width of these men, their largeness. It was good to hear Tony talk in
+the most matter-of-fact manner (yet with a touch of reverence, as
+towards an ever-possible contingency) of a Salcombe fisherman who was
+drowned. "Her was drownded all through his own carelessness, and didn't
+rise in the water for a month. ('Tis nine days down and nine days up,
+wi' the crab bites out of 'ee, as a rule.) An' he wer carried up by the
+tide an' collected, like, out o' the water just at the back o' his own
+house. Nice quiet chap he was." That coolness of speech one saw
+plainly, is the outcome not of contempt, still less of non-feeling, but
+of familiarity, of a breadth of mind in looking at the catastrophe. I
+have not noticed such breadth of mind elsewhere except among those who
+live precariously and the few of very great religious faith.
+
+An hour after bringing in the balks, we were hauling the boats over the
+wall, and at high tide the seas swept across the road.
+
+
+30
+
+[Sidenote: _A SING-SONG_]
+
+Many an evening we have had small sing-songs in the kitchen. To-night,
+on account of my going and the need to give me a cheery send-off, we
+had quite a concert. Tony was star.
+
+Supper being pushed back on the table and a piece of wreckage flung on
+the fire, he made himself ready by taking off his soaked boots and
+stockings, and plumping his feet on Mam Widger's lap; then brought
+himself into the vocal mood with a long rigmarole that he used to
+recite with the Mummers at Christmas time. Soon we were humming,
+whistling and singing "Sweet Evelina," whose sole musical merit is that
+her chorus goes with a swing. The fire crackled and burnt blue. The
+fragrant steam of the grog rose to the ceiling and settled on the
+window. We leaned right back in our chairs.
+
+"Missis," said Tony, "I feels like zingin' to-night."
+
+"Wait a minute while I shuts the door, else they kids'll be down for
+more supper."
+
+"Us got it, an't us?"
+
+"Yes, but _they_'ve had enough."
+
+When Tony sings, he throws his head back and closes his eyes, so that,
+but for the motions of his mouth, he looks asleep, even deathlike, and
+is, in fact, withdrawn into himself.
+
+I think he sees his songs, as well as sings them. I often wonder what
+pictures are flitting through his mind beneath (as I imagine) the place
+where the thick grizzled hair thins to the red forehead. His voice is a
+high tenor. I make accompaniment an octave below, whilst Mrs Widger--a
+little nasal in tone and not infrequently adrift in tune--supports him
+from above.
+
+We sang "The Poor Smuggler's Boy"--
+
+    Your pity I crave,
+      Won't you give me employ?
+    Or forlorn I must wander,
+      Said the poor smuggler's boy.
+
+Then the "Skipper and his Boy"--
+
+    Over the mounting waves so 'igh,
+    We'll sail together, my boy and I-I,
+    We'll sail together, my bo-oy and I!
+
+"Have 'ee wrote to George?" Tony asked.
+
+"'Tis your place to du that."
+
+"I an't got time...."
+
+"Thee asn't got time for nort!"
+
+    The fisher's is a merry life!
+        Blow, winds, blow!
+    The fisher and his vitty wife!
+        Row, boys, row!
+    He drives no plough on stubborn land,
+    His fruits are ready to his hand.
+    No nipping frosts his orchards fear,
+    He has his autumn all the year,
+        Blow, winds, blow!
+
+    The farmer has his rent to pay,
+        Blow, winds, blow!
+    And seeds to purchase every day,
+        Row, boys, row!
+    But he who farms the rolling deep,
+    He never sows, can always reap,
+    The ocean's fields are fair and free,
+    There ain't no rent days on the sea;
+      The fisher's is a merry life!
+        Blow, winds, blow!
+        Blow, damn ye, blow!
+
+"Aye!" said Tony with conviction, "thic's one side o'it."
+
+[Sidenote: "_ROLLING HOME_"]
+
+He tried a note or two at different pitches, then struck with energy
+into the fine song, "Rolling Home." (Who that has steered for England
+in a ship--and by ship I do not mean a bustling steam-packet or a
+floating hotel, but a ship to whose crew England stands for fresh food,
+women, wine, home.... Who that has so steered the course for England,
+does not feel a catch at his vitals on hearing the melody, at once
+plaintive and triumphant, of "Rolling Home?")
+
+    Pipe all hands to man the capstan, see your cables run down clear;
+    Soon our ship will weigh her anchor, for old England's shores we steer;
+    If we heave round with a will boys, soon our anchor it will trip,
+    And across the briny ocean we will steer our gallant ship:
+            Rolling home, rolling home!
+            Rolling home across the sea!
+            Rolling home to Merrie England!
+            Rolling home, true love, to thee!
+
+    Man the bars then with a will, boys, clap all hands that can clap on;
+    As we heave around the capstan, we will sing this well-known song;
+    It will bring back scenes and changes of this parting gift so rare;
+    We shall hear sweet songs of music softly whispering through the air.
+            Rolling home, rolling home!
+            Rolling home across the sea!
+            Rolling home to Merrie England!
+            Rolling home, true love, to thee!
+
+    Up aloft amid the rigging, as we sail the waters blue,
+    Whilst we cross the briny ocean, we will always think of you;
+    We will leave you our best wishes as we leave this rocky shore;
+    We are bound for Merrie England, to return to you no more!
+            Rolling home, rolling home!
+            Rolling home, across the sea!
+            Rolling home to Merrie England!
+            Rolling home, my love to thee!
+
+To Mrs Widger's great disgust, Tony has been learning _in bed_ the
+correct words (he knew the tune) of "Gay Spanish Ladies." That he gave
+us as a finale.
+
+    Farewell and adieu to you, gay Spanish Ladies.
+    Farewell and adieu to you, Ladies of Spain!
+    For we've received orders for to sail for old England.
+    But we hope in a short time to see you again.
+
+    We'll rant and we'll roar like true British heroes,
+    We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt seas,
+    Until we strike soundings in the Channel of old England.
+    From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues....
+
+How we did rant and roar the wonderful up-Channel verse, with its
+clever use of the high-sounding promontories of the south!
+
+    The first land we made, it was called the Deadman,
+    Next Ram Head off Plymouth, Start, Portland and Wight,
+    We passed up by Beachy, by Parley and Dungeness,
+    And hove our ship to off the South Foreland light....
+
+Our glasses were empty. We drove out the cat, gutted some fish,
+extinguished the lamp, and came upstairs to the tune, repeated, of
+"Rolling Home." All the tunes are ringing in my head.
+
+[Sidenote: _ART THAT IS LIVED_]
+
+There is something about this singing of sea-songs by a seafarer which
+makes them grip one extraordinarily. They are far from perfect in
+execution, they are not always quite in tune, especially on Tony's high
+notes, yet, I am certain, they are as artistic in the best sense as any
+of the fine music I have heard. Tony sings with imagination: he sees,
+_lives_ what he is singing. Between this sort of song and most, there
+is much the same difference as between going abroad, and reading a book
+of travels; or between singing folk-songs with the folk and twittering
+bowdlerised versions in a drawing-room. However imperfect technically,
+Tony's songs are an expression of the life he lives, rather than an
+excursion into the realms of art--into the expression of other kinds of
+life--with temporarily stimulated and projected imagination. His art is
+perpetual creation, not repetition of a thing created once and for all.
+The art that is _lived_, howsoever imperfect, has an advantage over
+the most finished art that is merely repeated. Next after the music of,
+as one might say, superhuman creative force--like Bach's and
+Beethoven's--comes this kind, of Tony's.
+
+Cultured people talk about the artistic tastes of the poor, would have
+them read--well, they don't quite know what--something 'good,'
+something namely that appeals to the cultured. It has always been my
+experience in much lending of books, that the poor will read the
+literature of life's fundamental daily realities quickly enough, once
+they know of its existence. What they will not read, what in the
+struggle for existence they cannot waste time over, is the literature
+of the _etceteras_ of life, the decorations, the vapourings. Sane
+minds, like healthy bodies, crave strong meats, and the strong meats of
+literature are usually the worst cooked. I am inclined to think that
+the taste of the poor, the uneducated, is on the right lines, though
+undeveloped, whilst the taste of the educated consists of beautifully
+developed wrongness, an exquisite secession from reality. As Nietzsche
+pointed out, degenerates love narcotics; something to make them forget
+life, not face it. Their meats must be strange and peptonized.
+Therefore they hate, they are afraid of, the greatest things in
+life--the commonplace. Much culture has debilitated them. Rank life
+would kill them--or save them.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+                                                         SALISBURY,
+                                                         _October_.
+
+
+1
+
+It is just at dawn that the coming day declares itself most plainly;
+not earlier, not later. This morning at peep o' day the wind was NNW.,
+the air delicate and peaceful. A band of dirty red water washed in
+fantastic outline along the cliffs. The sea, with its calm great
+rollers, bore upon it only the rags of last night's fury; as if it had
+been less a part of the storm than a thing buffeted by the storm, and
+now glad to sink into tranquillity. The air was scented with land
+smells. Shafts of the dawn's sunlight beamed across it. Three punts put
+off to find out if the lobster-pots had been washed away; the sea had
+its little boats upon it again. But the sky, to the SW., was looking
+very wild. The wind was SW. in the offing.
+
+While we were at breakfast a southerly squall burst open the kitchen
+door. Mrs Widger got up to see what child it was. A screaming sea-gull
+mocked her.
+
+The storm came. The trees by the railway bowed and tossed. Rain
+spattered against the carriage windows. Dead leaves scurried by. I
+wanted to get out, to go back. I wanted to know whether Tony was at
+sea. Here, at Salisbury they are already talking about the 'great
+storm'; some of the beautiful elms are down. What must the storm have
+been at Seacombe!
+
+Curiously, I felt, the first time for years, as if I were leaving home
+for boarding school--the warmth behind, the chill in front. I smelt
+again the rank soft-soap in the great bare schoolrooms.
+
+
+2
+
+A postcard from Tony--
+
+    "quite please to get your letter this morning it as been rough ever
+    since you left Seacombe it was a gale the night you went Back the
+    sea was all in over and knocking the boats about the road. I haven
+    been out sea sinsce it is still rough hear now it is blowing a gale
+    of wind I expect we shall get some witing and herring in the bay
+    when the weather get fine the sea hear is like the cliff now red.
+    Us aven catched nort nobody cant go to sea.
+
+    "TONY.
+
+    "I will write a letter soon.
+
+    "P.S. Tony just waked up. George is coming home, Tony mazed with
+    excitement and wishes you was here.
+
+    "MAM W."
+
+So do I!
+
+
+3
+
+[Sidenote: _TONY OFF TO SEA_]
+
+The evening before I left Seacombe, Tony was telling us how upset and
+miserable he was, how he cried, when his two elder brothers left home
+to join the Navy. Also he told us what I knew nothing of before--his
+own one attempt to go to sea aboard a merchantman. When he was at
+Cloade's he looked on fishing as a refuge from groceries, and when he
+had given up groceries for fishing, he looked on a ship's fo'c'stle as
+a refuge from that. Fishing was very bad one summer. He and Dick Yeo
+agreed to run away together:
+
+"Us was doin' nort noway wi' the fishing--nort 't all. Father, Granfer
+that is, wer away to his drill wi' the Royal Naval Reserves. So Dick
+Yeo an' me agreed to go off together. Where he went, I was to go tu,
+an' where I went, he was to come. He had two pounds put away, in gold.
+I only had half a crown, an' cuden't see me way to get no more nuther.
+'Casn' thee ask thy maid for some?' Dick said. I was ashamed, like, but
+I did.
+
+"'What's thee want it for?" her asked.
+
+"'Tisn' nothing doing down here,' I says, 'an' I wants to go to sea.'
+
+"'I an't got no money,' the maid says.
+
+"'Casn' thee get nort?' I asks, having begun, you see. I'd been goin'
+with her for nigh on two years.
+
+"Her cried bitter at the thought o' me going, but her did get seven
+shillin's from a fellow servant. I told me mother--her cried tu'--an'
+off us started, going by train to Bristol and stopping the night at the
+Sailor's Rest. 'Twasn't bad, you know. They Restis be gude things.
+Dick, he woke in the morning wi' a swelled faace, but I didn' feel
+nort.
+
+"Dick Yeo paid both our boat fares from Bristol to Cardiff. The
+steward--what us urned against aboard ship--recommended us to a lodging
+house in Adelaide Street, an' he giv'd me a note for a man at the Board
+o' Trade, sayin' we was Demshire fishin' chaps an' gude seamen.
+
+"Well, us went to the lodging house an' gave in our bags an' took a
+room wi' fude [food] for two an' six a day--each, mind yu. Then us
+looked into a big underground room wer there was a lot o' foreigners
+gathered round a fire an' us didn' much like the looks o' that. So us
+went straight down to the docks an' tried to ship together on several
+sailing ships an' steamers. Some on 'em would on'y take me, an' some
+were down to sail at a future date, like, what our money wouldn't last
+out tu. _I_ cude ha' got a ship, 'cause I had me Naval Reserve ticket,
+but nobody cuden't du wi' both on us--an' where one went t'other was to
+go tu, by agreement.
+
+[Sidenote: _AT THE BOARD O' TRADE_]
+
+"Us went back to the lodging house, into a sort o' kitchen in a cellar,
+where there was a 'Merican wi' a long white beard cooking, an' men
+drunk spewing, an' men lying about asleep like logs. The 'Merican, his
+beard looking so red as hell in the firelight, wer stirring some kind
+o' stew. Yu shade ha' see'd the faaces what the glow o' they coals
+shined on! An' the fude.... An' the tables an' plates.... I've a-gone
+short many a time in my day, but I'd never ha' touched muck like they
+offered to gie us there. Dick an' me crept up the staircase to bed wi'
+empty bellies thic night.
+
+"Soon a'ter we was to bed, Dick says to me: 'Can 'ee feel ort yer
+Tony?'
+
+"'No,' I says, an' whatever 'twas, I didn' feel ort o'it. But I see'd
+'em crawling so thick as sea-lice on the wall in a southerly gale, an'
+I tell 'ee, 'twas they things what took the heart out o' me more'n ort
+else, aye! more'n the food an' being away from home. Us cuden turn out,
+'cause the landlord had our bags an' us hadn' got no money to get 'em
+back wi', nor nowhere else at all to go tu.
+
+"Next morning, us went straight down to the docks again. Cuden' eat no
+breakfast what they give'd us. Didn' know what to du. I only had
+tuppence left, which wuden' ha' taken me home again, not if I'd been
+willing to give up and go. Come to the last, us was forced to break our
+agreement. I signed on as able seaman--_able_ seaman 'cause I was a
+fishing chap an' had me Royal Naval Reserve ticket--aboard the
+_Brooklands_, bound for Bombay. Penny o' me tuppence, I spent writing
+home to tell mother. I cuden' stay aboard the ship (an' get summut to
+eat) 'cause I had my gear to get an' a ship to find for Dick--an' we
+still had hopes, like, o' getting a ship together. Howsbe-ever, us
+cuden't, nohow. The writer aboard the _Brooklands_ wuden't advance
+me no wages to get any gear. He told me the landlord to the lodging
+house wude, him what had our bags a'ready.
+
+"Then I thought o' the steward's note to the Board o' Trade officer,
+an' us inquired our way to the Board o' Trade, where ther was a gert
+crowd outside. 'Twas by that us know'd the place. A man told us as the
+officer what the note was directed tu, wude appear outside the door an'
+call. Sure 'nuff, he did--wi' gold buttons on his coat--an' called out:
+'Six A.B.'s for the _Asia_'!
+
+"'Who be that?' I asked.
+
+"'That's he,' the man said. 'He'll come out again by'm-bye.'
+
+"Us worked our way to the front--getting cussed horrible for our
+pains--an' when Mr Gold-Buttons 'peared again, I give'd him the
+steward's note. He luked at it--an' us. He cude offer me something an'
+said as he'd du his best for me, but he cuden' hold out no promise for
+Dick because, see, he hadn' got no Naval Reserve ticket.
+
+[Sidenote: "_WER DICK GOES, I GOES_"]
+
+"'Wher Dick goes, I goes,' I says, like that. With which the Board o'
+Trade officer leaves us waiting there.
+
+"After an hour or so, he com'd out an' called, as if he hadn' ha'
+know'd us: 'Anthony Widger an' Richard Yeo! Richard Yeo an' Anthony
+Widger o' Seacombe!'
+
+"'Yer we be, sir,' shouts I, thinking we was fixed up.
+
+"'Be yu Anthony Widger an' Richard Yeo? Come in.'
+
+"Dick, he went in behind the officer, an' me behind Dick. 'Twer a
+darkish passage, but as the door closed I luked, an' there, hidden
+behind the door, sort o' flattened against the wall, who did I see but
+Dick's mother; her'd come all that way by herself. I called to Dick.
+
+"'What the bloody hell be doin' here?' said Dick swearing awful.
+
+"'Don't thee swear at thy mother, Dick,' I says.
+
+"'Dick!' her says, 'Dick, come home again. Your father's breakin' his
+heart.'
+
+"'Go to b----ry!' says Dick, swearing worse'n ever, 'cause _he_ was
+wanting in his heart to be home again, yu see.
+
+"I burst out crying, then and there, wi' seeing Dick's mother cry, an'
+all o'it what we'd been drough. The Board o' Trade officer repeated as
+he'd help me an' no doubt find me a ship, but Dick--his mother was
+come'd for he.
+
+"'Wer Dick goes, I goes,' says I.
+
+"Then Dick's mother, her says: 'Will 'ee come home then, Tony?'
+
+"'Wer Dick goes, I goes,' I says again. 'Twas fixed in me head, like.
+
+"'Well,' her says, 'if Dick comes home, will yu come too?'
+
+"I told her: 'I've a-signed on aboard the _Brooklands_, an' I'll hae to
+tramp it 'cause I an't got no money.'
+
+"'Well, if I pays _your_ fare too?'
+
+"'Wer Dick goes, I'll go!' I says.
+
+"So her got over Dick a bit, an' the Board o' Trade man told us to come
+again, saying as he'd do anything for me, but Dick's mother was come'd
+for he. An' Mrs Yeo asked us to go wi' her to a restaurant.... That
+turned me more'n ort else 'cause us hadn' eaten the stuff to the
+lodging house an' us _was_ hungry. An' her telegraphed home to Dick's
+father for a trap to meet us to Totnes, for 'twas a Saturday an' there
+wern't no trains no nearer home.
+
+"Us went to the station, Dick swearing awful, an' in the end us come'd
+to Totnes to find the trap.
+
+"The trap was there at the inn, sure 'nuff, an' the ostler was waiting
+up, but the man what come'd wi' the trap was disappeared. We on'y found
+'en at two in the morning, sleeping dead drunk in the manger, an' then
+he an' the ostler began fighting on account o' the ostler casting out a
+slur 'cause Dick's mother didn' gie him no more than a shilling. A
+policeman come an' cleared us out o' it!
+
+[Sidenote: _CARRIAGE PEOPLE_]
+
+"Two or dree mile out o' Totnes the horse stops dead an' begins to go
+back'ards. Us coaxed 'en, like, an' still he kept on stopping an'
+walking back'ards. Dick an' me got out to walk to the halfway inn.
+There the landlord wuden' come down for us. But he did when the trap
+come'd up--us was carriage people than, yu see. We had drinks round,
+an' us give'd flour an' water to the horse to make 'en go. But us hadn'
+gone far when he stopped an' began to go back'ards again. Dick, he
+started swearing. 'Let's walk on,' I says, to get 'en out o'it; an' so
+us did for a mile or so. 'Twas dark, wi' a mizzling rain--an'
+quiet--an' the trees like shadows. A proper logie night 'twas. Wude 'ee
+believe me when I says I cude smell the flowers I cuden' see? Us was
+glad when a tramp caught up wi' us.
+
+"'Have 'ee see'd ort o' a horse an' trap wi' two persons in 'en?' I
+askis.
+
+"'Two mile back,' he says.
+
+"'Us lef 'en only a mile back,' Dick says.
+
+"'He've a-gone a mile back'ards then!' says I.
+
+"And with the same, Dick laughs out loud, an' I laughs, an' the tramp,
+he laughs.... 'Twas the first laugh us had since us left Seacombe, an'
+I reckon it did us gude. Us went on better a'ter that. I covered the
+tramp up wi' hay in a hay loft, advising of him not to smoke. I could
+ha' slept tu; I wer heavy for a gude bed; but I saw lights in the
+farmhouse winder, an' us wer so near home again.
+
+"Well, we crept into Seacombe by the back (people was jest astir,
+Sunday morning) going each our way from the churchyard, an' I listened
+outside mother's door. Father was home again, an' they was to
+breakfast. Her'd had my letter telling them as I'd a-shipped for
+Bombay.
+
+"'They'll Bumbay the beggar!' father was saying, only 'twasn't 'beggar'
+as he did say.
+
+"Then my sister Mary, cried out: 'Here's Tony!'
+
+"'I know'd _he'd_ never go to Bumbay!' outs father so quick as ever.
+
+"But they was so pleased as Punch to see Tony back, cas I ude see, if
+they'd ha' cared to say so. I don' know 'xactly why I went off to
+sea--summut inside driving of me--'twasn't only 'cause there wern't
+nothing doin'--but I an't never been no more. An' thic Mam Widger
+there'd hae summut to say about it now. Eh, Annie?"
+
+
+4
+
+[Sidenote: _THE SEA'S STAMP_]
+
+It is an Englishman's privilege to grumble, and a sailorman's duty; yet
+one thing always strikes me in talking to seafaring men, namely how
+indelible the sea's stamp is; how indissolubly they are bound to the
+sea--with sunken bonds like those which unite an old married
+couple,--and also what outbursts of savage hatred they have against it.
+Tony says that if he could earn fifteen shillings a week regularly on
+land, he would give up the sea altogether. I very much doubt it. The
+sea has him fast. He says further that nobody would go to sea unless he
+were caught young and foolish, and that few would stay there if they
+could get away. There are, among the older fishermen of Seacombe, some
+who have worked well, and could still work, but prefer to stay ashore
+and starve. Tony holds them excused. "Aye!" he says, "they've a-worked
+hard in their day, an' they knows they ain't no for'arder. An' now
+they'm weary o' it all, an' don't care; an' that's how I'll be some
+day, if I lives--weary o'it, an' just where I was!"
+
+But the sea has her followers, and will continue to have them, because
+seafaring is the occupation in which health, strength and courage have
+their greatest value; in which being a man most nearly suffices a man.
+It is remarkable that Baudelaire, decadent Frenchman, apostle of the
+artificial, who was violently home-sick when he went on a voyage,
+should have expressed the relation of man and the sea--their enmity and
+love--more subtly than any English poet.
+
+    Homme libre, toujours tu cheriras la mer;
+    La mer et ton miroir; tu contemples ton ame
+    Dans le deroulement infini de sa lame,
+    Et ton esprit n'est pas un gouffre moins amer.
+
+    Tu te plais a plonger au sein de ton image;
+    Tu l'embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton coeur
+    Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur
+    Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.
+
+    Vous etes tous les deux tenebreux et discrets:
+    Homme, nul n'a sonde le fond de tes abimes,
+    O mer, nul ne connait tes richesses intimes,
+    Tant vous etes jaloux de garder vos secrets!
+
+    Et cependant voila des siecles innombrables
+    Que vous vous combattez sans pitie ni remord,
+    Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
+    O lutteurs eternels, o freres implacables!
+
+[Sidenote: _SEA-LARGENESS_]
+
+The sea is never mean. Strife and brotherhood with it give a largeness
+to men which, like all deep qualities of the spirit, can be neither
+specified nor defined; only felt, and seen in the outcome. The
+Seacombe fishermen are more or less amphibious; ocean-going seamen
+look down on them. They are petty in some small things, notably in
+jealousy lest one man do more work, or make more money, than another:
+to say a man is doing well is to throw out a slur against him.
+Nevertheless in the larger, the essential things of life, their
+sea-largeness nearly always shows itself. They are wonderfully
+charitable, not merely with money. They carp at one another, but let a
+man make a mess of things, and he is gently treated. I have never
+heard Tony admit that any man--even one who had robbed him--had not
+his very good points. Is a man a ne'er-do-well, a drunkard, an idler?
+"Ah," they say, "his father rose he up like a gen'leman, an' that's
+what comes o'it." In their dealings, they curiously combine generosity
+and close-fistedness--close-fistedness in earning, and generosity in
+spending and lending. A beachcomber, for simply laying a hand to a
+rope, receives a pint of beer, or the price of it, and next moment the
+fisherman who paid the money may be seen getting wet through and
+spoiling his clothes in order to drag a farthing's worth of jetsam
+from the surf. Tony fails to understand how a gen'leman can possibly
+haggle over the hire of a boat. When he goes away himself, he pays
+what is asked; regrets it afterwards, if at all; and comes home when
+his money is done. "If a gen'leman," he says, "can't afford to pay the
+rate, what du 'ee come on the beach to hire a boat for--an' try to
+beat a fellow down? I reckon 'tis only a _sort o' gen'leman_ as does
+that!"
+
+Like most seafarers, the fishermen are fatalistic. "What's goin' to be,
+will be, an' that's the way o'it." But they are not thoroughgoing
+fatalists, inasmuch as disappointment quickly turns to resentment
+against something handy to blame. If, for example, we catch no fish,
+Tony will blame the tide, the hour, the weather, the boat, the sail,
+the leads, the line, the hooks, the bait, the fish, his mate--anything
+rather than accept the one fact that, for reasons unknown, the fish are
+off the bite. A thoroughgoing fatalist would blame, if he did not
+acquiesce in, fate itself or his luck.
+
+Tony is a black pessimist as regards the present and to-morrow;
+convinced that things are not, and cannot be, what they were; but as
+regards the further future, the day after to-morrow, he is a resolute
+optimist. "Never mind how bad things du look, summut or other'll sure
+to turn up. It always du. I've a-proved it. I've a-see'd it scores o'
+times." He can earn money by drifting for mackerel and herring, hooking
+mackerel, seining for mackerel, sprats, flat-fish, mullet and bass,
+bottom-line fishing for whiting, conger or pout, lobster and crab
+potting, and prawning; by belonging to the Royal Naval Reserve; by
+boat-hiring; by carpet-beating and cleaning up. I have even seen him
+dragging a wheel chair. His boats and gear represent, I suppose, a
+capital of near a hundred pounds. It would be hard if he earned
+nothing. Yet he is certain that his earnings, year in and year out,
+scarcely average fifteen shillings a week. "Yu wears yourself out wi'
+it an' never gets much for'arder." The money, moreover, comes in
+seasons and lump-sums; ten pounds for a catch perhaps, then nothing for
+weeks. Mrs Widger must be, and is, a good hand at household management
+and at putting money by. I doubt if Tony ever knows how much, or how
+little, gold she has, stored away upstairs. Probably it is as well. He
+is a generous man with money. He 'slats it about' when he has it.
+
+[Sidenote: _OPEN BOATS_]
+
+It has to be realised that these fishermen exercise very great skill
+and alertness. To sail a small open boat in all weathers requires a
+quicker hand and judgment than to navigate a seagoing ship. Seacombe
+possesses no harbour, and therefore Seacombe men can use no really
+seaworthy craft. "'Tis all very well," Tony says, "for people to buzz
+about the North Sea men an' knit 'em all sorts o' woollen gear. They
+North Sea men an' the Cornishmen wi' their big, decked harbour boats,
+they _have_ got summut under their feet--somewhere they can get in
+under, out the way o'it. They _can_ make themselves comfor'able, an
+ride out a storm. But if it comes on to blow when we'm to sea in our
+little open craft, we got to hard up an' get home along--if us can.
+For the likes o' us, 'tis touch an' go wi' the sea!"
+
+Tony knows. At places like Seacombe every boat, returning from sea,
+must run ashore and be hauled up the beach and even, in rough weather,
+over the sea-wall. The herring and mackerel drifters, which may venture
+twenty miles into the open sea, cannot be more than twenty-five feet in
+length else they would prove unwieldy ashore. To avoid their heeling
+over and filling in the surf, they must be built shallow, with next to
+no keel. They have therefore but small hold on the water; they do not
+sail close to the wind, and beating home against it is a long wearisome
+job. Again, because the gear for night work in small craft must be as
+simple as possible, such boats usually carry only a mizzen and a
+dipping lug--the latter a large, very picturesque, but unhandy, sail
+which has to be lowered or 'dipped' every time the boat tacks. Neither
+comfort nor safety is provided by the three feet or so of decking, the
+'cuddy' or 'cutty,' in the bows. To sleep there with one's head
+underneath, is to have one's feet outside, and _vice versa_. In
+rough broken seas the open beach drifter must be handled skilfully
+indeed, if she is not to fill and sink.
+
+I have watched one of them running home in a storm. The wind was
+blowing a gale; the sea running high and broken. One error in steering,
+one grip of the great white sea-horses, meant inevitable wreck. Every
+moment or two the coastguard, who was near me with a telescope to his
+eye, exclaimed, "She's down!" But no. She dodged the combers like a
+hare before greyhounds, now steering east, now west, on the whole
+towards home. It was with half her rudder gone that she ran ashore
+after a splendid exhibition of skill and nerve, many times more
+exciting than the manoeuvres of a yacht race. Were there not many
+such feats of seamanship among fishermen, there would be more widows
+and orphans.
+
+[Sidenote: _BOATS SHEERING_]
+
+Those are the craft, those the sort of men--two usually to a boat--that
+put to sea an hour or two before sunset, ride at the nets through the
+night, and return towards or after dawn. Anything but a moderate breeze
+renders drifting impossible. In a calm, the two men are bound to row,
+for hours perhaps, with heavy 16-20 ft. sweeps. Moreover, if the sea
+makes, or a ground swell rises, the least mistake in beaching a boat
+will cause it to sheer round, capsize, and wash about in the breakers
+with the crew most probably beneath it. Yarns are told of arms and legs
+appearing, of a horrible tortured face appearing, while the upturned
+boat washed about in the undertow, and those ashore were powerless to
+help. There is nothing the fishermen dread so much. One of them owns to
+leaving the beach when he has seen a boat running in on a very rough
+sea, so that he might not endure witnessing what he could not
+prevent.--He peeped however.
+
+These risks need considering, not in order to exaggerate the dangers of
+drifting in open beach boats--in point of fact, accidents seldom do
+happen,--but to show what skill is habitually exercised, what a touch
+and go with the sea it is.
+
+Sundown is the time for shooting nets. Eight to fourteen are carried
+for mackerel, six to ten for herrings--the scantier the fish, the
+greater the number of nets. At Seacombe they are commonly forty fathoms
+in length along the headrope which connects them all, and five fathoms
+deep. Stretching far away from the boat, as it drifts up and down
+Channel with the tides, is a line, perhaps a thousand yards long, of
+cork buoys. From these hang the lanyards[16] which support the headrope,
+from the headrope hang perpendicularly the nets themselves. Judgment is
+needed in shooting a fleet of nets. They may get foul of the bottom or
+of another boat's fleet. When, on account of careless shooting or
+tricks of the tide, the nets of several boats become entangled, there
+is great confusion, and the cursing is loud.
+
+      [16] For herrings the lanyards may be of such a length that the
+      foot of the net almost touches the sea-bottom. For mackerel,
+      which is a surface and midwater fish, they are much shorter, so
+      that the headrope lies just below the top of the water.
+
+Nets shot, the fishermen make fast the road for'ard; sup, smoke, sing,
+creep under the cutty, and sleep with one eye open.
+
+Sometimes they are too wet to sleep; often in the winter it is too
+cold.
+
+Afterwards, the laborious hauling in--one man at the headrope and the
+other at the foot. Contrary to a very general impression, the fish are
+not enclosed within the net, as in seining or in pictures of the
+miraculous draught of fishes. They prod their snouts into the meshes,
+and are caught by the gills. There may not be a score in a whole fleet
+of nets, or they may come up like a glittering mat, beyond the strength
+of two men to lift over the gunwale. Twenty-five thousand herring is
+about the burthen of an open beach drifter. Are there more, nets must
+be given away at sea, or buoyed up and left--or cut, broken, lost.
+Small catches are picked out of the nets as they are hauled in, large
+catches ashore.
+
+[Sidenote: _FISHERMEN FLEECED_]
+
+It is ashore that the fisherman comes off worst of all. Neither
+educated nor commercialized, he is fleeced by the buyers. And if he
+himself dispatches his haul to London.... Dick Yeo once went up to
+Billingsgate and saw his own fish sold for about ten pounds. On his
+return to Seacombe, he received three pounds odd, and a letter from the
+salesman to say that there had been a sudden glut in the market.
+Fishermen boat-owners have an independence of character which makes it
+difficult for them to combine together effectively, as wage-servers do.
+They act too faithfully on the adage that a bird in the hand is worth
+two in the bush, and ten shillings on the beach a sovereign at
+Billingsgate. So 'tis, when
+
+    There's little to earn and many to keep,
+
+and no floating capital at a man's disposal.
+
+In recent years, owing to bad prices and seasons and general lack of
+encouragement, or even of fair opportunity, the number of sea-going
+drifters at Seacombe has decreased by two-thirds. Much the same has
+happened at other small fishing places along the coast. This
+decline--so complacently acquiesced in by the powers that be--is of
+national importance; for the little fisheries are the breeding ground
+of the Navy. Nowadays fishermen put their sons to work on land.
+"'Tain't wuth it," they say, "haulin' yer guts out night an' day, an'
+gettin' no forrarder at the end o'it." Luckily for England the sea's
+grip is a firm one, and many of the sons return to it.
+
+When one hears Luscombe talk about the maddening trouble he has had in
+teaching plough-tail or urban recruits to knot and splice a rope, or
+watches, as I have, a couple of blue-jackets drive ashore in a small
+boat because they couldn't hoist sail, then one comprehends better the
+importance of the fisher-families whose work is made up of endurance,
+exposure, nerve and skill; who play touch and go with the sea; and who
+in the slack seasons have--unlike the ordinary workman--only too much
+time to think for themselves. They are the backbone of the Navy.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+                                                          SEACOMBE,
+                                                        _November_.
+
+
+1
+
+Whilst the train was drawing up at the platform, I noticed the people
+moving and looking downwards as if dogs were running wild amongst them.
+Then I saw two whitish heads bobbing about in the crowd. It was Jimmy
+and another boy come to meet me.
+
+We gave the luggage to the busman, and walked on down.
+
+"Tommy's gone tu Plymouth."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"They'm going to cut his eyes out an' gie 'en spectacles."
+
+"When did he go?"
+
+A rather sulky silence....
+
+Then: "Us thought 'ee was going to ride down. Dad said as yu'd be sure
+tu."
+
+"'Tisn't far to walk, Jimmy...."
+
+"Us be tired."
+
+Alack! I had done the wrong thing. Their little festivity, that was to
+have made them the envy of 'all they boys tu beach,' had fallen flat.
+They had expected to ride down 'like li'l gentry-boys.' However, we
+bought oranges, and then I was taken to see yesterday's fire, and was
+told how Tony had rushed into the blazing house to rescue a carpet 'an'
+didn' get nort for it.'
+
+Tony himself came downstairs from putting away an hour in bed. "I'd ha'
+come up to meet 'ee," he said sleepily, "if anybody'd a reminded me
+o'it. Us an't done nort to the fishing since you went away."
+
+"An' yu an't chopped up to-morrow morning's wude nuther!" added Mrs
+Widger.
+
+Grannie Pinn came in at tea-time. We invited her to sit down and have a
+cup. "Do 'ee think I an't got nothing to eat at home?" she asked.
+"Well, I have, then!--Ay," she continued, bobbing her head
+sententiously, "yu got a mark in Seacombe, else yu wuden't be down yer
+again so sune. That's what 'tis--a mark! I knows, sure nuff. Come on!
+who be it now? What's her like, eh?"
+
+She cannot understand how any young unmarried man can be without his
+sweetheart. Everybody according to her, must have a mark, or be in
+search of one. I told her with the brutality which delights her factual
+old mind, that if she herself had been a little less antique and
+poverty-stricken....
+
+"There! if I don't come round and box yer yers. Yu'm al'ays ready wi'
+yer chake."
+
+[Sidenote: _A MARK_]
+
+Then I offered her five _per cent._ of the lady's fortune, if she
+would find me a mark with unsettled money. Though she laughed it off,
+she was not a little scandalized by my levity. The Tough Old Stick has
+not outlived her memory of romance. Indeed, I think she holds to it all
+the tighter for her hardheadedness in every-day affairs.
+
+Midway through tea, Straighty crept into the kitchen. "What do _yu_
+want?" shouted Grannie Pinn. "Bain't there enough kids yer now?"
+Straighty stood in the centre of the kitchen, sucking three fingers
+and looking shyly at me from beneath her tousled tow-coloured hair.
+
+"You've not forgotten me, Straighty?" I asked. "You're not frightened
+of me, are you?"
+
+"Go an' speak to 'en proper," commanded Grannie Pinn. "Wer's yer
+manners, Dora?"
+
+"_Yu_ didn' speak to me proper, Grannie Pinn! Wer's yours?"
+
+"Aw, my dear soul! Now du 'ee shut up wi' yer chake!"
+
+Straighty remained sucking her fingers in the middle of the kitchen.
+She seemed about to cry. Quite suddenly, her eyes brightened. She
+glided over to me, put her wet fingers round my neck ("Dora!" from Mrs
+Widger), and gave me a big kiss on the chin. Then she told me all about
+everything, sitting with her head on my shoulder in the old courting
+chair.
+
+A tiny little episode, I grant; but very sweet.
+
+"That's your mark?" Grannie Pinn shouted. "You'll hae tu wait for she!"
+
+Straighty is established as my mark, and takes her duties, as she has
+learnt to conceive them, with amusing seriousness. She will not let me
+go out through the Square without being told where I am off to, nor let
+me return in house until I tell her where I have been. At the beginning
+of every meal we hear her creeping up the passage; see her yellow hair
+against the door-post. By the end of the meal she has summoned up
+courage to claim a kiss. "Now be off tu your mother!" says Mrs Widger.
+
+
+2
+
+Mrs Widger has let the back bedroom to a young married couple possessed
+of a saucer-eyed baby that cries lustily whenever its mother is out of
+its sight. How they succeed in living, sleeping, baby-tending and doing
+their minor cookery in the one pokey little room, already half filled
+by the bedstead, is difficult to understand. They do it. We see little
+of them, except just when we had rather see nothing at all.
+
+For dinner and the subsequent cup o' tay, Mam Widger allows one hour.
+But usually, before even the pudding is out of the oven, first one of
+us, then another, glances round to make sure that the kettle is well on
+the fire.
+
+[Sidenote: _MRS PERKINS_]
+
+Nowadays, however, when the kettle is beginning to sing, Mrs Perkins,
+the baby in her arms, comes downstairs and proceeds to cook for her
+husband a couple of small chops or a mess of meat-shreds and bubble and
+squeak. She stirs and chatters; she holds forth on the baby's beauty
+and goodness, its health, its father's love of it--and, in short, she
+talks to us as if we were delighted to see her and her baby. Tony's
+good manners triumph comically over his desire to get his cup o' tay
+and put away an hour up over. (He likes to take every chance of making
+up for wakeful nights at sea.) We all wish she would go quickly.
+Meanwhile, we feign an interest in what blousy, skirt-gaping,
+slop-slippered, enthusiastic maternity has to say.
+
+And when she does go, it is with a most joyful haste that we move the
+kettle to the very hottest part of the fire.
+
+
+3
+
+The family hubbub over Tommy's stay in the Plymouth Eye Infirmary has
+hardly died down yet. Recognizing with uncommon good sense that his
+double squint would bar him from the Navy or Army (he shows an
+inclination towards the latter), Mrs Widger took him to Plymouth; and
+on hearing that an operation would cure him, she did not hesitate, did
+not bring him home to think about it; she left him there. Then.... What
+a buzz! The child is to return very thin. Mrs Widger's cousin declares
+loudly that she would rather lead her boy about blind (he squints
+excessively) than let him go to one o' they places. Tony says, "Aye!
+they may feed 'en on food of a better quality like, after the rate, but
+he won't get done like he is at home." Several times daily he wants to
+know how long they will keep Tommy there, and when Mrs Widger replies,
+six weeks, he asks in a woe-begone voice: "Do 'ee think 'er'll know his
+dad when 'er comes home again?"
+
+All of which is easy to laugh at.
+
+No doubt hospitals are a godsend to the poor, immediately if not
+ultimately. At the same time, it cannot be said that the prejudice
+against them is wholly unreasonable. Poor people declare that they are
+starved in hospital, and it is, in fact, now recognized in dietetics
+that comparatively innutritious food, eaten with gusto, is better
+assimilated than the most scientifically chosen but unpalatable
+nutriment. A man, a poor man especially, can be half starved or at all
+events much thinned, on good food, who would do well on the habitual
+coarse fare that he enjoys. His life is a long adventure in a land
+where every other turning leads to starvation, but his adventurousness
+seldom extends to new sorts of food.
+
+[Sidenote: _HOSPITALS_]
+
+No one is so depressed by strange surroundings as the average poor man
+or woman. (Children get on much better.) Very likely he has never been
+alone, has never slept away from some relative or friend, the whole of
+his life. The unfamiliarity and precise routine of hospitals, the faces
+and ways all strange, are capable not only of greatly intensifying a
+man's sufferings, but even of retarding his recovery.
+
+Hospitals must necessarily be governed by two main conditions:--(1) The
+need of doing the greatest good to the greatest number; (2) The
+advancement of medical science and experience. Under (1) the
+overpressure on medical skill and time is bound to diminish tact and
+sympathy. Under (2) the serious or interesting cases are apt--as
+everyone who has mixed with hospital staffs knows very well--to receive
+attention not disproportionate to the nature of the malady, but
+disproportionate to the bodily, and particularly to the mental,
+suffering. The poor man can appreciate sympathy better than skill. He
+may not know how ill he is, but he knows how much he suffers. He is
+quick to detect and to resent preferential treatment. From the point of
+view of the independent poor, hospitals are far from what they might
+be. They are last straws for drowning men, useful sometimes, but best
+avoided.[17]
+
+      [17] I trust I make it plain that these statements imply no
+      general disparagement of hospitals. Whether or no they do the
+      best possible under the circumstances is not to be discussed
+      shortly or by the present writer. Since penning the above, it has
+      fallen to me to take a patient to the out-department of one of
+      the great London hospitals. We had some time to wait, with very
+      many others, on long wooden benches. I cannot express the almost
+      unbearable depression, the sense of ebbing vitality, the feeling
+      of being jammed in a machine, which took possession of me, who
+      was quite well. And I wish I could adequately express my
+      admiration of the visiting surgeon's manipulation of his delicate
+      instruments and his management of the patient.
+
+[Sidenote: _JACKS THE RIPPER_]
+
+Jacks is a very energetic young country surgeon. He is keen on his work
+and will procure admission to the hospital for any operative case. But
+he finds it by no means easy to get his patients there; for he is so
+keen on his work that he treats their feelings carelessly; hustles them
+through an operation; pooh-poohs their fear of anaesthetics and the
+knife. Jacks is well disliked by the poor. He has to live, and
+therefore he has to cultivate a professional manner and to dance
+attendance on wealthy hypochrondriacal patients whom otherwise he would
+probably send to the devil. The poor people have told him to his face
+that he runs after the rich and cuts about the poor; and they have
+nicknamed him _Jacks the Ripper_.
+
+Tony would have to be very far gone before he would willingly go into a
+hospital. Just now, between the mackerel and herring seasons, he is fat
+and sleepy, very sleek for him. Rheumatic fever in boyhood and
+neglected colds have left him rather deaf, and subject to noises in the
+head and miscellaneous bodily pains. He is 'a worriter' by nature.
+"When I gets bothered," he says, "I often feels as if summut be busted
+in me head." As the herring season comes round, so will Tony 'hae the
+complaints again,' and few will pity a man who always looks so well. A
+few years back, Mrs Widger procured for his deafness some quack
+treatment--which did do him good;--but he himself had little faith in
+it, and did not persevere. Like the mothers who rejoice in delicate
+children rather than feed them properly and send them early to bed,
+Tony prefers to think his ailments constitutional, a possession of his,
+a curse of fate, which flatters him, so to speak, by singling him out
+for its attentions. In a couple of years' time, when he comes out of
+the Royal Naval Reserve, he will have the option of accepting L50 down
+at once, or of waiting till he is sixty for a pension of four shillings
+a week. Mrs Widger understands perfectly that unless he wants to buy
+boats and gear--unless, in other words, he can make the L50
+productive--he had much better wait for the pension and be sure of a
+roof over his head when he is past work. Tony, however, will probably
+take the lump sum. He fears he may die and get nothing at all. He does
+not _feel_ that he will never see sixty, but he is of opinion that
+he will not, and sixty to a man of his temperament is such a long way
+hence. He thinks as little as possible of old age. "Aye!" he
+says--almost chants, so moved is he,--"the likes o' us slaves an'
+slaves all our life, an' us never gets no for'arder. Like as us be when
+we'm young, so us'll be at the end o'it all. Come the time when yu'm
+past work, an' yu be done an' wearied out, then all yer slavin's gone
+for nort. Tis true what I says. I dunno what to think--but 'tis the way
+o'it. 'Tain't right like. 'Tain't right!"
+
+
+4
+
+"Go shrimping wi' the setting-nets t'night, I reckon," said Uncle Jake.
+"Tide be low 'tween twelve and one o'clock. Jest vitty, that."
+
+It was one of those evenings, wind WSW., when the sea and sky look
+stormier than they are, or will be. Uncle Jake stood on the very edge
+of the sea wall, his hands in his pockets, his torn jumper askew, and
+his old cap cocked over one ear. From time to time he turned half round
+to deride a dressy visitor, or for warmth's sake twisted his body about
+within his clothing, or shrugged his shoulders humorously with a, "'Tis
+a turn-out o'it!" The seine net had just been shot from the beach for
+less than a sovereign's worth of fish--to be divided, one third for the
+owner of the net and the remainder among the seven men who had lent a
+hand.
+
+[Sidenote: _PRAWNING_]
+
+"Coo'h!" Uncle Jake exclaimed. "_'Tis_ a crib here! Nort 't all doing.
+Not like 't used tu be. I mind when yu cude haul in a seine so full
+as.... Might pick up a shilling or tu t'night shrimping, if they damn
+visitors an' bloody tradesmen an't been an' turned the whole o' Broken
+Rocks up an' down. _I_ tells 'em o'it!"
+
+"Shrimps or prawns, d'you mean?"
+
+"Why, prawns! Us calls it shrimping hereabout. You knows that. There's
+prawns there if yu knows where to look, but not like 't used to be.
+On'y they fules don' know where to look. An' they don' see Jake at it,
+an' I never tells 'em what I gets nor what I sells at; an' so they says
+I don' never du nort. I'd like to see they hae tu work waist-deep in
+water every night for a week when they'm sixty-five. An' in the winter
+tu!--If yu'm minded to come t'night, yu be up my house 'bout 'leven
+o'clock, an' I'll fetch me nets from under cliff if they b----y b----rs
+o' boys an't been there disturbin' of 'em."
+
+Uncle Jake's cottage looks outside like a small cellar that has somehow
+risen above the ground and then has been thatched with old straw and
+whitewashed. Inside, it is a shadowy place, stacked up high with
+sailing and fishing gear, flotsam, jetsam, balks of wood and all the
+odds and ends that he picks up on his prowlings along the coast. With
+tattered paper screens, he has partitioned off, near the fire and
+window, a small and very crowded cosy-corner. There he was sitting when
+I arrived; bread, butter, onions, sugar and tea--his staple foods--on
+the round table beside him, and his prawn-nets on the flagstones at his
+feet. Three cats glided about among the legs of the table and chairs,
+on the lookout to steal. Using the gentle violence that cats love from
+those they trust, Uncle Jake flung them one by one to the other side of
+the room. They returned, purring, to snatch at the none too fresh berry
+[eggs] of spider-crab with which the nets were being baited.
+
+The shallow small-meshed setting-nets are about two feet in diameter at
+the top. Stretched taut from side to side of the rim are two doubled
+strings or _thirts_--which cross at right angles directly above the
+centre of the net, and into which, near the middle, the four pieces of
+bait are ingeniously and simply fixed by little sliders on the thirts
+themselves. The whole apparatus hangs level from a yard or more of
+stout line, at the upper end of which is a small stick, a stumpy
+fishing rod, so to speak, often painted white so that it may be easily
+found as it lies on the dark rocks. Uncle Jake's net-sticks, however,
+are anything but white. Capable almost of finding them with his eyes
+shut, he would sooner lose his nets altogether than let whitened sticks
+point out to other people the pools which he alone knows.
+
+We put the nets into a couple of sacks and shouldered them. A long
+light pole was placed into my hand. "Don't yu never leave your pole
+behind. Yu'll want it, sure 'nuff, afore this night's over."
+
+So we set out. One by one the cats who were following, left us to go
+back home. We did not walk towards the sea. On the contrary we went
+inland, through some roads with demure sleeping villas on either side.
+"If they bloody poachers," Uncle Jake explained, "see'd us going
+straight towards the sea, they'd follow. _I_ knows 'em! They takes away
+the livelihood o' the likes o' us an' sells it. Sells it--an' says 'tis
+sport! I leads 'em a dance sometimes. I goes along a narrow ledge
+that's jest under water, wi' ten or twelve feet depth on either side.
+On they comes a'ter me. 'Uncle Jake knows where to go,' they says. And
+in _they_ goes--not knowing the place like I du--head over heels an' a
+swim for it! O Lor'! they don' like it when I tells 'em they better go
+home an' tumble into dry clothes. Yu shude hear the language they spits
+out o' their mouths 'long wi' the salt water. Horrible, tu be sure!"
+
+[Sidenote: _SETTING-NETS_]
+
+Broken Rocks, a playground for children by day, look wild and strange
+on a night when clouds are driving across the moon, when the cliffs
+fade into darkness high above the beach, and everything not black is
+grey, except where the white surf beats upon the outermost ledge. Then
+Broken Rocks have personality. A sinister spirit rises out of them with
+the heave of the sea. It is as if some black mood, some great monotony
+of strife, were closing in around one. On the sea wall, in the
+sunshine, I used to wonder why Uncle Jake calls Broken Rocks a terr'ble
+place. Now I do not. He works there by night.
+
+We peered out from the beach underneath the cliffs. Nobody had
+forestalled us. Uncle Jake was pleased. He laughed hoarsely, and the
+echo of it was not unlike the natural noises of the place. "Us'll make
+a start there," he said, pointing to a ledge between which and
+ourselves was a wide sheet of water. "Yu follow me an' feel for a
+foothold wi' your pole. _Don't_ yu step afore yu've felt."
+
+Into the water he went; seemed, indeed, to run across it. "Be 'ee wet?"
+he asked when I stepped out the other side.
+
+"Half way up my thighs!"
+
+"Yu hadn't no need to get wet so far up as your knees. I didn't. An' yu
+might ha' gone in there over your head. Yu use your pole, skipper. Feel
+afore yu steps. I'll set 'ee your two nets for a beginning."
+
+With his pole he felt the depth of the water around the ledge. Then he
+dropped the nets down, edging them carefully under the overhanging
+weed, and placed the sticks on the rock above. "Don't yu forget where
+yu sets your nets. Yu won't _see_'em. An' when yu hauls up, go gently,
+like so, else off goes all they master prawns, d'rec'ly they feels a
+jerk.... Leave 'em down a couple o' minutes.... But there, yu knows,
+don' 'ee? Us won't catch much till the tide turns. They prawns knows
+when 'tis beginning to flow so well as yu an' me. Yu work this yer, an'
+along easterly. I be going farther out."
+
+[Sidenote: _PRAWNS_]
+
+When I hauled up my first net I heard the faint clicketty noise--like
+paper scratching metal--of three or four prawns jumping about inside.
+My hand had to chase them many times round the net. One jumped over;
+one fell through. Nothing is more difficult to withdraw from a net than
+prawns, except it be a lobster, flipping itself about, hardly visible,
+and striking continually with its nippers. There was a lobster in the
+second net. It had to go into the same pocket as the prawns. It was
+something of an adventure afterwards to put a hand into the pocketful
+of lobster claws and prawn spines.
+
+Working eastward and outward, plunging in to the water or sliding with
+bumps and bruises off a rock, I must have passed Deadman's Rock, Danger
+Gutter, Broken Rock and the Wreckstone. (Things of the sea nearly
+always take name from their evil aspects.) Uncle Jake could have told
+me at any moment exactly where I was.
+
+At last, near the surf, I saw in front of me a flat table-rock,
+standing up alone, and as I descended towards the foot of it, a high
+black rocky archway became plain. Broad-leaved oarweed covered it like
+giant hair, and hung drooping into the deep black pool beneath. The
+moonlight glinted on the oarweed. The pool, though darkly calm, ebbed
+and flowed silently with the waves outside. I recognized the place. It
+was Hospital Rock--the rock the little boats strike on because it is
+smooth on top and the waves do not break over it very much. I half
+expected the ugly head of a great conger to look out at me from the
+pool. As I lay flat on the rock to drop my nets, the rattle and roar of
+the sea beyond, vibrating through the solid stone, the whistle of the
+wind through the downhanging oarweed, sounded like an orchestra of the
+mad damn'd.
+
+I caught nothing there, and was not sorry. The place was too eerie to
+stay in long. "Ah!" said Uncle Jake when we met again on the inner
+reef, "I've knowed they amateurs run straight off home when they've
+a-found theirselves under Hospital. A terr'ble place! Yu knows now. Did
+'ee set your nets there? Eh?"
+
+He took some fresh bait from his prawn bag and fixed it in the thirts
+of my nets. "'Tis nearly over," he said, "but jest yu try that, an' if
+they'm there that'll hae 'em. There's no bait like that there when yu
+can get it, on'y nobody knows o'it."
+
+The nature of that bait I shall not divulge, any more than I shall name
+the place where Uncle Jake goes to play with the young ravens in the
+spring. Somebody might catch his prawns; somebody would shoot his
+ravens. We had caught about two hundred prawns between us, a few
+lobsters and some wild-crabs. As we walked homewards, the three cats
+came down the lane, one by one, to welcome Uncle Jake.
+
+[Sidenote: _EAST WITH A SKIM-NET_]
+
+Next day we sailed east in the _Moondaisy_. Uncle Jake straddled the
+pools and lifted the heavy stones. Then in a skim-net,[18] with
+marvellous dexterity, he caught the almost invisible prawns as they
+darted away. He dragged lobsters out of holes, and cursed the
+neighbouring villagers who had been down to the shore after crabs and
+had disturbed his favourite stones. He knows how each one ought to lie;
+he even keeps the seaweed on some of them trimmed to its proper length.
+"But 'tain't like 't used to be," he says.
+
+      [18] Like a landing net, but shallower and with a shorter handle.
+
+He has almost given up going to sea for fish; some say because he will
+not take the trouble; but I think it is because he loves his rocks and
+cliffs so well. No one knows how much by night and day he haunts the
+wilder stretches of shore, nor how many miles he trudges in a week. But
+the gulls know him well, and will scream back to him when he calls. His
+laugh has something of the gulls' cry in it. I have heard it remarked
+that when his time comes (no sign of it yet) he will be found one
+morning dead among his familiar rocks. He is acquainted with death
+there. He has borne home on his shoulder by night the body of a woman
+who had fallen from the cliffs above; and again a negro that had washed
+ashore. With a little self-control one might have carried the woman all
+right, but the drowned nigger.... Imagine his face in the darkness--his
+eyes! Only a man with greatness in him, or a very callous man, could
+have brought such a corpse home, all along under the crumbling cliffs;
+and Uncle Jake is certainly not callous.
+
+
+5
+
+"Let 'em try any o' their tricks on me! They can turn out the likes o'
+us all right, I s'pose. But I can tell 'em what I thinks on 'em, here's
+luck. Thank God I don't live in no tradesman's house, an' can deal
+where I likes. Not that I shouldn't anyway...."
+
+Grannie Pinn's shrill angry voice pierced the kitchen door. The
+occasion was a mothers' gossiping; the subject, a kind of boycott that
+is practised in Seacombe. On the table there was a jug of ale and stout
+and an hospitably torn-open bag of biscuits. Around it sat Grannie
+Pinn--bolt upright in the courting chair, with her hands folded--Mrs
+Meer and Mam Widger. The feathers in Grannie Pinn's hat shook like a
+bush on the cliff-edge. All of them looked as if they felt a vague
+responsibility for the right conduct of the world. In short, they
+looked political.
+
+[Sidenote: _POOR MAN v. TRADESMAN_]
+
+The poor people here live in small colonies scattered behind the main
+street and among the villas, in little blocks of old neglected
+property, some of which has been bought up by tradesmen. So much of the
+former village spirit still survives, and so many of the tradesmen have
+but recently risen from poorer circumstances, that between some of the
+oldest and the youngest of them, and the workmen, there is even yet a
+rather mistrustful fellowship. They call each other, Jim, Dick, Harry
+and so on--over glasses, at all events. The growth of the class spirit,
+as opposed to the old village spirit, can be seen plainly when Bessie
+returns from school, saying: "Peuh! Dad's only a fisherman. Why can't
+'er catch more fish an' get a little shop an' be a gen'leman?" Seacombe
+tradesmen have been withdrawing into a class of their own--the class of
+'not real gen'lemen'--and have been showing a tendency to act together
+against the rest of the people, and to form rings for the purpose of
+keeping shops empty or prices up. Nobody minds their bleeding visitors.
+That is what God sends visitors for; and besides, the season is so
+short. But when they began to overcharge their fellow townsmen, in
+summer because it was the season and in winter because it wasn't the
+season, the poor people revolted, and amid tremendous hubbub, thunders
+of talk and lightnings of threat, a co-operative store was opened. Then
+did the tradesmen remind the poor of old family debts, legacies from
+hard times. Then did the poor say: "Very well, us'll hae our own store
+and bakery, and pay cash down to ourselves." Unable to obtain the
+tenancy of a shop, they bought one. They refused to raise the price of
+bread. They laughed at advertisements which professed to point out the
+fallacies of all co-operation. They succeeded, but the class difference
+was widened and clinched--poor man _versus_ tradesman.
+
+Grannie Pinn, Mrs Meer and Mam Widger were reckoning up the number of
+people who have been turned out of their cottages, or are under notice
+to quit, for neglecting to deal with their tradesmen landlords.
+
+Their indignation having found vent, they went on to talk of Virgin
+Offwill, who has acquired celebrity by living alone in a cottage on no
+one knows what, by sleeping in an armchair before the fire (when she
+can afford one), and by never washing. Sometime last month, Virgin sent
+for Dr Jacks because, so she said, she was wished [bewitched]; and she
+would not let him go until he threatened to report the state of her
+house to the medical officer of health.
+
+[Sidenote: _GOD SAVE--THE DINNER_]
+
+The tale of Virgin Offwill was capped by another--that of old Mrs
+Widworthy. Several years ago (these gossips have long memories) she
+received a postal order from her son together with an invitation to
+visit him in London. The post arrived after her man had gone to work.
+She did not wait; she sent out a neighbour's child to change the order,
+packed her few things in a basket, and went off to her son by the
+midday train. On the table she left a note:
+
+    "Widworthy, I am gone to London. Your dinner is in the saucepan. I
+    shall be back directly."
+
+There was loud laughter in the kitchen; another round of stout and ale;
+then silence. The mothers fidgeted, each after her own manner,
+meditatively. In all the world, and Seacombe, there seemed nothing to
+talk about--or too much.
+
+"Have 'ee heard ort lately of Ned Corry?" asked Grannie Pinn with a
+delightful mixture of gusto and propriety. "Have 'er still got Dina wi'
+'en?"
+
+"Yes, I think."
+
+"An' his wife tu?"
+
+Bessie burst into the room. Neither Tony nor Mrs Widger approve of
+discussing the intimate humanities before children, so Bessie was
+allowed to fling her news to us unchecked. "Mother, Miss Mase says I
+can leave school so soon as yu've found me a place. Then I'll hae some
+money o' my own earnings, won't I?"
+
+"Yu'll bring it to me, same as I had to what I earned, an' yu'll stay
+on to school till I thinks vitty. You'm not fit for a gen'leman's
+house."
+
+"Yes, I be. I can work. That's what yu'm paid for, ain't it?"
+
+"How many cups an' saucers have yu smashed this week?"
+
+"Have they learned 'ee all yu wants to know up to school?" inquired
+Grannie Pinn quietly, but with a twinkle at the company.
+
+"They an't learned me to play the pi-anno. That's what I wants now. If
+Dad 'd get one, _I_'d play."
+
+"Have they learned 'ee to cook a dinner?"
+
+"Anybody can du thic. I've learned to play _God Save the King_ on the
+school pi-anno."
+
+"How do 'ee start then?"
+
+"Why, you puts your fingers...."
+
+"Naw! I means how du 'ee start to cook dinner?"
+
+"Peuh!"
+
+"Her an't learned tidiness," said Mam Widger. "Lookse! Her scarf on one
+chair, gloves flinged on another, coat slatted on the ground an' her
+hat on the dresser--now, since her's come in! Pick 'em up to once, else
+thee't hae my hand 'longside o'ee!"
+
+Bessie scrabbled up her clothes and, making sounds of disgust, went
+out.
+
+"Her'll steady down, I hope," remarked Mrs Widger. "Her's wild, but a
+gude maid to try an' help a body, though her makes so much work as her
+does."
+
+"Ay!" said Grannie Pinn grimly. "If work don't steady her, there's
+nothing will."
+
+[Sidenote: _NED CORRY_]
+
+When Bessie was gone the conversation reverted to Ned Corry and the
+ages of his children. I met him last summer--have never ceased hearing
+about him, for his sayings are often repeated and his adventures at sea
+recounted. He came down here on holiday with his wife, who appeared to
+be very happy and was obviously very proud of her Ned. The morning he
+went back, he collected all of his old mates he could find, before
+breakfast, into a public-house, treated them to whisky until his
+pockets were empty, and then borrowed money to return to London. His
+personality seems to have left a deeper impression than any other on
+Seacombe. He is a man very alive; big, generous and uncontrollable in
+all things; so broad that he seems short; great in voice, great in
+strength, greatest in laughter. Very dark, and prominent in feature
+where his fierce black beard allows any of his face to be seen, he is a
+kind of Hebraic Berserker in general appearance, in the uncompromising
+force of him and the squat sloppiness of his clothes. Yet his eyes,
+almost bedded in hair, have often the bright peeping humorousness of a
+shaggy dog's.
+
+He had the most boats on the beach, and mighty strokes of luck with the
+fish; employed more men than anyone before or since; paid them well
+when he had the money, and with an irregularity which would have been
+tolerated from no other boat-owner. Dina went to lodge at his house. He
+made of her, so gossip says, a second wife. He succeeded in running a
+household of three; then bought two lodging houses and set a wife to
+manage each. "Ned was all right," Tony says, "on'y he didn't know how
+to look after hisself--didn't care--nor after his money when he made
+it." One evening, Tony found him in his bath in the middle of the
+kitchen whilst his womenfolk were cooking him a good hot supper. It was
+not his being in his bath which made Tony blush, but the freedom with
+which he called, "Come in!"
+
+When the prudent-minded of Seacombe clamoured to Ned for their money,
+he sold up his boats and furniture, went to London, took without
+apprenticeship a well-paid job at the docks, and now, as he walks home
+along the dockside streets, he is given _Good Night_ from London
+Bridge to Tilbury. The exerting of strength seems to have been his
+leading impulse; pride in Ned Corry his only check. He was too big for
+Seacombe. In London he remains entirely himself--'West-country Ned!'
+
+Before Ned Corry's affairs were finished with, Tony came into the
+kitchen, saying: "I just been talking out there to Skinny Chubb. Nice
+quiet chap, he is. His wife _is_ gone."
+
+"Well, didn't 'ee know that?"
+
+[Sidenote: _SELF-RESTRAINT_]
+
+Then I heard a wonderful tale of self-restraint. Chubb is a good
+workman, a man of about fifty with grown up boys and girls. His wife
+has been no good to him. She used to have men in the house when he was
+away. She provided them with grog and food, but there was never
+anything for Chubb to eat, except abuse. She won the daughters over to
+her side. Sometimes she would go away to London, taking perhaps one of
+the girls with her. Only the eldest son, who was not at home, sided
+with his father. Neighbours used to hear the couple quarrelling half
+the night, but during the whole of their married life he never once
+struck or beat her. All he used to tell other people was:--"'Tis a
+wonder how a man can stand all her du say to me, day an' night, early
+an' late."
+
+Just before Michaelmas, she decided to leave her husband: to go to
+London with a German flunkey. They broke up the home. Chubb packed up
+for her the best of the furniture. He wrote out her labels, said
+_Good-bye_, paid her cab fare to the station. Now he is living in
+lodgings. Rumour has it that the German has left her. In answer to
+inquiries, Chubb merely says: "Well, I tell 'ee, _I_ be glad to be out
+o'it all at last. _I_'ll never hae her back."
+
+It is a sound old piece of psychology which distinguishes a man's bark
+from his bite. The poor man's bark is appalling; I often used to think
+there was murder in the air when I heard some quite ordinary
+discussion; there would have been murder in the air had I myself been
+worked up to speak so furiously. But, comparatively speaking, he seldom
+bites; hardly ever without warning; and he can as a rule stay himself
+in the very act. The educated man, on the other hand, does not bark
+much; one of the most important parts of his education has been the
+teaching him not to do so; but when he does bite, it is blindly, and he
+makes his teeth meet if he can. We hear, of course, much more of the
+poor man in the police courts, and we imagine (spite of Herbert
+Spencer's warning) that education is to diminish his crimes. How very
+simple and fallacious! In the first place, the poor, the uneducated or
+but slightly educated, greatly out-number the educated. Suppose by
+means of complete and trustworthy criminal statistics, we could work
+out the _percentage criminality_ of the different classes. I fancy
+that the poor man would not then show--even judged by our whimsical
+legal and moral standards--a greater percentage criminality than the
+educated. And if in our statistics we could include degrees of
+provocation to the various crimes, such as hunger, poverty, want of the
+money to leave exasperating surroundings--it would probably be found
+that the poor are, if anything, less criminally disposed than other
+sections of the community; that, though they lack something of the
+secondary self-restraint which prevents bark and noise, they are, other
+things being equal, actually stronger in that primary self-restraint,
+the lack of which leads directly to crime. On _a priori_, historical,
+grounds one would anticipate such a conclusion.
+
+It is certain that they forgive offence more readily.
+
+I have often wondered how many nice quiet respectable vindictive
+murders are yearly done by educated men too clever to be found out. The
+poor man is a fool at 'Murder as a Fine Art.' He hacks and bashes.
+
+
+6.
+
+Sighting, as we thought, some balks of timber, floating away on the ebb
+tide over the outside of Broken Rocks, two of us shoved a small boat
+down the beach. Our flotsam was a trick of the fading light on the sea,
+just where Broken Rocks raised the swell a little; but in the
+exquisite, the almost menacing, calm of the evening, we leaned on our
+oars and watched for a while. To seaward, the horizon was a peculiar
+lowering purple, as if a semi-opaque sheet of glass were placed there.
+On land, over the Windgap, the sunset was like many ranks of yellow and
+shining black banners--hard, brassy. The sea was a misty blue. One by
+one, according to their prominence, the bushes on the face of the
+cliffs faded into the general contour. As we landed, a slight lop came
+over the water from the dark south-east. "Ah!" said Uncle Jake. "We'm
+going to hae it. South-easter's coming!"
+
+[Sidenote: _CALLED OUT BETIMES_]
+
+There was some discussion as to whether or not we should haul the boats
+up over the sea-wall. In the end we hauled the smaller ones, leaving
+the _Cock Robin_ and the drifter upon the beach.
+
+In the very early morning--it was so dark I could not see the outline
+of the window--I half awoke to an indistinct sensation that the house
+was rocking and hell unloosed outside. Something solid seemed to be
+beating the wall. Than I heard Grandfer's voice roaring at the foot of
+the stairs:--"What is it? Why, tell thic Tony he'd better hurry up else
+all the boats 'll be washed away. Blowing a hurricane 'tis! Sea's
+making. Oughtn't to ha' left they boats...."
+
+"Be quiet! yu'll wake all the kids up."
+
+"Blowing a hurricane 'tis! Nort to me if the boats du wash off. Tony'd
+never wake."
+
+"All right, I'll wake him."
+
+In five minutes we were downstairs, with the fire lighted and the
+kettle on.
+
+Outside, it was pitch dark. There was nothing there, it seemed, except
+a savage wind and stinging splotches of rain and the cry of the low
+tide on the sand. I felt my way up the Gut and out, sliding one foot
+before the other so as not to fall over the sea-wall. John Widger
+bumped into me, and together we crept along to the capstan. A white
+shadow of surf was just visible. We dropped gingerly off the wall to
+the beach, trusting there was no iron gear there to smash our ankles.
+Then for an hour we fumbled our way about; pushed, hauled,
+disentangled, slid and swore; grasping sometimes the right rope and
+sometimes the wrong one with hands almost too cold and stiff, too
+painful, to grasp anything at all.
+
+Out of the blackness came another hurricane squall with rain that
+lashed. The rushing air itself shook. We crouched, all humped up, in
+the lew of a drifter's bows, whilst the rain water washed around our
+boots and coat-tails. "This 'll tell 'ee what 'tis like for us chaps,"
+said Tony. "I be only sorry," Uncle Jake added, "for them what's out to
+sea now in ships wi' rotten gear."
+
+[Sidenote: _A DISCOLOURED FURY_]
+
+As the dawn broke thick, the sea rose still further, until it was a
+discoloured fury battering the shore. With Uncle Jake I watched some
+long planks, four inches in thickness and ten broad, swept off the top
+of the beach. We saw them hurtled over Broken Rocks, now dashed against
+the cliff, now careering, so to speak, on their hind legs. Such were
+their mad capers that we laughed aloud. We were far from wishing to
+save them. We rejoiced with them.
+
+As the day blew on, the wind moderated inshore and the lop gathered
+itself together into a heavy swell. And after dark, at half tide, Uncle
+Jake and myself worked hard. We dragged the heavy planks from a surf
+that seemed ever advancing on us to drive us towards the cliffs, yet
+never did, and we propped up the planks against cliffs whose crumbling
+drove us constantly down to the sea. There's a winter's firing there.
+
+We talked--out-howling the noise jerkily--of wrecks and wreckages. Had
+we had the chance, we might then conceivably have wrecked a ship. For
+there, on the narrow strip of shingle between the wash of the waves and
+the unstable cliff, we were primitive men, ready without ruth to wreck
+for ourselves the contrivances of civilization.
+
+
+7.
+
+Tony has received one or two presents this autumn, and now the gales
+have put an end to all kinds of fishing, he is beginning to write his
+letters of thanks. Or rather, he bothers Mam Widger to write them for
+him, and when she has said sufficiently often, "G'out yu mump-head! Du
+it yourself!" he sets to work. After long hesitation, pen in hand, and
+a laborious commencement, he dashes off a letter, protests that it
+ought to be burnt, and sends it to post. He acts, indeed, a comic
+version of the groans and travail about which literary men talk so
+much.
+
+[Sidenote: _PRESENTS AND TIPS_]
+
+Whether he prefers a present or a tip is doubtful, and depends largely
+on the amount of money in the house. Presents are more valued; tips
+more useful. He feels that 'there didn't ought to be no need of tips';
+knows obscurely that they are one of the effects, and the causes, of
+class difference; that they are either a tacit admission that his
+labour is underpaid, or else such an expression of good-will as a man
+would not presume to give to 'the likes o' himself,' or else an
+indirect bribe for some or other undue attention. Usually, however, not
+wishing to go into the matter so thoroughly--having come in contact
+with outsiders chiefly when they have been on holiday and least
+economical--he considers a tip merely as the outflowing of a
+gen'leman's abundance. "They can afford it, can't 'em? They lives in
+big houses, an' it helps keeps thees yer little lot fed an' booted."
+
+If, however, he has reason to believe that 'a nice quiet gen'leman' is
+really hard-up, then he is very sorry, and will reduce the rate of hire
+by so much as half. In such cases, it is well that the gen'leman should
+add a small tip, for his niceness' sake. Then is Tony more than paid.
+
+The gentleman, as such, seems to be losing prestige. Gentility is being
+made to share its glory with education, 'Ignorant' is becoming a worse
+insult than 'no class.' Grandfer, in argument will think to prove his
+case by saying: "Why, a gen'leman told us so t'other day on the Front.
+A gen'leman told me, I tell thee!" Grandfer's sons would like the
+gen'leman's reasons. In fact the stuff and nonsense that the chatting
+gen'leman, feeling himself safe from contradiction, will try to teach a
+so-called ignorant fisherman, is most amazing. If he but knew how
+shrewdly he is criticised, afterwards....
+
+Education even is esteemed not so much for the knowledge it provides,
+still less for its wisdom, as for the advantage it gives a man in
+practical affairs; the additional money it earns him. "No doubt they
+educated people knows a lot what I don't," says Tony, "an' can du a lot
+what I can't; but there's lots o' things what I puzzles me old head
+over, an' them not the smallest, what they ain't no surer of than I be.
+Ay! an' not so sure, for there's many on 'em half mazed wi' too much
+o'it."
+
+
+8.
+
+[Sidenote: _BESSIE_]
+
+Bessie has finally left school. The excitement, the chatter, the sudden
+air of superiority over the other children, the critical glance round
+the room when she returns home.... She has learnt next to nothing of
+school-work--which matters little, since she is strong, hopeful, and
+has a genuine wish to do her best. What does matter is, that she is
+careless, inclined to be slatternly, and has no idea of precision
+either in speech or work. (Few girls have.) This is in part, no doubt,
+mere whelpishness to be grown out of presently. She picks up some piece
+of gossip. "Mother! Mrs Long's been taken to hospital. Her's going to
+die, I 'spect."
+
+"No her an't gone to hospital nuther. Dr Bayliss says as her's got to
+go if she ain't better to-morrow. Isn't that what you've a-heard now?"
+
+"Yes--but I thought her'd most likely be gone 'fore this," says Bessie
+without, apparently, the least sense of shame, or even of inexactitude.
+
+The other day she reached down a cup to get herself a drink of water.
+Then she took some pains to see if the cup still _looked_ clean, and
+finding it did, she replaced it among the other clean ones on the
+dresser.
+
+Her mother sent her out to the larder for some more bread. Bessie
+brought in a new loaf.
+
+"That ain't it," said Mrs Widger. "There's a stale one there."
+
+"No, there ain't."
+
+"Yes, there is."
+
+"I've looked, an't I?"
+
+"Yu go an' look again, my lady."
+
+"Well, 'tis dark, an' I an't got no light to see with."
+
+Protesting vehemently, Bessie found the stale loaf. Were I her
+mistress, she would irritate me into a very bad temper, and then, by
+her muddle-headed willingness, would make me sorry. She is untrained.
+School has in no way disciplined her mind. From early childhood, of
+course, she has had to do many odd jobs for her mother, but a woman
+with the whole burden of a house on her shoulders, who has never found
+the two ends more than just meet, cannot spare time or thought to train
+her girls systematically. It is so much easier to do the whole of the
+work herself. Bessie's usefulness, such as it is, speaks a deal for her
+disposition. After all, how many women in any station of life, have
+precision and forethought enough to lay a fire so that it will burn up
+at once? Bessie is only thirteen. It is, indeed, her ability for her
+age that tempts one to judge her by a standard which elsewhere--except
+among women discussing their servants--would only be applied to a girl
+of twenty.
+
+Suppose fathers judged their daughters as mothers judge their
+servants....
+
+[Sidenote: _GOING INTO SERVICE_]
+
+For the present, Bessie is in daily service at a lodging-house. For a
+'gen'leman's residence,' which would be better for her, she is
+over-young and would, besides, need an outfit of dresses, caps and
+aprons which she is not yet old enough to take care of, nor will be
+until she is ready to fall in love. She can go to Mrs Butler's in a
+torn dress and dirty pinafore. She is not expected to appear before the
+visitors; only to do the dirty, rough, and heavy work behind the
+scenes. It was a condition of her leaving school so young, that she
+should go into service and sleep there. Very naturally, Mrs Widger and
+Mrs Butler soon arranged that the 'education lady,' when she came to
+inspect, should be shown Bessie's bedroom at the lodging-house--and
+that Bessie should sleep at home. It was better for all three; for Mrs
+Butler who is short of room, for Mrs Widger who wants Bessie's help,
+and for Bessie who still requires her mother's authority and oversight.
+Educationalists don't seem to understand.
+
+In return for two shillings a week and her food, Bessie is supposed to
+work twelve hours a day, from eight till eight. All she does might
+possibly be crammed into three hours a day; that is all she is paid
+for. She brings home her supper in a piece of newspaper. One evening
+she brought some chicken bones which had been in turn the foundation of
+roast chicken, cold chicken, stewed chicken, and soup. Bessie rather
+enjoyed them. Another evening, she unwrapped a whole cake. It fell on
+the floor, whack! neither bouncing, nor breaking. It was full of dough.
+A basin of soup-dregs which she brought home two days ago was found to
+contain a length of stewed string. Stewed to rags, it was, like badly
+boiled meat. Bessie says that Mrs Butler did miss a bell-rope.
+
+
+9
+
+There was a rush and a banging up the passage. The kitchen door burst
+violently open. A girl (though she wore long skirts her figure was
+unformed and her waist had a stiff youthful curve) ran quickly into the
+room.
+
+Her eager bright-coloured young face--that also not yet fully
+formed--was overshadowed by a flapping decorated hat obviously
+constructed less for a woman's head--less still for a maiden's--than
+for a cash draper's window. Her chest was plastered with a motley
+collection of cheap jewellery and lace. Her boots had not been cleaned.
+
+She dropped her cardboard boxes on the floor. Regardless of her womanly
+attire, like nothing so much as a hasty child, she flung her arms round
+Tony's neck.
+
+"Hallo, Dad! How be 'ee? Eh? How's everybody? Lord, I'm hungry. Look
+what I got for 'ee. An't forgot nobody this time, though 'tisn't
+everybody as remembers me. Look, Dad!"
+
+"What is it?" asked Tony, looking blankly, as if he could hardly
+realise so much clatter.
+
+"Lookse, Dad! What do 'ee think o'it?"
+
+A box was torn open. From it came a couple of glass ornaments, and
+various sorts of 'coloured rock' and sticky toffee for the children.
+
+[Sidenote: _BACK FROM SERVICE_]
+
+It was Tony's eldest daughter, Jenny, come home from service. She
+walked round the room picking up things to examine, things to eat,
+things that she claimed were hers, and things that she desired given
+her. She talked without, so far as I could see, any connection between
+the sentences. Mouthfuls of food reduced her babbling shriek to a
+burr-burr.
+
+"Be 'ee glad to see your daughter, Dad?"
+
+"Iss...." said Tony, looking at her very fondly, but still puzzled.
+
+"Don't believe yu be. Why didn't 'ee write then if yu loves me so?"
+
+"Thic's Mam 'Idger's job."
+
+"G'out!" said Mrs Widger,--"Jenny, you an't see'd our addition, have
+'ee."
+
+I held out my hand. Jenny blushed; then she said: "Good evening, sir";
+then she giggled; and finally she turned her back on me. It took a
+minute or two for her happy carelessness to return.
+
+Domestic servants on holiday, more than any other class of people,
+strain one's tact and rouse one's ingrained snobbery. They tend to be
+over-respectful--the sort of respectfulness that presupposes
+reward,--and to brandish _sirs_, or to be shy and silly, or else
+to treat one with a more airy familiarity than the acquaintanceship
+warrants. In the matter of manners, they sit between two chairs, the
+class they serve has one code; the class they spring from has another,
+equally good perhaps, certainly in some respects more delicate, but
+different. In imitating the one code, unsuccessfully, they lose their
+hold on the other. Their very speech--a mixture of dialect and standard
+English with false intonations--betrays them. They are like a man
+living abroad, who has lost grip on his native customs, and has
+acquired ill the customs of his adopted country. It is not their fault.
+Circumstances sin against them.
+
+Mrs Widger tells me that, when she left her mother's for service, she
+felt nothing so keenly as the loneliness, the isolation, of being in a
+house where no one could be in any full sense of the word her
+confidant, where she was at the beck and call of strangers from the
+time she got up till the time she went to bed, where her irregular
+hours of leisure were passed quite alone in a kitchen. It seems, as
+might be anticipated, that _mental_ comfort or discomfort is at the
+bottom of the servant question, and that class differences, class
+misunderstandings, are ultimately the cause of it. Often enough the
+mistress wishes to be kind, but she fails to understand that what she
+values most differs from what is most valued by her servants. Often
+enough the servants wish to do their best, but little irritations,
+unsalved by sympathy and not to be discussed on terms of equality, lead
+to sulky, don't-care moods which exasperate the mistress into positive,
+instead of negative, unkindness. So a vicious circle is formed. The
+covert enmity between one woman and another simply calls for give and
+take where both are of the same class, but when one of them is, for
+payment and all day, at the disposal of the other.... How many homes
+there are where the menfolk can get anything done willingly, and the
+mistress nothing whatever! The girls go out so early. They miss the
+rough and tumble of their homes. They have their own little ambitions,
+hardly comprehensible to anyone else. Whether or no they desire to be
+satisfactory, they do want their own little flutters.
+
+
+10
+
+[Sidenote: _LITTLE SERVANT GIRLS_]
+
+Poor brave small servant girls, earning your living while you are yet
+but children! I see your faces at the doors, rosy from the country or
+yellowish-white from anaemia and strong tea; see how your young breasts
+hardly fill out your clinging bodices, all askew, and how your hips are
+not yet grown to support your skirts properly--draggle-tails! I see you
+taking the morning's milk from the hearty milkman, or going an errand
+in your apron and a coat too small for you, or in your mistress's or
+mother's cast-off jacket, out at the seams, puffy-sleeved, years behind
+the fashion and awry at the shoulders because it is too big. I see your
+floppety hat which you cannot pin down tightly to your hair, because
+there isn't enough of it;--your courageous attempts to be prettier than
+you are, or else your carelessness from overmuch drudgery; your
+coquettish and ugly gestures mixed.
+
+I picture your life. Are you thinking of your work, or are you dreaming
+of the finery you will buy with your month's wages; the ribbons, the
+lace, or the lovely grown-up hat? Are you thinking of what he said, and
+she said, and you said, you answered, you did? Are you dreaming of
+_your_ young man? Are you building queer castles in the air? Are
+you lonely in your dingy kitchen? Have you time and leisure to be
+lonely?
+
+I follow you into your kitchen, with its faint odour of burnt grease
+(your carelessness) and of cockroaches, and its whiffs from the
+scullery sink, and a love-story that scents your life, hidden away in a
+drawer. I hear your mistress's bell jingle under the stairs. You must
+go to bed, and sleep, and be up early, before it is either light or
+warm, to work for her; you must be kept in good condition like a cart
+horse or a donkey; you must earn, earn well, your so many silver pounds
+a year.
+
+In mind, I follow you also into your little bedroom under the roof,
+with its cracked water-jug that matches neither the basin or the
+soap-dish, and its boards with a ragged scrap of carpet on them, and
+your tin box in the corner; and the light of the moon or street lamp
+coming in at the window and casting shadows on the sloping whitewashed
+ceiling; and your guttered candle. What will you try on to-night? A
+hat, or a dress, or the two-and-eleven-three-farthing blouse? Shift the
+candle. Show yourself to the looking-glass. A poke here and a pull
+there--and now put everything away carefully in the box under the bed,
+and go to sleep.
+
+Though I say that I follow you up to your attic, and watch you and see
+you go to sleep, you need not blush or giggle or snap. I would not do
+you any harm; your eyes would plague me. And besides, I do not entirely
+fancy you. You are not fresh. You are boxed up too much. But I trust
+that some lusty careless fellow, regardless of consequences, looking
+not too far ahead, and following the will of his race--I trust that he
+will get hold of you and whirl you heavenwards, and will fill your
+being full to the brim; and will kiss you and surround you with
+himself, and will make you forget yourself and your mistress and all
+the world, the leaves and birds of the Lover's Lane, the shadowy cattle
+munching in the field and the footsteps approaching.
+
+I wish you luck--that your young man may stick to you. It is after all
+a glimpse of God I wish you, perhaps your only one.
+
+You've got a longish time before you.
+
+
+11
+
+[Sidenote: _MRS YARTY_]
+
+Mrs Yarty, up Back Lane, is reduced to that last extremity of poor
+women: she is cleaning her cottage and preparing as well as she can 'to
+go up over' on credit, without either doctor or midwife--unless she
+becomes so ill that someone sends for the parish doctor. She will not
+wish that done, and probably when her time comes, some neighbour will
+look in to see if she is going on as well as can be expected. Were
+Yarty and his wife sufficiently servile to attend church or chapel,
+prayer-meetings or revivals, all sorts of amateur parsons, male and
+female, would flock round; but in any case, Mrs Yarty has no time for
+such goings-on, and if Yarty found anyone sniffing about his house, he
+would certainly tell them that it _was_ his house.
+
+A while ago one of the 'district ladies' came here, to Tony's. We were
+a little short with her, and as a last resource, she remarked
+superciliously, in a tone of pleasant surprise: "You are really _very_
+clean here." 'Twas an untruth. We are not _very_ clean: we are as
+cleanly as is practicable. I should have liked to show her the door.
+"'Tis only the way of 'em!" said Mrs Widger. "They'm stupid, but they
+means all right."
+
+[Sidenote: _THE YARTY CHILDREN_]
+
+Mrs Yarty is not low-spirited at all, and though her voice sounds
+rather hysterical, it is merely her manner of speaking, slightly
+accentuated perhaps by more trouble than usual. She is fairly well used
+to such events by now. Yarty himself is angry. His ordinary habits are
+bound to be upset for a few days; for ever, if Mrs Yarty dies. He is
+what successful and conceited people call a waster. "There ain't no
+harm in him," Tony says. "He wuden't hurt a fly. The only thing is, 'er
+don't du much." I have never seen him actually drunk. He keeps very
+nearly all his irregular earnings for his own use in a strong locked
+box upstairs. His house is a sort of hotel to him, where he expects to
+find a bed and food, and it is apparently not his business to inquire
+how the food is obtained. If there is none, he makes a fuss, and will
+not take for an answer that he has failed to bring the money. Bobby
+Yarty, thin, pale, big-eyed, the eldest son but one--a nice intelligent
+boy though he swears badly at his mother--is ill of a disease which
+only plenty of good food can cure. If, however, food is scarce, it is
+first Mrs Yarty who goes short, then the children. Whether they do, or
+don't, have as much as a couple of chunks each of bread and dripping,
+Yarty must have his stew or fry. The wage-earner has first claim on the
+food, and even when the wage-earner does not earn, the custom is still
+kept up. It is possible also that Mrs Yarty has still an underlying
+affection for her man, a real desire, become instinctive, to feed him.
+
+She does not say so. Far from it. She says that she is sorry she ever
+left a good place to marry Yarty. She would, she declares, go back into
+service but for her children. Washing-day, she swears, is her jolliest
+time, and she boasts, with what pride is left her, of there being
+places at twelve or fourteen shillings a week still open to her. She
+did take a place once--was allowed to take her baby with her--but at
+the end of a fortnight she arrived home to find that her husband,
+impatient for his tea, had thrown all the crockery on the floor. She
+saw then that she must be content with things as they are.
+
+Her present worry is, what will become of the children while she is up
+over, and who will feed them? Mam Widger will do her share, I don't
+doubt. Very often now she puts aside something for them. There is a
+sort of pleasantness in watching them take it: they run off with the
+dish or baking tin like very polite and very hungry dogs, and bring it
+back faithfully with exceeding great respectfulness towards a household
+where there is food to spare.
+
+Mrs Yarty is one of those people who work better for others than for
+themselves. She is no manager. "They says," she remarked the other day,
+"as He do take care of the sparrows." She is a sparrow herself; she
+grubs up sustenance, rubs along without getting any forwarder, where
+others would go under altogether. Years ago she must have been
+good-looking. Her patchily grey hair is crisp; she still has a few
+pretty gestures. But trouble and too much child-bearing have done next
+to their worst with her. Sensible when she grasps a thing, she is often
+a bit mazed. She has the figure of an old woman--bent, screwed--and the
+toughness of a young one. Her words, spoken pell-mell in a high
+strained voice which oscillates between laughter and tears, seem to be
+tumbling down a hill one after another. Spite of all her household
+difficulties, she retains the usual table of ornaments just inside the
+front door. Last summer she reclaimed from the roadway a tiny
+triangular garden, about five inches long in the sides, by wedging a
+piece of slate between the doorstep and the wall. There she kept three
+stunted little wall-flowers--no room for more--which she attended to
+every morning after breakfast. Cats destroyed them in the end. She
+laughed, as it were gleefully. Her laugh is her own; derisive,
+open-mouthed, shapeless, hardly sane--but she has a smile--a smile at
+nothing in particular, at her own thoughts--which is singularly sweet
+and pathetic. I cannot but think that the spirit which enables her to
+live on without despair, to love her little garden and to smile so
+sweetly, is better worth than much material comfort. Hers, after all,
+is a life that has its fragrance.
+
+
+12
+
+[Sidenote: _TONY AS NURSEMAID_]
+
+Mrs Widger went off after tea to look at Rosie's grave. She likes to go
+alone, without the children, and she also likes to stop and have a chat
+with someone she knows up on land. In consequence, Tony, taking his
+Sunday evening promenade, found the children on the Front just in that
+state when they want, and do not wish, to go to bed. They followed him
+in.
+
+"Wer's thic Mam 'Idger?"
+
+"Don' know!"
+
+"Her's gone to cementry."
+
+"Didn' ought to leave 'ee like thees yer."
+
+"Her's gone to see Rosie."
+
+Tony felt himself rather helpless. "Now then," he cried with a vain
+nourish, "off to bed wi' 'ee!"
+
+"No!--No!--Shan't!--Us an't had no supper."
+
+"Wer is yer supper? What be going to hae?"
+
+"Don' know.--Mam! Mam 'Idger!"
+
+One started crying, then the other.
+
+"Casn' thee put 'em to bed thyself?" I asked.
+
+"I don' know! Better wait.... Her's biding away a long time. I'll hae
+to talk to she."
+
+Tony sat down in the courting chair. The two boys climbed one on each
+of his knees. They wriggled themselves comfortable, and fell asleep. He
+woke them. "Won' 'ee go to bed now? I wants to go out."
+
+"No! No!" they cried peevishly. "Wer's thiccy Mam?"
+
+Their white heads, turned downwards in sleep on either side of Tony's
+red weathered face, looked very patient and bud-like. Tony's eyes
+twinkled over them with a humorous helplessness, crossed occasionally
+by a shade of impatience. So the three of them waited for the
+household's source of energy to return. Tony had been wanting a glass
+of beer. He nearly slept too.
+
+Mam Widger said, when she did come, that they were 'all so big a fule
+as one another.' "Casn' thee even get thy children off to bed?" she
+asked.
+
+"I can't help o'it," was Tony's reply.
+
+[Sidenote: _LOSS OF TEMPER_]
+
+She has taken the household affairs so completely on her shoulders that
+he is almost helpless without her. In many ways, and in the better, the
+biblical, sense of the word, he is still so childlike that he often
+gets done for him what it would be useless for other people who have
+little of the child in them, to expect. For the same reason, bullies
+choose him out for attack. If I should happen to lose my temper with
+him, it is a fault on my part, quickly repented of and quicker
+forgiven, but a fault nevertheless. If he, on the other hand, loses his
+temper with me, he merely says afterwards: "Ah! I be al'ays like
+that--irritable like; I al'ays was an' I al'ays shall be to the end o'
+the chapter." He assumes that there was no fault on his part, that his
+loss of temper was simply the outcome of the nature of things and of
+himself, and consequently that there was nothing to call for
+forgiveness. The curious thing is that one feels his view to be right.
+One does not _forgive_ children; nor the childlike spirit either.
+
+Returning from sea one evening, more lazy than tired, he said: "You
+wash me face, Mam, an' I'll wash me hands myself." His face was washed
+amid shouts of laughter, and I tugged off his boots. We were all quite
+pleased. Happy is the man for whom one can do that sort of thing!
+
+Mrs Widger explained the other day at dinner that for a time after they
+were married, Tony used to help a great deal with the housework, until
+once, when he was doing something clumsily, she said: "Git 'long out
+wi' 'ee, I can du that!"
+
+"Iss," added Tony, "I used to scrub, and help her wi' the washing (an'
+kiss her tu), but I ain't done nort to it since her spoke to me rough,
+like that, an' now I be got out the way o'it, an' that's the reason
+o'it--thic Mam 'Idger there!"
+
+"G'out! 'tis thy...."
+
+"Oh well, I du cuddle 'ee sometimes, when yu'm willing!"
+
+
+13
+
+Against the beach the listless sea made a sound like a rattle, very
+gently and continuously shaken by a very tired baby. Nothing was doing.
+The air was a little too chilly for pleasure boating. Tony had gone to
+'put away up over' the after-dinner hour. I lay down to read, and fell
+asleep to the meg-meg of Mam Widger's voice chatting in a neighbour's
+doorway.
+
+Two or three small pebbles jumped through the open window. Uncle Jake
+was below. When he says, on the Front, that he is going somewhere, he
+may set off this week, next week, or never; but when he wakes one
+up.... I hastened down.
+
+[Sidenote: _PRAWNING WITH BOAT-NETS_]
+
+"Going shrimpin' wi' the boat-nets," he said, flavouring, as it were, a
+tit-bit in his mouth. "Must try and earn summut if I bean't going to
+feel the pinch o' _thees_ winter." Then he added as if it were an
+afterthought: "Be 'ee coming?"
+
+"When?"
+
+"Now--so sune as I can get enough bait. I've a-got a beautiful cod's
+head towards it. Back about midnight, I daresay."
+
+"All right."
+
+"Put some clothes on your back. I'll bring a bottle o'tay--better than
+brewers' tack--an' go'n get the boat ready. Take the _Moondaisy_.... Eh?"
+
+Tony, just downstairs and still rubbing his eyes (when he snoozes he
+goes right to bed), asked what was up. "Shrimping wi' Uncle Jake," I
+replied. "That'll gie thee a doing!" he said. "Yu ask George. George
+used to be Uncle Jake's mate. 'Tis, 'Back oar-for'ard--back wi'
+inside--steady--steady--damn yer eyes!' George couldn't put up wi' it.
+Jake don' never sleep hisself, and wuden' let he sleep."
+
+The poor little _Moondaisy_, lying on ways at the water's edge, looked
+as if she had a small deckhouse aft. Sixteen boat-nets,[19] with their
+lines and corks, were piled up on the stern seats. In the stern-sheets
+were two baskets, one of them very smelly, and a newspaper parcel that
+reeked. Piled up in the bows were bits of old rope, sacks and bags
+(very catty), chips of wood, empty tea-bottles, and all the litter that
+collects in a boat used by Uncle Jake.
+
+      [19] Boat-nets are the same in construction as setting-nets (see
+      p. 192), but upwards of a yard in diameter. Instead of a cord and
+      stick, they have attached to them four or five fathoms of grass
+      line. A few small flat oval corks are spliced at short intervals
+      into the end of the line remote from the net, and at the
+      extremity is a cork buoy about half as large as a man's head.
+
+"Where are we going?" I asked.
+
+"_I_ knows; but if anybody asks yu where we'm going, or where we've
+been, don't yu tell 'em. Don't want none o' they treble-X-ers on our
+ground. You say like ol' Pussey Pengelly used to: 'Down to Longo.' I
+don't hae nobody 'long wi' me what can't keep a quiet tongue.--I can
+see some o' they hellers down there now, but they ain't so far west as
+we'm going, not by a long way. An' yu wuden' see 'em where they be if
+they didn't think 'twas going to be a quiet night with not much pulling
+attached to it. But _I_ shuden' be surprised to see a breeze down
+easterly 'fore morning. Don't du to get caught down to Longo be an
+easterly breeze. Lord, the pulls I've a-had to get home 'fore now!"
+
+[Sidenote: _THE HIGH-TIDE WAVES_]
+
+A very old-fashioned figure Uncle Jake looked, standing up in the
+stern-sheets and bending rhythmically, sweep and jerk, sweep and jerk,
+to his long oar, as if there were wires inside him. His grey
+picture-frame beard seems to have the effect of concentrating the
+expressiveness of his face, the satiric glint of his eyes, the dry
+smile, the straightness of his shaven upper lip, and the kindly
+lighting-up of the whole visage when he calls to the sea-gulls and they
+answer him back, and he says with the delight of a child, "There! Did
+'ee hear thic?" Keeping close along shore in order to avoid the
+strength of the flood tide against us, we rode with a perfection of
+motion on the heave of the breaking swell. As we were passing over the
+inside of Broken Rocks, three waves ran far up the beach. "Did 'ee hear
+thic rattle?" Uncle Jake exclaimed. "That was the high-tide wave, then,
+whatever the tide-tables say. Yu'll hear the low tide t'night if yu
+listens."
+
+Once I backed the boat ashore for Uncle Jake to go and look at one of
+the numerous holes under the cliffs, in every one of which he has
+wreckage stored up for firewood against the winter. He can at least
+depend on having warmth. When he is nowhere to be found, he is a as a
+rule down-shore carrying jetsam into caves. Much of it he gives away
+for no other payment than the privilege of talking sarcastically at
+those who don't trouble to go and of blazing forth at them when they
+do.
+
+The November sun went down while we rowed, an almost imperceptible
+fading of daylight into delicate thin colours and finally into a shiny
+grey half-light. More and more the cliffs lowered above us. They lost
+their redness except where a glint of the sun burned splendidly upon
+them; coloured shadows, as it were, came to life in the high earthern
+flanks, lifted themselves off, and floated away into the sunset, until
+the land stood against and above the sea, black and naked, crowned with
+distorted thorn bushes. Very serene was the sky, but a little hard.
+"Wind down east t'morrow," Uncle Jake repeated. We passed Refuge Cove,
+over Dog Tooth Ledge, and along Landlock Bay. We tossed over the Brandy
+Mull, a great round pit in a reef, where even in calm weather the tide
+boils always. No further were there any beaches. The sea washed to the
+sheer cliffs through tumbled heaps of rocks. "_'Tis_ an ironbound
+shop!" said Uncle Jake. "Poor fellows, that gets wrecked hereabout! I
+knows for some copper bolts when they rots out o' the wreck where they
+be."
+
+We had rowed down to Longo on the calm sea; we were on the sea, almost
+in it, in so small a boat; and shorewards were the tide-swirls, the
+jagged rocks, the high black cliffs. The relation of sea and land was
+become reversed for us. The sea was no longer a thirsty menace, an
+unknown waste. It was the land, the rocks and the cliffs, which
+threatened hungrily. Night-fears, had there been any, would surely have
+sprung out from the land.
+
+[Sidenote: _A COD'S HEAD_]
+
+We rowed into a bay whose wide-spreading arms were like an amphitheatre
+of shadows.
+
+"Take thees yer oar," said Uncle Jake. "Wer's thic cod's head?"
+
+Everywhere in the boat, to judge by one's nose. He found it, hacked it,
+then beat it with a pebble, and hacked again, and tore. From it came
+two awful separate smells--one like that of a dissecting room, the
+other like bad crab's inside, or like fearfully perverted cocoa, just
+wetted--a sort of granulated stink that stopped one's breath. Beautiful
+bait!
+
+"Now then, while I fixes the bait between the thirts," said Uncle Jake,
+"yu paddle westward. Keep 'en straight, else if a bit of a breeze
+comes, us'll never find the buoys." While I rowed very slowly, he flung
+overboard first a buoy and then its net, a buoy and its net, till he
+had hove the whole sixteen with about four boat's lengths between each.
+The _plop_ was echoed from the cliff, and as the nets sank the sea-fire
+glittered green upon them. He drew on a ragged pair of oilskin
+trousers, stationed himself on the starboard side of the stern-sheets,
+and grasped the longer tiller. On account of the ebb tide and
+consequent lay of the corks, we worked back, in reverse order,
+eastwards. It was for me to row the boat up until the bow was just
+inside the large buoy. Then Uncle Jake's directions, more or less
+abbreviated, came fast one after another:
+
+_Back outside oar_ (or _Pull inside oar_), to bring the bows round
+towards the buoy.
+
+_Pull both oars_, to bring the boat up to the buoy.
+
+_Pull outside oar_, to bring the stern of the boat a nice striking
+distance from the line between the buoy and the small corks. (Uncle
+Jake strikes under and up with the tiller.)
+
+_Pull both oars_, while he hauls in the loose line.
+
+_Back both_, to stop the boat's way.
+
+_Back outside oar_, to keep the line just clear of the gunwale.
+
+_Stop_, while he hauls very slowly and stealthily at first, lest prawns
+and lobsters jump out, then swiftly, raising his arms high above his
+head, until the net is aboard.
+
+So, in single and even half strokes, with variations according to
+current and wind, for all the sixteen buoys and nets. Whilst Uncle
+Jake, on his part, dropped the prawns into a bag which hung from his
+neck, flung the wild-crabs amidships, and the lobsters under the stern
+seat, and hove out the net again a few yards from where it was at
+first--I, on my part, had to spy the next buoy, a mere rocking blot on
+the water, to find out how the line lay from it, and then to hold the
+boat steady till he was ready with the tiller. After a time, one became
+a little mazed, one's head ached with screwing it round to sight the
+buoys, and his directions ceased so long as everything was going right.
+
+[Sidenote: _MAKING THE ROUNDS_]
+
+Very wonderful, even exhilarating was the silence and loneliness, the
+feeling that ourselves only, of all the world, were in that beautiful
+mysterious place. Had I had prayers to say, I should have said them,
+sure that some sort of a God was brooding on the waters and suspicious
+perhaps, at the back of my mind, that where the black cliffs upreared
+themselves, there the devil was.
+
+After we had hauled and shot again the sixteenth net, Uncle Jake
+counted one hundred and seventy odd prawns from his bag into the
+basket. "Do 'ee see how whitish they be?" he asked. "They'm al'ays like
+that in the dirty water after a gale. Lord, what a battering they poor
+things must get when it blows on thees yer coast!" He picked over the
+lobsters to see if any were saleable, but found only small
+ones--cockroaches--that, as he said, "it don't do to let the bogie-man
+[fishery inspector] glimpse.--An' I've a-catched," he added, "more than
+five shill'orth o' fine lobsters in one round of the prawn-nets 'fore
+they bloody men from the west'ard came up hereabout wi' their pots. Ah,
+shrimpin' ain't what 't used to be!"
+
+We made three more rounds in that bay, then hauled all our nets into
+the boat, rowed further west, and shot our nets round a submarine
+ledge, the whereabouts of which Uncle Jake knew to a yard. A couple of
+rounds there, and we brought up to the buoy of a lobster pot (for the
+ebb tide, washing round the headland, kept on hurtling us out to sea),
+had our supper, and waited. Prawns take longer to go into the nets
+after a second round in the same water.
+
+A haziness that had been in the sky, strengthened into a lurry of
+little cloudlets between us and the stars. "That's where 'tis going to
+be," said Uncle Jake. "Easterly! Do 'ee feel this bit of a swell? Us
+won't be here to-morrow night.--There! Did 'ee hear that? Eh?"
+
+Two waves gave forth a peculiar confidential chuckle, long drawn out
+and very gentle, very fatigued--as if the sea were making some signal
+to us; as if it wished to say that it was tired of ebbing and flowing.
+The cliff shadow listened, I thought, immovable and pitiless, but I
+fancy that I heard the cry of a bird a quarter of a mile to the
+eastward. Sea life wakes up with the flow of the tide. I had forgotten
+the gulls and the ravens; had forgotten the existence of all living
+things except prawns, lobsters and wild-crabs. No more waves
+chuckled.... "That's the low tide waves sure 'nuff--thic chuckle.
+There's mostly three on 'em. An' I can al'ays hear the rattle of the
+high tide waves tu--iss, even in a gale o' wind. What a rattle they
+makes on the beach, to be sure! They fules o' visitors 'ould laugh at
+'ee if yu was to tell 'em that--they've a-laughed at me--but 'tis true.
+Yu've heard, an't 'ee?"
+
+The end buoy was troublesome to find. And in the middle of the round, I
+rowed up to a shadow thinking to find a buoy, and there close beside
+the boat, revealed as the swell sank, was a reef of rock, humped and
+covered with seaweed which stood up on end as the water flowed
+shallowly over the ledge. It was like a grisly great head, ages old,
+immense, and of terrible aspect, heaving itself up through the sea at
+us.
+
+[Sidenote: _UNCLE JAKE'S MATES_]
+
+With much careful working of the boat, we picked up the middle buoys
+from the ledge, and hove them further to sea. Uncle Jake swore at the
+reef, at the nets, at himself, at his luck. "_'Tis_ a bloody crib!
+Didn't think the tide was going to fall so far. This same happened the
+very last time I was down yer wi' old Blimie--old Sublime, us calls
+'en. 'Let's get out o' this!' he said. 'Leave the blasted nets an'
+let's get out o' it quick!' But I 'ouldn't let 'en, not I--us had three
+thousand shrimps thic night; an' he very nearly cried, he did. '_Tis_
+some mates I've had for thees yer job. Most of 'em won't come when they
+can pay the brewer any other way. _I'll_ never come out again wi' the
+last three on 'em, not if I starves for it. One of 'em went to sleep;
+t'other cuden' see the buoys; an' old Blimie was blind and not willing
+neither. 'Wer be the cursed things?' he'd say. 'Back!' I'd say. 'Back
+oars! You'm on top o' it!' 'Well, I be backing, bain't I?' he'd say,
+an' go on pulling jest the same. Then 'er said 'er was ill and wanted
+to go home. _He_ won't come no more, not if he starves, an' me too.
+I won't hae 'en!"
+
+A ripple came down from the east. The sound of its _lap-lap-lap_ under
+the boat stole on one's ears sleepily, but it roused Uncle Jake to
+quick action. "Do 'ee see thees little cockle on the water?" he said.
+"Do 'ee feel the life o'it in the boat? Must get out of thees yer, else
+we shan't never find the buoys."
+
+We picked up the buoys--those we had shifted out of line were hard to
+find, for the stars were now all hidden by cloud--and a little breeze
+followed the ripple from the east. Rowing along under the cliffs, even
+inside some of the rocks, through passages that only Uncle Jake is sure
+of, we caught the young flood tide. The north-easter, that blew out
+freshly from the Seacombe valley, chilled us to the bone.
+
+Seacombe was asleep. No one was on the Front. We had to carry the nets
+up from the water's edge to the seawall before our utmost straining
+could drag the _Moondaisy_ up the bank of shingle. For more than an
+hour we hauled.
+
+When at last it was over, I brought Uncle Jake in house and made him a
+cup of cocoa. We had been nine hours' rowing. Though he could have done
+the same again, without food or rest, he looked a little haggard. It
+seemed impossible to believe that the grey old man with disordered hair
+and beard, clothed in rags and patches, sipping cocoa in a windsor
+chair, was that same alert shadow who had been reckoning up life, so
+humorously and wisely, in the darkness under the cliffs. He referred
+again to the winter's pinch. It must mean that he has not enough money
+put by from summer for the days coming, when even he will not be able
+to find some odd job. Yet, as I know very well, when the pinch does
+come he will go short and say nothing whatever to anybody. He will be
+merely a shade more sarcastic. One of the children may come home saying
+that 'thic Uncle Jake an't had half a pound of butter all this week,'
+or that he has been in one of his passions with Aunt Jake for taking in
+a loaf of bread without paying cash for it. He will bring out a
+ha'penny from a little screw of newspaper to buy milk for his cats, and
+he will take some crumbs to leave on dry rocks under the cliffs for the
+robins that flutter after him there. "Poor things!" he'll say. And to
+people he will still be saying what he thinks, fair or foul, gentle or
+hard. To understand his sternness and his kindness, it needs to go with
+him wrinkling in the sunshine and prawning in the dark. He is become
+very like his beloved rocks and cliffs. He is, as one might say, a
+voice for them, and his words and deeds are what one would expect their
+words and deeds to be, did they not stand there, warm, sunny and
+graciously coloured, or dark and stern, fronting the sea immovably, as
+Uncle Jake fronts life. "Du _I_ want to die?" he says when asked his
+age. "Why, I'd like to live a thousand years!"
+
+
+14
+
+[Sidenote: _NARCOTICS AND STIMULANTS_]
+
+Tony is singularly free from any craving either for narcotics or
+stimulants. Most people I know, especially those who do brain work or
+live in cities, are satisfied if they can strike a working balance
+between the two. Granfer must have his glass of beer regularly, but
+neither smokes nor drinks much tea; Uncle Jake snuffs and loves his
+tea, but drinks no alcohol whatever; John Widger smokes heavily; and I
+have never known Mrs Widger get up in the morning without her cup o'
+tay. Tony, on the other hand, smokes, for politeness' sake, an
+occasional cigarette when it is offered him, does not hanker after his
+tea, and scarcely ever drinks alone. He gets drunk now and then, not
+because he greatly wants to, but socially; because, when half-a-dozen
+of them are drinking in rounds, 'What can a fellow du?' Even then he
+often leaves untouched a glassful that has been ordered for him, though
+all the while after his third or fourth glass, he may be asking other
+men to 'drink up and hae another.' Drinking with him is an expression
+of jollity, not the means of it.
+
+The Perkinses went at the end of last week into a jerry-built villa up
+on land. To escape the brunt of moving in, probably, Perkins took Tony
+to a football match at Plymouth. It was not so much that they drank a
+great deal, as that they came home, singing, in a very overcrowded and
+smoky railway carriage. "I s'pose I got exzited like," Tony says. He
+was all right until they got out into the fresh air, and then ...
+Perkins brought him in house and laid him along the passage. "Here's
+your husband, Mrs Widger." Being rather afraid of Mrs Widger, because
+she always speaks her mind, Perkins disappeared quickly.
+
+[Sidenote: _TONY ON DRINK_]
+
+_In vino veritas_, no doubt. When Tony is drunk he becomes most
+affectionate, and begins 'slatting things about'--not violently or
+maliciously, but simply out of joyous devilment and a desire to feel
+that he is doing something. Mrs Widger neither wept nor upbraided him.
+"Yu silly gert fule!" she said. "Yu silly gert fule! Shut up, or yu'll
+wake they chil'ern."
+
+"Be glad tu see yer Tony?"
+
+"G'out! Git yer butes off."
+
+Tony made the chairs skip round the room and thought he'd like to see
+the table (with the lamp) upside down. The window curtains annoyed him.
+Mrs Widger took steps.
+
+Luckily, she is not with child, or otherwise delicate, and can
+therefore stand a deal of rough and tumble. She pushed him headlong
+into a chair and took off his boots. (Those two, there alone, for Under
+Town was asleep.) Then she shouldered him upstairs, like a heavy piece
+of luggage, and laid him on their bed. Poor Tony was more than leery.
+He swam. He moaned. He was sick. He could neither lie down nor get up.
+"Sarve thee damn well right!" said Mam Widger.
+
+"_I_ can't help o'it...."
+
+"_Yu can't help o'it!_"
+
+Between three and four in the morning, she went downstairs, relighted
+the fire and made him and herself a cup o' tay. After that, not so very
+long before daylight, they slept.
+
+To-day Tony is ill and subdued, if not repentant. He reckons he will do
+the same again ("What chap don't, 'cept they mump-headed long-faced
+beggars?"), but at present he turns from liquor; he always does for a
+day and a half after 'going on the bust.' "Didn' ought never to drink
+more'n one glass," he says; "no, n'eet none at all!" Seeing what it
+would mean for the family if Tony took to drink, Mrs Widger is, and was
+at the time, wonderfully calm and cheerful--how far from reliance in
+herself, or from trust in Tony, is not plain. I asked her what she
+would do if he became a drunkard and brought no money home.
+
+"Oh," she said carelessly, "I s'pose I should turn tu and get some work
+to du and keep things going somehow."
+
+"Would you let him have any pocket-money?"
+
+"Ay, I 'spect I should--enough for his pint."
+
+There's not a shadow of doubt but she would do both.
+
+
+15
+
+Tony has always been a man for the girls; so much so, and so naively,
+that whatever he might do would seem quite innocent; as innocent as the
+love-play of animals. Along the Front, of an evening, he calls out,
+"How be 'ee, my dear?" to any girl he chooses, and perhaps takes her
+arm for a few steps. Given half a chance, he snatches a playful kiss.
+They never seem to turn rusty with him. He has the primitive quality of
+knocking their conventionality to bits at one blow.
+
+[Sidenote: _FLIRTATIONS_]
+
+Just before the Perkinses left, he turned out at five in the morning to
+see if the high long tide was flowing up to the boats. At six he made
+tea and went with it to bed again. When he came downstairs at eight
+o'clock (in his pants, darning the seat of his trousers), Mrs Widger
+and Mrs Perkins both had breakfasts frying on the fire. Mrs Widger,
+very loud-voiced that morning, was packing the children off to school;
+Mrs Perkins was bent over the pan, browning sausages. Tony crept up
+behind her, seized her by the waist, and kissed her.
+
+"Oh, you naughty man!" said Mrs Perkins, who was married out of a
+drapery establishment and has the drapery style of talking to
+perfection. "If my dear hubby knew...."
+
+"Tell him!" retorted Tony. "I be ready for 'en. I feels lively this
+morning. I'll gie 'ee another if yu'll darn thees yer trousers for me.
+Thic Mam 'Idger there won't du nort. You wuden' think I'd had two
+nights o'it, wude 'ee? I went to bed last night, an' then I got up,
+five o'clock, and 'cause there weren't nort doing I went to bed again
+an' had an hour or an hour an' a half's more sleep."
+
+"Oh, you sleepy man!"
+
+"I didn' want to sleep. I wanted the missis here to cuddle me, on'y her
+'ouldn't. Her turned away from me that cold.... I went off to sleep.
+An' when I woke up again, thinkin' her'd cuddle me then, her gave me a
+kick an' got out bed. I never see'd ort like it. Her ain't what her
+used to be, for all her ain't a bad li'l thing, thee's know."
+
+"G'out!" said Mrs Widger. "I be older--and wiser."
+
+"Don' know about that. I shall go into Plymouth an' git a nice li'l
+girl there.... Oh, I've know'd plenty on 'em. All the li'l girls likes
+ol' Tony."
+
+"I know they do," remarked Mrs Perkins sententiously, while Mrs Widger
+laughed rather proudly.
+
+"Iss; us was to Plymouth once, an' a nice li'l girl wi' a white bow
+roun' her neck came up an' spoke to me when I was a-looking into a shop
+window, an' her said, 'I lives jest here,' an' I said, 'Do 'ee, my
+dear? I'll be 'long in a minute....'"
+
+"Where was Mrs Widger then?"
+
+"Oh, her was 'bout ten yards in front."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Iss; if her won't be nice to me when I wants her tu, I shall go into
+Plymouth an' find out my li'l girl there...."
+
+"Garn then, yu fule! I can du wi'out 'ee. I shall hae thic divorce.
+Thee's think, I s'pose, as I can't get 'long wi'out 'ee? Thee's much
+mistaken!"
+
+"Well...."
+
+"Git 'long out wi' 'ee!" repeated Mrs Widger, laughing and very
+proudly. "Git 'long out an' let me clear these yer breakfast things."
+
+"What have yu got for dinner, me dear? Then I'll remain with 'ee an'
+not go out at all."
+
+"G'out!"
+
+Amid loud laughter, Tony snatched a kiss from both ladies, and pranced
+out.
+
+
+16
+
+[Sidenote: _MRS WIDGER_]
+
+"'Tisn't no use to be jealous," Mrs Widger says. "I used to be a bit
+taken that way once, but I ain't now, an' 'twuden' make no difference
+if I was." Doubtless she is quite right, and she certainly succeeds in
+never showing what jealousy she may feel when, for instance, she
+catches sight of Tony strolling in through the Gut with his arm half
+round another woman's waist, as his playful way is. If Tony speaks of
+his first wife she does not, like most second wives, stop talking. If
+she hears of a woman unhappily married, she usually dismisses the
+affair with a "Well, her shuden't ha' married 'en: her must put up wi'
+'en now her's got 'en." The goings-on of unmarried people do not easily
+scandalise her. "I reckon," she says, "yu can du as yu like afore yu'm
+married, but after that yu'm fixed." She is so confident of the
+fastness of the marriage tie (it is, of course, much more indissoluble
+for poor people who cannot travel, have no servants, and cannot afford
+lawyers for divorce proceedings) that she can afford to give Tony
+plenty of rope in small things. Her trust in his faithfulness is
+absolute, and justified. She has him; he cannot get along without her;
+she knows that. Her attitude is founded on experience and common-sense;
+not on some abstract system of morality that never controlled men's
+lives, and never will.
+
+When I used to look upon fishermen as picturesque common objects of the
+seashore, I thought their womenfolk rather dreadful. Now, however, the
+more I see of this household the more I admire Mrs Widger's management
+of it. I know of few other women who could direct it better and with
+less friction. Indeed, I am acquainted with no middle-class woman at
+all who could direct any of these poor men's households as their own
+wives so noisily and so cleverly do. Mrs Widger does not attempt to
+gain her own way by sheer force and hardness, not even with the
+children; she bends to every current; but she never breaks, and finally
+prevails. Like most West-country people, she has more staying power
+than visible energy. By going not straight over the hills, like a Roman
+road, but round by the valleys and level paths, she arrives at her
+journey's end just as quickly and with much less disturbance and
+fatigue. She does nothing quite perfectly; neither cooking, mending,
+cleaning nor child-rearing; but she does everything as well as is
+practicable, as well as is advisable. Tony would often like things a
+little better done, but if he had to do them they would be done a
+little worse. Some people here greatly pride themselves on keeping
+their homes spotlessly clean, and their front doors locked so that no
+dirty boot shall soil the oilcloth in the passage. Mrs Widger says that
+her house is for living in. Children run in and out of it, laughing and
+shouting.
+
+In some respects, she and Tony remind one of a French bourgeois couple.
+He has the sentiment, the expressed ideality, the sensitiveness. He
+perceives a great deal, but perceives much of it vaguely. He seldom
+makes up his mind--then unalterably. He is like the little man in
+Blake's drawing, who stands at the foot of a long ladder reaching up to
+the moon, and cries, "I want!" What he wants, he does not precisely
+know. Summut or other. Mrs Widger, on the other hand, knows what she
+wants very exactly; so exactly that she is content to bide her
+opportunity. When they were married, Tony had neither boats nor gear.
+He has them now.
+
+[Sidenote: _A STEADY HEAD_]
+
+How she keeps a steady head passes my understanding; at breakfast-time,
+for example, when the boys are clamouring for their kettle-broth or
+loudly demanding fish, or trying to sneak lumps of sugar; and the
+girls, nearly late for school, are asking what she wants from the
+butcher's or stores; and one or two of them require clean things, or
+something darned, or have not washed their faces or combed out their
+hair properly; and Tony's and my breakfasts are cooking; and the kettle
+is boiling out or over; and Tony is asking her where he has left his
+other guernsey, and everybody is talking nineteen to the dozen--and she
+wants her own breakfast too. It is at such a moment that she displays
+best her most characteristic gesture.
+
+Most people who work with a will, possess some gesture or movement
+which is typical of, and sums up, the major part of their
+activities--the gesture that sculptors and painters try to catch. To
+lay out on home and family the earnings of a workman who is regularly
+paid, calls for skill and care enough on the part of a wife who has no
+reserve fund and must make the weekly accounts balance to within a few
+ha'pence. But successfully to lay out, and to lay by, the earnings of a
+man like Tony, whose family is large and whose money comes in with
+extreme irregularity, requires a combination of forethought and
+self-control which falls little short of genius. And it has to be done
+on a cash basis, for debt would worry Tony out of his wits. The family
+purse must necessarily be the centre, and the symbol, of Mrs Widger's
+household activities; a matter to which she must give more thought than
+to any other one thing.
+
+"Mabel, I want you to go out for me," she says. "Get me my purse."
+
+[Sidenote: _CHARACTERISTIC GESTURE_]
+
+Standing, as a rule, by the dresser, she receives the purse into her
+hand, opens it meditatively, looks in, pokes a ringer in, tips the
+purse and peers between the coins as they fall apart; takes one or two
+out and replaces them as if they fitted into slots. Then with a
+wide-armed gesture, curiously commanding and graceful, she hands out to
+the child perhaps a ha'penny. "Get me a ha'porth o' new milk, quick!"
+
+The purse is put away.
+
+So striking is the little ceremony, so symbolic, so able to stop our
+chatter while we look, that we have nicknamed Mam Widger _The Purse
+Bearer_.
+
+That is the name for her--Purse Bearer.
+
+
+17
+
+Downstairs in the front room there are two or three photographs of
+George, that he himself has sent home since that day he went off to the
+Navy. The earliest shows him still boyish, sitting small, as it were,
+and a little shy of his new uniform. In the latest, taken not long ago,
+nor very long in point of time after the first, he is sitting bolt
+upright, chest inflated, arms akimbo with a straight, level, almost
+ferocious look in his eyes. He has apparently taken a measure of the
+world outside Under Town, and is all the surer of his feet for having
+stood up against greater odds and for having walked the slippery plank
+of Navy regulations. "If you'm minded to run up against me," he seems
+to be saying, "come and try; here I am." The two photographs suggest
+the difference between a bird in winter and in the mating season.
+George's uniform, in the later photograph, has become his spring
+plumage.
+
+[Sidenote: _GEORGE HOME_]
+
+When he sent word that he was coming home on leave, I was prepared for
+a great change in him, but scarcely for the new George. He used to be
+so like a cat on a sunny wall; used to lie along the stern seat of the
+_Moondaisy_ so lazy and content that only his ever-watchful eyes
+held any expression. He was deeply sunburnt: scraggy in the neck;
+strong and lissome, but not very smart.
+
+He is returned home no less strong and lissome, and exceedingly smart.
+The sunburn is gone; indeed there's many a maiden would envy his
+complexion; and his long stout neck, with the broadening bands of
+muscle, would delight a sculptor. The alert expression, that used to be
+more or less limited to his eyes, has spread, so to speak, over all his
+face, over the whole of him and into all his movements. He is
+organised; unified. In repose now, he would not be simply lazy; he
+would be _being lazy_. His features, rather indeterminate of old, have
+become curiously refined, almost delicate, almost supercilious (in the
+pride of young strength), but not quite either. It is noticeable
+generally that an orderly mental existence has great power to
+regularise the features, and in so doing, to refine them. Hence perhaps
+this refinement of feature in George; for if, in the effort to gain
+promotion, he has been putting his heart into his work--the routine
+work of his ship and the Naval barracks--it follows that his mental
+existence must have been very orderly and regular. But how far the
+total change in him is due to Navy discipline, and how far to his
+arrival at mating time, one cannot say, neither probably could he.
+Among working people nothing so smartens a young man and so quickly
+sets him on his own feet as a little traffic with the maidens;
+especially when he can't get his own way too easily. George, I gather,
+is paying attention to two or three.
+
+Whereas his toilet used to consist of dragging on trousers, guernsey
+and boots, and lacing up the last-named aboard his boat, if at all, it
+is now a function delightful to witness as he stumps backwards and
+forwards between the kitchen looking-glass and the scullery-sink. What
+a washing and spluttering! what a boot-blacking and hair brushing! what
+retouches and last glances into the glass! The cap comes off and is
+replaced at a jauntier angle, a ribbon is tied again, the lanyard is
+put just right, and George goes forth to a war that began before
+battleships were thought of. One makes fun of his titivations, and
+admires nevertheless. Pride o' life, I have heard it called. Hitching
+one's wagon to a star is doubtless good; so is driving one's wagon
+along mankind's track. Thank God we have still a deal of the monkey in
+us.
+
+I should like to see how Master George would carry on the land campaign
+if he had money to spare. That, however, he has not. The presents he
+brought home for the whole family, as is customary, must have cost him
+a good deal. He has had, too, a spell in the Naval barracks--which
+means spending money on shore amusements instead of putting it by. And
+as he has bought some civilian clothes on the instalment system, and
+will have that to pay off, he cannot borrow much of his father or
+mother.
+
+Being 'on his own' now, he does not, of course expect a supply of money
+from his father, nor on the other hand does Tony try to force his
+authority upon George. Whilst he was here, George met a few of his old
+chums up in the Town, and about midnight he came home rather drunk. We
+were all abed; he had to knock several times; and in the end Tony went
+down to let him in. 'Twas a good opportunity for a quarrel that would
+have wakened the whole Square. But Tony said nothing then. He saw
+George safely to bed, and merely remarked next day in George's hearing,
+that "'Tisn't gude to drink tu much if you can help o'it, specially
+when yu'm young; besides, it costis tu much." George was very ashamed.
+
+[Sidenote: _MRS WIDGER'S DIPLOMACY_]
+
+Mrs Widger it was who had the row over George's spree, but not with
+George, and owing to her clever diplomacy it was hardly a row at all.
+
+Mabel rushed into the house at breakfast-time.
+
+"Mother, is George come home?"
+
+"Course he is. What next?"
+
+"Well, Lottie Rousdon says as he come'd home last night an' yu an' Dad
+wuden' let 'en in. Drunk's a handcart, falling about, her says he was."
+
+"Tis a lie!" began Mrs Widger loudly. Then she appeared to think of
+something; her eyes widened, and she spoke quietly.
+
+"Who told yu thic tale?"
+
+"Why, May Rousdon jest as I was coming in now. Her stopped me an' asked
+if what Lottie'd told her was true."
+
+"Yu go an' tell Lottie Rousdon that if she has a minute to spare when
+she comes home this afternoon to clean herself [Lottie Rousdon is a day
+servant], as mother'd like to see her. Don't yu"--this with rising
+voice--"don't yu tell anything more'n that or I'll break your neck for
+yu."
+
+Mabel rushed out full of importance.
+
+"The lying bitch!" remarked Mam Widger.
+
+Lottie Rousdon walked into the trap. She came in the early evening,
+feathers flying, very innocent. She was in a strange house, not in the
+Square or among her relatives. Mrs Widger was on her own ground. Both
+went into the front room.
+
+"What for did yu--" we could not help hearing.
+
+"Oh, I didn't, Mrs Widger; I'm sure I didn't----"
+
+"Yu did!"
+
+"Mabel," called Mrs Widger. "Go'n ask May Rousdon to kindly step this
+way."
+
+May Rousdon came.
+
+"Who told yu what yu told Mabel about George, this morning? Did _yu_
+make it up?"
+
+"'Twas Lottie told me, Mrs Widger."
+
+"There! if I didn't think.... Don't yu ever say such a wicked thing
+again! Yu don' know what harm...."
+
+The parlour door was shut fast. A hubbub went on within. After a time,
+Lottie, weeping, was led out of the house by her sister.
+
+"The lying bitch," Mrs Widger repeated. "I've a-give'd it to her.
+Making up that tale so pat as if 'twas all true! That's the sort o'
+thing they used to put about when Tony and me was first married, but I
+fought 'em down, I did, an' I thought 'twas all stopped long ago. They
+tried to make out as 'twas me drove George to sea. Nobody can't ever
+say I haven't luked after Tony's first wife's children so well as I
+have me own--but they _have_ said it, all the same, an' I've up an'
+give'd it to 'em 'fore now. Whenever I used to correct the children,
+they'd only to run out o' the house an' they cude always find someone
+to listen to 'em and say as I was cruel to 'em and God knows what. One
+time, when I wasn't very well, I felt I cuden' put up wi' it any
+longer. But I did. An' here I be, same's ever. Pretty times us used to
+have, I can tell yu, when we was first married an' some of 'em put my
+blood up!"
+
+I understand that she cursed several--literally kicked one or two--out
+of the house; but now when anybody is ill, or anything has to be done,
+she is the first person to be sent for; and when George said goodbye to
+her at the station, he wept.
+
+
+18
+
+[Sidenote: _IN THE BAR_]
+
+I was in the Alexandra bar this evening, drinking bitter ale. Apart
+from the new saloon counter, it is an old-fashioned place, full of
+wooden partitions and corners and draughts. The incandescent light was
+flickering dimly in the draught that the sea-wind drove through the
+window and the front door. Seated around the fireplace or against the
+painted partitions, and standing about in groups, were fishermen in
+guernseys, ex-fishermen, some bluejackets, and some solid-looking men
+who were pensioners or sailors in mufti. A couple of repulsive
+lodging-house keepers (they eat too much that falls from the lodgers'
+tables) were talking local politics with a foxy-faced young tradesman
+of the semi-professional sort. The barman, who had had enough to drink,
+was thumb-fingered, loud-voiced, hastily slow. Sometimes the sound of a
+heavier wave than usual broke through the buzz of conversation, and
+sometimes, when the conversation dropped, wave after wave could be
+heard sweeping the shingle along the beach.
+
+A party of vagrant minstrels came to the front-door steps. They played
+a comic song, and the voices within rose in defiance of the music, so
+that when it stopped suddenly, they were surprised into silence.
+
+Up through that silence welled the opening notes of Schubert's
+_Serenade_. Nobody spoke. The barman took up a glass cheerily. "My
+doctor ordered me to take a little when I feel I need it," he said; and
+was _hushed_ down. Some edged towards the door, others sat back with
+faces and pipes tilted up, and others gazed down at the floor. A
+memory-struck, far-away look came into their eyes. Only the barman with
+his glass, and the tradesman in his smart suit, seemed wholly
+themselves.
+
+The _Serenade_ ceased. None spoke. The light gave a great flicker.
+"What the bloody hell!" exclaimed John Widger. The day-dreamers awoke,
+as if from a light sleep. An everyday look came quickly into their eyes
+and each one shifted in his seat. Some even shook themselves like dogs.
+A joke was made about the woman who came in to collect pence, and the
+conversation rose till nothing of the sea's noise could be heard.
+
+I realised with a shock that in four days I shall not be here, and when
+I left the bar, I forgot entirely to say _Good-night_.
+
+[Sidenote: _A GLIMPSE_]
+
+It was as if, for the moment, we had all been very intimate; as if we
+had all gone an adventure together and had peeped over the edge of the
+world.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+                                                         SALISBURY,
+                                                         _January_.
+
+
+1
+
+[Sidenote: _CONTRASTS_]
+
+Chilliness--a social and emotional chilliness that can with difficulty
+be defined or nailed down to any cause--is, above and below all, what
+one feels on returning from a poor man's house into middle-class
+surroundings. It is not unlike that chill with which certain forms of
+metropolitan hospitality strike a countryman. He meets a London friend,
+a former fellow-townsman, perhaps, who has migrated to London and whom
+he has not seen for a year or two. "Glad to see you," says the
+Londoner. "You must call on my wife before you go back. Her day is
+Wednesday." Or, "You must come to dinner one evening. When are you
+free? Next Tuesday? or Friday?" If the hospitality had begun forthwith,
+and the countryman had been haled off, country fashion, to the very
+next pot-luck meal, he would have had a pleasant adventure. It would
+have been like old times. The former glow of friendship would have more
+than revived. But the calculated invitation for a future date, the idea
+that the countryman will like to call for a twenty minutes' chat on
+generalities and a couple of cups of bad afternoon tea.... Though he
+may understand that a multiplicity of engagements in London renders
+this sort of thing convenient, he none the less feels a chill when it
+is applied to himself, and usually cares little whether he go or not.
+He becomes conscious of the desire to save trouble, which is at the
+bottom of such calculations. Had the Londoner revisited the country, he
+would have found old friends ready to upset all their arrangements for
+the sake of entertaining him. The London hospitality is the 'better
+done,' but country hospitality is warmer. Middle-class life runs
+smoother than the poor man's, it is more arranged and in many ways
+'better done,' and it is chillier precisely because, for smooth
+running, the warmer human impulses, both good and bad, must be
+repressed. 'Something with a little love and a little murder' in it,
+was what the illiterate old woman wanted to learn to read. It is what
+we all want in our hearts, much more than smooth running and
+impenetrable uniform politeness.
+
+Down at Seacombe we warm our hands, so to speak, at the fire of life;
+hunger lurks outside, and the fire is dusty and needs looking after;
+but it glows, and we sit together round it. Here at Salisbury,
+throughout the social house, we have an installation of hot-water
+pipes; they may be hygienic (which is doubtful), and they are little
+trouble to keep going; but they don't glow. Give me the warmth that
+glows, and let me get near the heart of it.
+
+Voices are often raised in Under Town and quarrels are not infrequent,
+but the underlying affections are seldom doubted, and when they do rise
+to the surface, there they are, visible, unashamed. 'Each for himself,
+and devil take the hindmost,' is more admired in theory than followed
+in practice. 'Each for himself and the Almighty for us all,' is Tony's
+way of putting it. The difference lies there.
+
+My acquaintances here are well off for the necessities of life. No one
+is likely to starve next week. Nevertheless, they are full of worry,
+and by restraining their expressions of worry so as not to become
+intolerable to the other worriers, they make themselves the more lonely
+and increase their panic of mind. They are afraid of life.
+
+At Seacombe, though there were not a fortnight's money in the house, we
+lived merrily on what we had. In Tony's "Summut 'll sure to turn up if
+yu be ready an' tries to oblige" there is more than philosophy; there
+is race tradition, the experience of generations. The Fates are
+treacherous; therefore, of course, they like to be trusted, and the
+gifts they reserve for those that trust them are retrospective.
+
+[Sidenote: _INSTANCES_]
+
+All of us at Tony's wanted many things--a pension, enough to live on,
+work, a piano, or only 'jam zide plaate'--God knows what we didn't
+want! But the things that men haven't, and want, unite them more than
+those they have. _I want_ is life's steam-gauge; the measure of its
+energy. It is the ground-bass of love, however transcendentalised, and
+whether it give birth to children or ideas. _I have_ is stagnant. And
+_I am afraid_ is the beginning of decay.
+
+It is still _I want_, rather than _I am afraid_, that spurs the poor
+man on.
+
+
+2
+
+For his first marriage and towards setting up house, Tony succeeded in
+saving twenty shillings. He gave it to his mother in gold to keep
+safely for him, and the day before the wedding, he asked for it. "Yu
+knows we an't got no bloody sovereigns," said his father. It had all
+been spent in food and clothes for the younger children. So Tony went
+to sea that night and earned five shillings. A shilling of that too he
+gave to his mother; then started off on foot for the village where his
+girl was living and awaiting him. She had a little saved up: he knew
+that, though he feared it might have gone like his. They were married,
+however; they fed, rejoiced, and joked; and 'for to du the thing proper
+like,' they hired a trap to drive them home. With what money was left
+they embarked on married life, and their children made no unreasonable
+delay about coming. "Aye!" says Tony, "I'd du the same again--though
+'twas hard times often."
+
+Before I left Seacombe I asked a fisherman's wife, who was expecting
+her sixth or seventh child, whether she had enough money in hand to go
+through with it all; for I knew that her husband was unlikely to earn
+anything just then. "I have," she said, "an' p'raps I an't. It all
+depends. If everything goes all right, I've got enough to last out, but
+if I be so ill as I was wi' the last one, what us lost, then I an't.
+Howsbe-ever, I don't want nort now. Us'll see how it turns out." She
+went on setting her house in order, preparing baby linen and making
+ready to 'go up over,' with perfect courage and tranquillity. When one
+thinks of the average educated woman's fear of childbed, although she
+can have doctors, nurses, anaesthetics and every other alleviation, the
+contrast is very great, more especially as the fisherman's wife had
+good reason to anticipate much pain and danger, in addition to the
+possibility of her money giving out.
+
+Those are not extraordinary instances, chosen to show how courageous
+people can be sometimes; on the contrary, they are quite ordinary
+illustrations of a general attitude among the poor towards life. To
+express it in terms of a theory which in one form or another is
+accepted by nearly all thinkers--the poor have not only the _Will to
+Live_, they have the _Courage to Live_.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE COURAGE TO LIVE_]
+
+On the whole, they possess the _Courage to Live_ much more than any
+other class. And they need it much more. The industrious middle-class
+man, the commercial or professional man, works with a reasonable
+expectation of ending his days in comfort. He would hardly work
+without. But the poor man's reasonable expectation is the workhouse, or
+some almost equally galling kind of dependency. The former may count
+himself very unlucky if after a life of work he comes to destitution;
+the latter is lucky if he escapes it. Yet the poor man works on, and is
+of at least as good cheer as the other one. If he can rub along, he is
+even happy. He is, I think, the happier of the two.
+
+The more intimately one lives among the poor, the more one admires
+their amazing talent for happiness in spite of privation, and their
+magnificent courage in the face of uncertainty; and the more also one
+sees that these qualities have been called into being, or kept alive,
+by uncertainty and thriftlessness. Thrift, indeed, may easily be an
+evil rather than good. From a middle-class standpoint, it is an
+admirable virtue to recommend to the poor. It helps to keep them off
+the rates. But for its proper exercise, thrift requires a special
+training and tradition. And from the standpoint of the essential, as
+opposed to the material, welfare of the poor, it can easily be
+over-valued. Extreme thrift, like extreme cleanliness, has often a
+singularly dehumanising effect. It hardens the nature of its votaries,
+just as gaining what they have not earned most frequently makes men
+flabby. Thrift, as highly recommended, leads the poor man into the
+spiritual squalor of the lower middle-class. It is all right as a means
+of living, but lamentable as an end of life. If a penny saved is a
+penny earned, then a penny earned by work is worth twopence.
+
+_The Courage to Live_ is the blossom of the _Will to Live_--a flower
+far less readily grown than withered. It might be argued that since
+apprehensiveness implies foresight, the poor man's _Courage to Live_
+is simply his lack of forethought. In part, no doubt, it is that. But
+he does think, slowly and tenaciously, as a cuttlefish grips. He
+foresees pretty plainly the workhouse; and he has the courage to face
+its probability, and to go ahead nevertheless. His reading of life is
+in some ways very broad, his foothold very firm; for it is founded
+closely on actual experience of the primary realities. He looks
+backwards as well as forwards; his fondness and memory for anecdote is
+evidence of how he dwells on the past; instead of comparing an
+occurrence with something in a book, he recalls a similar thing that
+happened to So-and-so, so many years ago, you mind.... He knows vaguely
+(and it is our vaguer knowledge which shapes our lives) that only by a
+succession of miracles a long series of hair's-breadth escapes and
+lucky chances, does he stand at any moment where he is; and he doesn't
+see why miracles should suddenly come to an end. Hence his active
+fatalism, as opposed to the passive Eastern variety. In Tony's opinion,
+"'Tis better to be lucky than rich." I have never heard him say that
+fortune favours the brave. He assumes it.
+
+
+3
+
+[Sidenote: _INTELLECTUAL TYRANNIES_]
+
+As one grows more democratic in feeling, as one's faith in the people
+receives shock after shock, yet on the whole brightens--so does one's
+mistrust of the so-called democratic programmes increase. One becomes
+at once more dissatisfied and less, more reckless and much more
+cautious. One sees so plainly that the three or four political parties
+by no means exhaust the political possibilities. The poor, though
+indeed they have the franchise, remain little more than pawns in the
+political game. They have to vote for somebody, and nobody is prepared
+to allow them much without a full return in money or domination. They
+pay in practice for what theoretically is only their due. Justice for
+them is mainly bills of costs. The political fight lies still between
+their masters and would-be masters; not so much now, perhaps, between
+different factions of property-owners as between the property-owners
+and the intellectuals. Out of the frying-pan into the fire seems the
+likely course; for the intellectuals, if they have the chance, enslave
+the whole man; they are logical and ruthless. The worst tyrannies have
+been priestly tyrannies, whether of Christians, Brahmins or negro
+witch-doctors; and those priests were the intellectuals of their time.
+I wonder when we shall have a party of intellectuals content to find
+out the people's ideals and to serve them faithfully, instead of trying
+to foist their own ideals upon the people.
+
+Law-makers, however, will probably continue to work for the supposed
+benefit of the people rather than on the people's behalf; and equally,
+the supposed welfare of the people will continue to be the handiest
+political weapon; for the property-owning, articulate classes are
+better able to prevent themselves being played with. To those two facts
+one's political principles must be adjusted. The articulate classes,
+moreover, are actually so little acquainted with the inner life of the
+poor that there is no groundwork of general knowledge upon which to
+base conclusions, and it is impossible to do more than speak from one's
+own personal experience. I don't mind confessing that, though I should
+prefer justice all round, yet, if injustice is to be done--as done it
+must be no doubt--I had rather the poor were not the sufferers. There
+is no reason to believe that present conditions cannot be bettered--to
+believe, with Dr Pangloss, _que tout est au mieux dans ce meilleur
+des mondes possibles_. I have found that to grow acquainted with the
+class that is the chief object of social legislation is to see more
+plainly the room for improvement, and also to see how much better, how
+much sounder, that class is than it appeared to be from the outside:
+how much might be gained, of material advantage especially, and at the
+same time how much there is to be lost of those qualities of character
+which have been acquired through long training and by infinite
+sacrifice. To learn to care for the poor, for their own sake, is to
+fear for them nothing so much as slap-dash, short-sighted social
+legislation.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE WILL TO LIVE_]
+
+The man matters more than his circumstances. The poor man's _Courage to
+Live_ is his most valuable distinctive quality. Most of his finest
+virtues spring therefrom. Any material progress which tends to diminish
+his _Courage to Live_, or to reduce it to mere _Will to Live_, must
+prove in the long run to his and to the nation's disadvantage. And the
+_Courage to Live_, like other virtues, diminishes with lack of
+exercise. Therefore every material advance should provide for the
+continued, for an even greater, exercise and need of the _Courage to
+Live_. If not, then the material advance is best done without.
+
+That is the main constructive conclusion to be drawn. Somewhat akin to
+it is another conclusion of a more critical nature.
+
+In Nietzsche's _Beyond Good and Evil_ there is an apophthegm to the
+effect that, "Insanity in individuals is something rare--but in groups,
+parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." And whilst, on the one
+hand mental specialists have been extending the boundaries of insanity
+to the point of justifying the popular adage that everyone is a bit
+mad, they have, on the other hand, tended to narrow down the difference
+between sanity and its reverse until it has become almost entirely a
+question of mental inhibition, or self-control.
+
+    The highest aim of Mental Hygiene should be to increase the power
+    of mental inhibition amongst all men and women. Control is the
+    basis of all law and the cement of every social system among men
+    and women, without which it would go to pieces.... _Sufficient
+    power of self-control should be the essence and test of
+    sanity._[20]
+
+          [20] "The Hygiene of Mind," by T. S. Clouston, M.D.,
+          F.R.S.E., (London, 1906). Without an extension which Dr
+          Clouston provides, though not in so many words, the
+          definition I have italicized is psychologically a little
+          superficial. Mental inhibition, generally, needs dividing
+          into self-control and, say, auto-control. Where one man may
+          _self-control_ himself by an effort of will, another man,
+          in the same predicament, might _auto-control_ himself
+          instinctively, without a conscious effort of will. Which is
+          the saner, and likelier to remain so, under ordinary
+          circumstances and under extraordinary circumstances, would be
+          most difficult to determine. Many people are only sane in
+          action because they know that they are insane in impulse, and
+          take measures accordingly. They keep a sane front to the
+          world by legislating pretty sternly for themselves.
+
+[Sidenote: _SOCIAL HYGIENE_]
+
+It is too gratuitously assumed by law-makers (_i.e._ agitators for
+legislation as well as legislators) that the poor man is woefully
+deficient in inhibition and must be legislated for at every turn.
+Because, for instance, he furnishes the police courts with the
+majority of 'drunks and disorderlies,' he is treated as a born
+drunkard, to be sedulously protected against himself, regardless of
+such facts as (1) there is more of him to get drunk, (2) he prefers
+'going on the bust' to the more insidious dram-drinking and drugging,
+(3) he has more cause to get drunk, (4) he gets drunk publicly, (5)
+tied-house beer and cheap liquors stimulate to disorderliness more
+than good liquor. The truth is that the poor have a great deal of
+self-restraint, quite as much probably as their law-makers; but it is
+exercised in different directions and, possibly, is somewhat frittered
+away in small occasions. The poor man has so much more bark than bite.
+He fails to restrain his cuss-words for example--but then cuss-words
+were invented to impress fools. There is much in his life that would
+madden his law-makers, and _vice versa_. If control is the cement of
+every social system and if it is the highest aim of mental hygiene, it
+follows that control should be the highest aim of legislation and
+custom, which together make up social hygiene. And--always remembering
+that control is of all virtues the one which strengthens with use and
+withers with disuse--every piece of new legislation should be most
+carefully examined as to its probable effect on the self-control of
+the people. Control, in short should be the paramount criterion of new
+legislation. A proximate advantage, unless it be a matter of life and
+death, is too dearly purchased by an ultimate diminution of
+self-control.
+
+
+4
+
+Since the Industrial Revolution and rise of the press, the middle-class
+has become more and more the real law-maker. The poor have voted
+legislators into power; the upper class in the main has formally made
+the laws; but the engineering of legislation has been, and is, the work
+of the middle class. And the amusing and pathetic thing is that the
+middle class has used its power to try to make other classes like
+itself. That it has succeeded so badly is largely due to the fact that
+the poor man is not simply an undeveloped middle-class man. The
+children at Seacombe showed true childish penetration in treating a
+_gentry-boy_ as an animal of another species: the poor and the middle
+class are different in kind as well as in degree. (More different
+perhaps than the poor and the aristocrat). Their civilizations are not
+two stages of the same civilization, but two civilizations, two
+traditions, which have grown up concurrently, though not of course
+without considerable intermingling. To turn a typical poor man into a
+typical middle-class man is not only to develop him in some respects,
+and do the opposite in others; it is radically to alter him. The
+civilization of the poor may be more backward materially, but it
+contains the nucleus of a finer civilization than that of the middle
+class.
+
+[Sidenote: _TWO CIVILIZATIONS_]
+
+The two classes possess widely dissimilar outlooks. Their morale is
+different. Their ethics are different.[21] Middle class people
+frequently make a huge unnecessary outcry, and demand instant
+unnecessary legislation because they find among the poor conditions
+which would be intolerable to themselves but are by no means so to the
+poor. And again, the benevolent frequently accuse the poor of great
+ingratitude because, at some expense probably, they have pressed upon
+the poor what they themselves would like, but what the poor neither
+want nor are thankful for. The educated can sometimes enter fully, and
+even reasonably, into the sorrows of the uneducated, but it is seldom
+indeed that they can enter into their joys and consolations.
+
+      [21] "The more one sees of the poor in their own homes, the more
+      one becomes convinced that their ethical views, taken as a whole,
+      can be more justly described as different from those of the upper
+      classes than as better or worse." ("The Next Street but One." By
+      M. Loane. London, 1907.)
+
+Broadly speaking, the middle-class is distinguished by the utilitarian
+virtues; the virtues, that is, which are means to an end; the
+profitable, discreet, expedient virtues: whereas the poor prefer what
+Maeterlinck calls 'the great useless virtues'--useless because they
+bring no apparent immediate profit, and great because by faith or
+deeply-rooted instinct we still believe them of more account than all
+the utilitarian virtues put together.[22]
+
+      [22] "When one begins to know the poor intimately, visiting the
+      same houses time after time, and throughout periods of as long as
+      eight or ten years, one becomes gradually convinced that in the
+      real essentials of morality, they are, as a whole, far more
+      advanced than is generally believed, but they range the list of
+      virtues in a different order from that commonly adopted by the
+      more educated classes. Generosity ranks far before justice,
+      sympathy before truth, love before chastity, a pliant and
+      obliging disposition before a rigidly honest one. In brief, the
+      less admixture of intellect required for the practice of any
+      virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation." ("From their
+      Point of View." By M. Loane. London, 1908.)
+
+      It is difficult to see on what grounds Miss Loane implies--if she
+      does mean to imply--that the poor would do well to exchange their
+      own order of the virtues for the other order. Christianity
+      certainly affords no such grounds, nor does any other philosophy
+      or religion, except utilitarianism perhaps.
+
+The poor, one comes to believe firmly, if not interfered with by those
+who happen to be in power, are quite capable of fighting out their own
+salvation. A clear ring is what they want--the opportunity for their
+'something in them tending to good' to develop on its own lines. (When
+I say 'a clear ring' I do not mean that one side should have seconds
+and towels provided and that the other side should be left with
+neither.) That their culture, so developed, will be different from our
+present middle-class culture, is certain; that it will be superior is
+probable. The middle class is in decay, for its reproductive instincts
+are losing their effective intensity, and it is afraid of having
+children; its culture, that it grafted on the old aristocratic stem,
+must decay with it. When the culture derived from the lower classes is
+ready to be grafted in its turn upon the old stem it is possible that
+mankind's progress will go backwards a little to find its footing, and
+will then take one of its great jumps forward.
+
+
+5
+
+[Sidenote: _THE SOCIO-POLITICAL PROBLEM_]
+
+The socio-political problem turns out, on ultimate analysis, to be a
+wide restatement of the old theological Problem of Pain. Suffering does
+not necessarily make a fine character, but the characters that we
+recognise as fine could not, apparently, have been so without
+suffering. It is possible to say, "I have suffered, and though I am
+scarred and seared, yet I know that on the whole I am the better for
+that suffering. I do not now wish that I had not had that suffering. I
+even desire that those I love shall suffer so much as they can bear,
+that their conquest may be the greater, their joys the fuller, and
+their life the more intense." Nevertheless, the very next moment, the
+same man will try by every means possible to avoid suffering for
+himself and for those he loves. That is the dualism which dogs humanity
+in the mass no less than in the individual. That lies at the core of
+domestic politics. But it may be that the part of our nature which
+finds reason to be grateful for past suffering is higher than that part
+which seeks to avoid it in the future.
+
+Waste of the benefits of suffering is waste indeed.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+                                                          SEACOMBE,
+                                                        _December_.
+
+
+1
+
+We hired a drosky--one of the little light landaus that they use with a
+single horse in this hilly district--and thus we came down from the
+station. On the box were the coachman (grinning), a cabin trunk, a
+portmanteau, a gaping gladstone bag, and a rug packed with sweaters and
+boots. On the front seat, a large parcel of books, a typewriter, a
+dispatch case, a grubby moon-faced little friend of Tommy's, Tommy
+himself, and Jimmy. On the back seat, Straighty, Dane and myself. The
+small boy stood up on the seat, and Dane squatting on his haunches,
+overtopped us all.
+
+Down the hill we drove, swerving, wobbling, laughing--a May party in
+leafless winter. Dane, in his efforts to lick the children's faces,
+tumbled off his perch. We helped him back to his seat amid a chorus of
+happy screams. The grubby boy was just too astonished to cry, just too
+proud of travelling in a carriage. He screwed up his face--and
+unscrewed it again. Every now and then Tommy sat back as far as he
+could from the disorder, the collection of jerking arms and legs, in
+order to adjust the Plymouth spectacles, of which he is so proud, on
+his small pug nose. As we passed the cross-roads, Straighty was trying
+to snatch a kiss. While we drove along the Front, the children waved
+their hands over the sides of the drosky, and shouted with delight.
+'Twas a Bacchanal with laughter for wine. The Square turned out to
+witness our arrival. "Her's come!" the kiddies cried. Dane leapt out
+first, found a rabbit's head and bolted it whole. The rest of us
+scrambled out. The luggage was piled up in the passage. Hastening in
+his stockinged feet (he had been putting away an hour) to say that he
+was on the point of coming up to station, Tony bruised a toe and barked
+a shin. But it was no time to be savage. I wonder where else the two
+shillings I paid for the drosky would have purchased so much delight.
+Or rather, the delight was in ourselves, in the children; the two
+shillings served only to unlock it.
+
+[Sidenote: _CHILDREN_]
+
+What precisely there is of difference between these children and those
+of the middle and upper classes has always puzzled me. That there is a
+difference I feel certain. A few years ago, when I had so much to do
+with the boys and girls of a high school, they liked me pretty well, I
+think, and trusted me, but they did not take to me, nor I very greatly
+to them. They went about their business, and I about mine. If I invited
+them for a walk, they came gladly, not because it was a walk with me,
+but because I knew of interesting muddy places, and where to find
+strange things. Their manners to me were always good: good manners
+smoothed our intercourse. But in no sense were our lives interwoven. We
+were side-shows, the one to the other. I was content that it should be
+so, and they were too.
+
+Here, on the other hand, my difficulty is to get rid of the children
+when I wish to go out by myself. They follow me out to the Front, and
+meet me there when I return, running towards me with shouting and arms
+upraised, tumbling over their own toes, and taking me home as if I were
+a huge pet dog of theirs. "Where be yu going?" they ask, and, "Where yu
+been?" Jimmy regards me as a fixture. "When yu goes away for two or
+dree days," he says, "I'll write to 'ee, like Dad du." I cross the
+Square, and some child, lolling over the board across a doorway, laughs
+to me shrilly and waves its arms. If by taking thought, I could send
+such a glow to the hearts of those I love, as that child, without
+thinking, sends to mine.... But I cannot. I can only wave a hand back
+to the child, and be thankful and full-hearted. Often enough I wish I
+could have a piano and find out whether my fingers will still play
+Chopin, Beethoven, and Bach; often I hanker after a sight of a certain
+picture or a certain statue in the Louvre or Luxembourg, for a concert,
+a theatre, a right-down good argument on some intellectual point, or
+for the books I want to read and never shall. Yet, all in all, I am
+never sorry for long. This children's babble and laughter, these
+simple, commonplace, wonderful affections, are a hundred times worth
+everything I miss.
+
+It is not that I buy the children bananas or give them an infrequent
+ha'penny. When bananas and ha'pence are scarce, their love is no less.
+It is not that I am always good-tempered and jolly. Sometimes I snap
+unmercifully, so that they look at me with scared, inquiring eyes. It
+is not that they are always well-behaved. Frequently they are very
+naughty indeed. The causes of our sympathy lie deeper.
+
+They are more naive than the children who are in process of being
+well-educated; more independent and also more dependent. They feel more
+keenly any separation from those they love; they cry lustily if their
+mother disappears only for an hour or two; and nevertheless they can
+fend for themselves out and about as children more carefully nurtured
+could never do. Less able to travel by themselves, they do travel
+alone, and in the end quite as successfully. They make more mistakes
+and retrieve them better. Affection with them more rapidly and frankly
+translates itself into action. They laugh quickly, cry quickly, swear
+quickly. "Yu'm a fule!" they rap out without a moment's hesitation; and
+I suppose I am, else they wouldn't want to say so. Perhaps I overvalue
+the physical manifestations of love, but if a child will take my hand,
+or climb upon my knee, or kiss me unawares, then to certainty of its
+affection is added a greater contentment and a deeper faith. The peace
+of a child that sleeps upon one's shoulder, is given also to oneself.
+The appurtenances of love mean much to me; nearness, warmth, caresses.
+But I cannot make the advances; I was bred in a different school where,
+though frankness was encouraged, _naivete_ was repressed; and I am the
+more grateful to these children for taking me in hand--for being able
+to do so.
+
+[Sidenote: _MANNERS_]
+
+Tommy has returned from the Plymouth Eye Infirmary much quietened down
+in many respects and, as most people would say, much better mannered.
+He is neater and a better listener to conversation. He puts his shoes
+under the table, does not throw them. But he has brought back also some
+of the nurses' exclamations of surprise--"Oh, I say!" "Not I!" "You
+don't say so!" "What idiocy!" and the like. No doubt those expressions
+sounded quite proper among the nurses, but on Tommy's lips they seem
+curiously more vulgar than his natural and rougher expletives. It is,
+besides, as if one were eavesdropping outside the nurses' common room.
+
+Much of the charm of these children, and of the grown-ups too, lies in
+the fact that, apart from a few points on which etiquette is very
+strict, they have no manners. I don't mean that they are bad-mannered;
+quite the contrary; what I mean is that their manners are not codified.
+Having no rules for behaviour under various circumstances, they must on
+each occasion act according to their kindliness and desire to please,
+or the reverse. They must go back to the first principles of manners.
+What they are, that they appear. What they feel at the moment, that
+they show. The kind man or child is kindly; the brutal or spiteful by
+nature are brutal or spiteful in manner. Elsewhere, among people of
+breeding, manners make the man--and hide him. Here, the man makes his
+own manners, and in so doing still further reveals himself.
+
+I have known a professional man who was rather well-spoken of for his
+good manners, fail lamentably so soon as he found himself in
+surroundings not his own. His code of manners did not apply there, and
+outside his code he had no manners. He was excessively rude. He showed
+at once that his customary good manners were founded on rules well
+learnt, and not on any real consideration for other people's feelings.
+The incredible impertinence of clergymen and district visitors
+furnishes plenty of cases in point. Their manners, no doubt, are pretty
+good among themselves. Yet it is a common saying here, "What chake they
+gentry've got!" A 'district lady' entered Mrs Stidson's cottage without
+knock or warning, just when Mrs Stidson was cleaning up and wanted no
+visitors of any sort. "What's the matter with your eye?" asked the
+district lady. Mrs Stidson refused to answer. ("Untidy, intractable
+woman!") But a neighbour upspoke and said, "Tis her husband, mam, as
+have give'd her a black eye." At which the district lady exclaimed, "My
+good woman, why don't you leave him. You _ought_ to leave him--at
+once!" Mrs Stidson has a number of young children.
+
+[Sidenote: _TONY'S FOOT IN IT_]
+
+It might have been expected, on the other hand, when Tony and myself
+went on holiday up-country, stayed at a largish much-upholstered hotel,
+and dined out several times as he had never done before, that he would
+have been like a fish out of water, very awkward, and would have
+committed a number of bad _faux pas_. Nothing of the sort. He was
+nervous, certainly, and the numerous knives, forks and glasses somewhat
+confused him at first. But Tony's good manners are not codified. He is
+sensitive, kindly, desirous of pleasing, quick to observe. On that
+basis, he invented for himself, according to the occasion, the manners
+he had not been taught. At the same time he remained himself. And he
+was a complete success. Nobody had any reason to blush on Tony's
+behalf. Except once; when he remarked to some ladies after dinner that
+he found Londoners very nice and free-like; that a pretty young lady
+had stopped him in the Strand the evening before, and had called him
+Percy; that he hadn't had time to tell her she'd made a mistake, and
+that, in fact, he might have knowed her tu Seacombe, only he didn't
+recollect.
+
+There was a bad pause.
+
+Tony doesn't think ill of anybody without cause. _Honi soit qui mal y
+pense_ might very well be _his_ motto.
+
+
+2
+
+News has come along from Plymouth that the boats there have fallen in
+with large shoals of herring. The air here has since been charged with
+excitement--the excitement of men who earn their livelihood by gambling
+with the sea. The drifters have fitted out. Most of the boats are up
+over--lying on the sea wall--but a few days ago many busy blue men slid
+the big brown drifters down their shoots to the beach. Looking along,
+one saw a couple of men standing in each drifter and, with the
+leisurely haste of seamen, drawing in their nets. It gave a peculiar
+savour, a hopeful animation, to the blank wintry sea. It was as if the
+spring had come to us human beings prematurely, before it was ready to
+seize on nature.
+
+[Sidenote: _ON THE CLIFFS_]
+
+Yesterday afternoon I felt too unwell to lend a hand in shoving off the
+boats. So I climbed to the top of the East Cliff. The air was cool and
+still--so still that all the Seacombe smoke hung in the valley and
+drifted slowly to seawards and faded there. While the sun was setting
+behind a bank of sulky dull clouds, some woolpacks, faintly outlined in
+white against the grey, rose almost imperceptibly in the western sky.
+Everything, the sea itself, seemed very dry. Nothing moved on the
+cliffs, except some small birds which flittered homelessly among the
+black and twisted burnt gorse. They were very tiny and pitiful against,
+or indeed amid, the solemn gathering of the great slow clouds. On
+looking down from the edge of the cliff, a slight mistiness of the air
+gave one the impression that there was, lying level above the sea, a
+sheet of glass that dulled the sound of the water yet allowed one to
+discern every half-formed ripple, and even the purple of the rocks
+beneath. Five hundred feet below and a quarter of a mile out, were
+three boats. They also, like the birds, seemed pitifully tiny. But,
+unlike the birds, they did not seem purposeless. It was evident they
+were moving, though one could not see rowers, oars, or splashes, for
+they progressed in short jumps and above the dulled rattle of a billow
+breaking on the pebbles, the faint click-thud of oars between
+thole-pins was plainly audible. I had an odd fancy that the six men
+were rowing through immensity, into eternity, to meet God; and that
+they would so continue rowing, eternally.
+
+This morning, very early, the crackle of burning wood in the kitchen
+fireplace awoke me. Then I heard the sea roaring; then Tony's bare feet
+on the stairs. "Wind's backed an' come on to blow," he said. "They've
+a-had to hard up an' urn for it. Two on 'em's in, an' one have a-losted
+two nets. I told 'em 'twasn't vitty when they shoved off. 'Tis blowing
+hard. I be going out along to see w'er t'other on 'em's in eet."
+
+The sea was angry, the moon obscure. The dead-asleep town stood up
+motionless before the madly-living breakers. It seemed as if a horrible
+fight was in progress; loud rage and dumb treachery face to face in the
+semi-darkness; and between the livelong combatants, little men ran to
+and fro, peering out to sea.
+
+Presently the third boat ran ashore. Its bellied sail hid everything
+from us who waited at the water's edge. It was hoisted on a high wave,
+and cast on land. The sea did not want it then. The sea spewed it up.
+The sea can afford to wait, even until the clean bright little town is
+a ruin on a salt marsh.
+
+Returning in house, we made hot tea, and laughed.
+
+
+3
+
+We had, as it were, said _Good-Night_ to the town, though it was only
+half-past three in the afternoon. Most lazy we must have looked as we
+sailed off to the fishing ground with a light fair wind, NNW. John's
+young muscular frame was leaning against the mainmast, like a
+magnificent statue dressed for the moment in fishermen's rig. Tony aft
+was lounging across the tiller. He fits the tiller, for he is older and
+bent and his eyes are deeply crowsfooted with watching. Both of them
+showed the same splendid contrast of navy-blue jerseys against sea eyes
+and spray-stung red and russet skins. I was lying full length along the
+midship thwart. We lopped along lazily, about three knots to the hour.
+
+[Sidenote: _HERRING DRIFTING_]
+
+As we lounged and smoked, each of us sang a different song, more or
+less in tune. It sounded not unmelodious upon the large waters. At
+intervals we asked one another where the 'gert bodies of herrings' had
+gone off to. Eastwards, westwards, to the offing, or down to the bottom
+to spawn?
+
+So near the land we were, yet so far from it in feeling. There, to the
+NE. was the little town, sunlit and brilliantly white, with the church
+tower rising in the middle and the heather-topped cloud-capped hills
+behind. There around the bay, were the red cliffs, crossed by deep
+shadows and splotched with dark green bushes. The land was there. We
+were to sea. The water, which barely gurgled beneath the bows of the
+drifter, was rushing up the beaches under the cliffs with a
+myriad-sounding rattle. Gulls, bright pearly white or black as
+cormorants, according as the light struck them, were our only
+companions. The little craft our kingdom was--twenty-two foot long by
+eight in the beam,--and a pretty pickle of a kingdom!
+
+Mixed up together in the stern were spare cork buoys, rope ends, sacks
+of ballast and Tony. Midships were the piled up nets and buoys. For'ard
+were more ballast bags and rope ends, some cordage, old clothes, sacks,
+paper bags of supper, four bottles of cold tea, two of paraffin oil and
+one of water, the riding lamp and a very old fish-box, half full of
+pebbles, for cooking on. All over the boat were herring scales and
+smelly blobs of roe. It's sometime now since the old craft was scraped
+and painted.
+
+But the golden light of the sunset gilded everything, and the probable
+catch was what concerned us.
+
+We chose our berth among the other drifters that were on the ground. We
+shot two hundred and forty fathom of net with a swishing plash of the
+yarn and a smack-smack-splutter of the buoys. We had our supper of
+sandwiches and tatie-cake and hotted-up tea.
+
+"Can 'ee smell ort?" asked John sniffing out over the bows.
+
+"Herring!" said I. "I can smell 'em plainly."
+
+"Then there's fish about."
+
+Tony however remarked the absence of birds, and declared that the water
+didn't look so fishy as when they had their last big haul. "They
+herrings be gone east," he repeated.
+
+"G'out! What did 'ee come west for then? I told yu to du as yu was
+minded, an' yu did, didn' 'ee? Us'll haul up in a couple o' hours an'
+see w'er us got any."
+
+We didn't turn in. We piled on clothes and stayed drinking, smoking,
+chatting, singing--a boat-full of life swinging gently to the nets in
+an immense dark silence, an immense sea-whisper.
+
+[Sidenote: _HAULING IN THE NETS_]
+
+About nine o'clock we hauled in for not more than nine dozen of fish.
+The sea-fire glimmered on the rising net, glittered in the boat, and
+then, with an almost painful suddenness, snuffed out. "They be so full
+as eggs," said John every minute or two, holding out fish to Tony, who
+felt them and answered, "Iss, they'm no scanters [spawned or undersized
+fish]. _They_ bain't here alone."
+
+Nets inboard, we rowed a little east of another boat, to shoot a second
+time. John said, "Hoist the sail, can't 'ee." Tony said, "What's the
+need?"
+
+Before eleven we were foul of the other boat's nets and had again to
+haul in. Tony puffed and panted with the double weight; John
+disentangled the mesh and swore.
+
+"If we'd a-hoisted the sail..." he grumbled.
+
+"There wasn't no need if we'd a-pulled a bit farther."
+
+"What's the good o' pulling yer arms out?"
+
+"I knowed where to go, on'y yu said we was far enough."
+
+"No I didn't!"
+
+"S'thee think I don' know where to shute a fleet o' nets?"
+
+"Well, we'm foul, anyhow."
+
+"I was herring drifting afore yu was born. I knows well enough."
+
+"Why don' 'ee hae yer own way then, if yu knows. Yu'm s'posed to be
+skipper here."
+
+"If I'd had me own way...."
+
+"Hould thy bloody row, casn'!"
+
+It sounded like murder gathering up; but Tony calls it their brotherly
+love-talk, and they are no worse friends for it all. The better the
+catch, the more exciting the work, and the livelier the love-talk. They
+say, therefore, that it brings luck to a boat.
+
+A third time we shot nets, safely to the east of every other craft.
+Then John with his legs in a sack and a fearnought jacket round him,
+snored in the cutty, whilst Tony nodded sleepily outside. The sky
+eastwards had already in it the weird whitish light of the coming moon.
+The risen wind was piping out from land. I could see the bobbing lights
+of the other drifters to westward, and the glint of the Seacombe lamps
+on the water. Every now and then a broken wave came up to the boat with
+a confidential hiss. I had a constant impression that out of the dark
+flood some great voice was going to speak to me--speak quite softly.
+
+"Shall us hot some more tea?" said Tony. "My feet be dead wi' cold."
+
+We took the old fish-box and placed on the pebbles in it an old
+saucepan half full of oakum soaked in paraffin. Across the saucepan we
+ledged a sooty swivel, and on the swivel a black tin kettle which
+leaked slowly into the flame. Tony and myself lay with our four feet
+cocked along the edge of the box for warmth. The smoke stank in our
+nostrils, but the flame was cheery. By that flickering light the boat
+looked a great deep place, full of lumber and the blackest shadows. The
+herring scales glittered and the worn-out varnish was like rich brown
+velvet. And how good the tea, though it tasted of nothing but sugar,
+smoke, paraffin and herring.
+
+[Sidenote: _A LONG NIGHT AT SEA_]
+
+It was nearly midnight. Tony suggested forty winks.
+
+John was still sprawling beneath the cutty. Tony and I snoozed under
+the mainsail, huddled up together for the sake of warmth, like animals
+in a nest. At intervals we got up to peep over the gunwale or to bale
+the boat out. Then with comic sighs we coiled down together again. It
+was bitterly cold in the small hours. We pooled our vitality, as it
+were, and shared and shared alike. When we finally awoke, about five in
+the morning, the wind had died down, the sky and moon were clouded, and
+a dull mist was creeping over the sea.
+
+We hauled in the net--fathoms of it for scarcely a fish.
+
+"Have 'ee got anything to eat?" asked Tony.
+
+"No."
+
+"Have yu got ort to drink?" asked John.
+
+"No."
+
+"Got a cigarette?" I asked.
+
+"Not one."
+
+"If we was to go a bit farther out and shute...." said Tony.
+
+"G'out! Hould yer row!"
+
+"All very well for yu. Yu been sleeping there for all the world like a
+gert duncow [dog-fish]. Why didn' 'ee wake up an' hae a yarn for to
+keep things merry like?"
+
+[Sidenote: _NORT' AT ALL_]
+
+John was leaning out over the bows. He rose up; stretched himself.
+"Shute again!" he said with scorn. "Us an't got nort to eat, nort to
+drink, nort to smoke, nor nort to talk about, an' us an't catched nort.
+Gimme thic sweep there, an' let's get in out o' it, I say."
+
+It was foggy. I steered the boat by compass over a sea that, under the
+smudged moon, was in colour and curve like pale violently shaken liquid
+mud. In time we glimpsed the cliffs with the mist creeping up over
+them. Day was beginning to break, and with a breath of wind that had
+sprung up from the SE., we glided like a phantom ship on a phantom sea
+towards a phantom town between whose blind houses the wisps of the fog
+writhed tortuously.
+
+Sixteen hours to sea in an open boat--for three hundred herrings--and
+the price three shillings a hundred!
+
+It is nothing to fishermen, that; but we were all glad of our
+breakfast, a smoke and our beds.
+
+
+4
+
+Tony was gone to sea on Christmas Eve. (They caught three thousand).
+Mrs Widger had cricked her back, or had caught cold in it standing at
+the back door with the steaming wash-tub in front of her and a
+northerly wind behind. We wanted some supper beer....
+
+I felt more than a little shy on entering the jug and bottle department
+with a jug. It is such a secret place. To face a bar full of people and
+plump a jug down on the counter, is one thing; but it is quite another
+to slink up the stairs and into the wooden box--about seven feet high
+and four by four--that does duty for the jug and bottle department, and
+the privy tippling place, of the Alexandra Hotel. There is no gas
+there. Light filters in from elsewhere. It holds about five people,
+jammed close together. Round it runs a shelf for glasses, and at one
+end is a tiny door through which jugs are passed to the barman. Once
+there was a curtain across the entrance, but it was put to such good
+and frequent use that they removed it. Talk in the jug and bottle box
+is usually carried on in soft whispers punctuated by laughter.
+
+Three cloaked old women were there and one young one. Their jugs stood
+on the shelf, ready to take home, but meanwhile they were having a
+round of drinks on their own account. They looked surprised at my
+arrival (it was an intrusion); and more surprised still when, on
+hearing that the barman was merely having a chat the other side, I
+rattled the jug on the shelf and bumped the little door. They gasped
+when I slipped the bolt of the little door with a penknife. What chake
+to be sure! The hotel shows respect to its light-o'-day customers, but
+the dim jug and bottle box is supposed to show respect to the hotel. It
+calls the barman _Sir_. It said, "Good-night, sir!" in astonished
+chorus to me.
+
+But just as the mere act of jumping a skipping rope made me long ago a
+freeman among the children, so I notice that fetching the supper beer
+has resulted in another indefinable promotion. I am not so much now
+'thic ther gen'leman tu Tony Widger's.' I am become 'Mister
+So-and-so'--myself alone.
+
+When I returned with the jug Jimmy was seated at the table and saying
+between tears, "I want some supper, Mam. I be 'ungry."
+
+"Yu daring rascal! Yu'll catch your death o' cold if yu goes on getting
+your feet wet like this, night after night. I'll break every bone in
+your body, I will! Take off they beuts to once, an' go on up over. An't
+got no supper for the likes o' you. Yu shan't wear your best clothes
+to-morrow, n'eet at all, spoiling 'em like this, yu dirty little cat!
+I'll beat it out o' 'ee. Now then! Up over!"
+
+Very tearful, very hungry, and very slowly, Jimmy went to bed.
+
+"No supper's the thing for the likes o' he," his mother remarked. "I
+shall gie it to him one o' these days, but I don't hold wi' knocking
+'em about tu much."
+
+Her impatience in speech and patience in action are alike
+extraordinary. She says she will half kill the children and seldom
+strikes even: if I had the responsibility of them, I fear I should do
+both.
+
+[Sidenote: _SUNDAY CLOTHES_]
+
+Next morning there was a fine dispute over the Sunday clothes. Both
+Jimmy and Tommy went upstairs defiantly, and routed them out. The
+kitchen was filled with cries and jeers and threats. Tommy appealed to
+me. I told him I knew nothing about it, because I hadn't got any Sunday
+clothes myself.
+
+"Iss, yu 'ave," said Tommy.
+
+"No, not a rag."
+
+"Yu 'ave."
+
+"I haven't. I've none at all. You've never seen them."
+
+"G'out!"
+
+"That's right."
+
+"Well," said Tommy confidentially, "Yu got a clean chimie-shirt then,
+an't 'ee?"
+
+In the laughter which followed, the Sunday clothes were slipped on. And
+while Jimmy was struggling with a new pair of boots, he paid me the
+nicest compliment I have ever heard. He looked up, red but thoughtful.
+"Yu'm like Father Christmas," he said.
+
+"Why for, Jimmy?"
+
+"'Cause yu'm kind."
+
+Jimmy doesn't know how kind he is to me. And I don't suppose it would
+do him any good to tell him.
+
+We had a very typical and enjoyable English Christmas. We over-ate
+ourselves, and were well pleased, and the children went to bed crying.
+
+
+5
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "SHOOTING STAR" FITS OUT_]
+
+"_Shuteing Star o' Seacombe!_ '_Tis_ a purty crew to go herring
+driftin'! I'd so soon fall overboard in a gale o' wind as go out to say
+wi' thic li'l Roosian like that ther. Lord! did 'ee ever see the like
+o'it? I never did. But there, what can 'ee 'spect when the herring be
+up in price an' men an' boats as hasn' been to sea for years fits out
+for to go herring driftin'? Coo'h! driftin'!"
+
+That was Uncle Jake's opinion. He stood on the shingle with his old
+curiosity of a hat cocked on one side and his hands deep in his trouser
+pockets, turning himself round inside his clothes to rub warmth into
+his skin; talking, always talking, whilst his twinkling eyes watch sea
+and land; but ready to help a boat shove off, and willing to take as
+pay the opportunity of talking to, and at, its crew. "'Tis blowing a
+fresh wind out 'long there, I tell 'ee," was his formula of
+encouragement for a starting boat.
+
+Herrings were up! Sixteen shillings a thousand they had been before
+Christmas; then eighteen, twenty-three, thirty-one.... "They'm fetching
+two poun' a thousand tu Plymouth, what there is, an' buyers there
+waiting from all over the kingdom. An' they'm still going up, 'cause
+there ain't none. Nine bob a hunderd tu St Ives, I've a-heard say.
+There's a Plymouth buyer here to-day. I've a-see'd our Seacombe buyers
+luke. They Plymouth men be the bwoys!"
+
+Herrings too have been in our bay as they have not come for
+years--'gert bodies of 'em'--while a succession of gales and blizzards
+has been sweeping the whole of the rest of the British coasts, and
+driving the steam-drifters into harbour. Hence the price of fish:
+quotations very high; business nil, or next door to it. Our bay
+however, by a fortunate freak of the weather, has been amply calm for
+our little undecked drifters, though squalls off land have made sailing
+tricky in the extreme. We have seen the snow on the distant hills but
+none has fallen here. We have had the ground-swell, rolling in from
+outside, but of broken seas, not one.
+
+The boats that came in early on Christmas night (they didn't like the
+look of the weather) brought hauls of ten thousand or so. They had
+given away netfuls of herring to craft from other places, because they
+had caught so many, and the wind was against them and the sky wild.
+
+Next night, much the same thing. It was rumoured that some Cornish
+craft were beating up to the bay.
+
+Next day, the Little Russian, a small, snug, ragged, much-bearded man,
+was to be seen painting the stern of his old boat--a craft more
+tattered and torn, if possible, than her owner.
+
+"What be doing, Harry?"
+
+No reply. Great industry with the paint-brush.
+
+"Be going to sea then?"
+
+"Iss intye! What did 'er think?"
+
+The Little Russian went on doggedly with his work, and when he rose
+from his knees, there appeared complete, on the stern of his boat, in
+lanky, crooked white letters: _Shooting Star of Seacombe_.
+
+"Be it true yu'm going to sea t'night, Harry?"
+
+"Iss."
+
+"What do 'ee 'spect to catch? Eh?"
+
+No answer again. The Little Russian was hauling a couple of nets
+aboard.
+
+"Who be going with 'ee?"
+
+"Ol' Joe Barker an' 'Gustus Theodore."
+
+"Good Lord! '_Tis_ a crew, that! Be 'ee going to catch dree dozen or
+ten thousand?"
+
+"We'm on'y taking two nets," replied the Little Russian quite
+seriously.
+
+He was very busy.
+
+[Sidenote: _AND SHOVES OFF_]
+
+About three in the afternoon, when the drifters put out to sea, the
+nor'west wind was springing out from land in squalls. It had not
+sea-space to raise big waves, but it blew the white tops off the
+wavelets which hurried out against, and on the top of, the sou'westerly
+swell that was heaving its way in. As Uncle Jake remarked: "'Tis
+blowing fresh, I can tell 'ee, an' not so very far out at that. An'
+'tis blowing half a gale from the sou'west outside in the Channel. Do
+'ee see thic black line across the horizon? That's the sou'west wind,
+an' plenty o'it. Luke at thees yer run along the shore, wi' a calm sea.
+'Tis the sou'west outside as makes that tu."
+
+The boats hoisted their smaller mainsails. "Aye, an' they'll hae to
+reef they down afore they gets out far. There! did 'ee see thic? That's
+thiccy seine-boat as fitted out. Seine-boats ain't no fit craft for
+herring driftin'."
+
+The mainmast of the seine boat had toppled over to port. No sooner was
+it re-stepped, and the sail hoisted, than over it went again. "Step o'
+the mast gone, I'll be bound," said Uncle Jake. "They'm going to
+capsize, going on like that, if they bain't careful. Poor job! when
+mastises goes over like that. Better to row.... There's thic Li'l
+Roosian shoving off!"
+
+In fact, the _Shooting Star_ was shoved off, but a wave threw her back
+upon the shore. She was again shoved off. Again she grounded on the
+sand, and there she stuck. A roar of laughter broke forth all along the
+beach. The Little Russian and his crew stood up in the heeled-over
+boat, and by using their oars like punt poles, they tried to prevent
+the seas from slewing them round broadside on. Very helpless they
+looked, very comic, very futile.
+
+A swarm of small boys buzzed around and jeered. The Little Russian
+jumped up and down with vexation. Augustus Theodore, rowing frantically
+in a foot or so of water, splashed and 'caught crabs.' Joe Barker,
+tall, patriarchal, thin and thinly clad, stood up to his oar, looked
+savage curses from his sunken old eyes and muttered them into his
+beard.
+
+[Sidenote: _AND GETS OFF_]
+
+"That _be_ a purty crew!" repeated Uncle Jake. "I 'ouldn' go to say wi'
+'em, not if.... A purty fellow, thic 'Gustus Theodore! They calls
+chil'ern by names nowadays, but they called he 'Gustus Theodore, an' us
+can't get over thic, so us al'ays calls 'en 'Gustus Theodore in long.
+Bain't no gude tu hisself nor nobody else. I've a-took 'en to say....
+Never again! 'Er ain't no fisherman nuther. An' thic Joe Barker's past
+it. He've had his day. Been in the Army an' been in the Navy, an' an't
+brought no pension out o' the one n'eet out o' t'other. Helped throw a
+'Merican midshipman overboard once, so they say, drough a porthole.
+Thought they was going to be hanged for it, but they wasn't. He've
+a-lived wildish in his time, I can tell 'ee; an' now he's the man for
+sleep. Take 'en out shrimping or lifting crab-pots, stop rowing a
+minute an' he's fast asleep. The Li'l Roosian hisself an't been to say
+thees dozen years. 'Tis a crew o'it! Luke! _they_ can't shove off. I
+can see they wants Uncle Jake there."
+
+The _Shooting Star_ was still being shoved. The Little Russian was
+still jumping up and down in the stern-sheets; Augustus Theodore was
+still rowing fast and fruitlessly; and Joe Barker stood impassively
+tall--a mummy of a man, wrapped up in aged clothes and a great dirty
+white beard. Life was contracted within him. No more than his eyes
+seemed alive, and hardly those until you looked closely; for the yellow
+rims and whites appeared to be dead, and the old cursing flame of life
+burnt only in the pupils.
+
+"Do 'ee really mean to go?" asked Uncle Jake, taking up a long oar to
+shove with. "'Tisn't nowise fit for a crazy craft like thees yer."
+
+"When a man," said the Little Russian solemnly, "when a man has a
+chance to catch herring and pay his way, and pay a debt or two maybe,
+'tis on'y right to try."
+
+"For sure 'tis. But why an't 'ee been to say thees twelve year then?"
+
+"An't been fit...."
+
+"Fit! Tis the price o' herring fetches the likes o' yu. Have 'ee got
+yer lead-line and compass aboard?"
+
+"I've broke mine."
+
+"'Tis tempting Providence to go away wi'out 'em Be yu off? Off yu goes
+then. Luke out!"
+
+A yell went up as a wave broke in over the stern and soaked Joe
+Barker's back.
+
+"They'm off!" cried Uncle Jave with ironic merriment. "Wet drough to
+the skin they be!"
+
+The Little Russian rowed steadily on the same side as 'Gustus Theodore.
+Both of them just balanced Joe Barker, who rowed on the other side in
+strong jerks, as if his aged strength revived for a part only of each
+stroke.
+
+Darkness, drawing in over the sea, hid the drifters from sight. Along
+the beach we asked one another in jest, "I wonder what the _Shuteing
+Star_ is doing now?"
+
+The commonest answer was a laugh. But we did want to know.
+
+Between eleven o'clock and midnight sail after sail appeared silently
+on the black darkness, as if some invisible hand had suddenly painted
+them there. The boats were coming in. Creaks and groans of winches
+sounded along the beach.
+
+[Sidenote: _AND RETURNS_]
+
+"Who be yu?" was the greeting from a rabble of youths who scuttled up
+and down the waters' edge to guide boats to their berths and gain first
+news of the catches. "Have 'ee see'd ort o' the _Shuteing Star_?" they
+shouted.
+
+"No-o-o-o!"
+
+"_I_ shan't go to bed till they comes in," said Uncle Jake. "Cuden'
+sleep if I did. '_Tis_ a craft! Her's so leaky as a sieve, lying dry
+all these years. Not but what her was a gude 'nuff li'l craft in her
+time--tu small for winter work. But I wishes 'em luck, I du."
+
+At last, the _Shooting Star_ did row in. They had not dared to sail
+her. She touched the beach before we glimpsed her, for all our
+watching. A crowd ran down to haul her up and to crack jokes on her.
+
+"Have 'ee catched ort, Harry?"
+
+"Tu or dree dizzen, an' half a ton o' coral an' some wild-crabs."
+
+"Did 'er sail well--keep up to the wind? Eh?"
+
+"Us rowed. 'Tis blowin' a gale out there."
+
+"What yu done to your nets?"
+
+"Broke 'em."
+
+"On to the bottom?"
+
+"Iss."
+
+"Why didn't 'ee go crab-fishing proper? Be 'ee going again?"
+
+The little Russan saw no joke. He bustled about the boat and replied:
+"A-course we be, if 'tis fit."
+
+"Well, I wishes 'ee luck then."
+
+We all wished luck to the _Shooting Star_--to that cranky old boatload
+of pluck, ill-luck, and ancient desperation.
+
+Said Uncle Jake: "I'd rather see they come in wi' a boatload o' herring
+than any boat along the beach. 'Tis a purty craft an' a purty crew, but
+they du desarve it."
+
+So said we all. 'Twas the least payment we could make for our
+entertainment.
+
+As soon as they were hauled up, Joe Barker lit his pipe, and, instead
+of going to bed, he went west along the shore, and carried up and
+sifted sand till dawn.
+
+"Jest what he be fit for now," Uncle Jake remarked. "That'll get 'en
+his bread an' baccy far sooner'n drifting for herring in thic _Shuteing
+Star_."
+
+But if we only could have looked into the _Shooting Star_ at sea. The
+_Shooting Star of Seacombe_!
+
+
+6
+
+"Us got 'em at last then!" so we tell one another. We have caught the
+catch of the season.
+
+For three or four days the hauls had been fairly good. Elsewhere on the
+coast, the snow, sleet, wind and wrecks continued. Here alone, in
+Seacombe Bay, it got colder and colder, and the sea became calmer and
+sunnier. "Tis like old days," Uncle Jake said while he spliced a new
+cut-rope to the drifter. "The herring be come again, in bodies, and the
+price be up. Us'll hae 'em."
+
+[Sidenote: _PAYING CALLS AT SEA_]
+
+An hour before sunset on Saturday afternoon we were shoved off the
+beach--Tony, John, and myself. Every article of underclothing in
+duplicate, a couple of guernseys and a coat or two were next to
+nakedness. We were bloated with clothes, but that northerly air, it
+seemed to be fingering our very skins. Yet there was hardly wind enough
+to fill the sail. Ricketty-rock, ricketty-rock, went the sweeps between
+the thole-pins, as we rowed to the fishing ground six miles or so away.
+Not one of us wished to shirk the heavy work. 'Twas indeed our only
+source of warmth. The sun was setting. The moon began to rise. The sea
+was all of a glimmer and glitter.
+
+"I should think we was nearly where they fish be," said John.
+
+"Bit farther," said Tony. "Us'll drift back 'long when the flid tide
+makes."
+
+"Du as yu'm minded tu."
+
+"Steer her a little bit in," directed Tony.
+
+"A little bit out," directed John the next minute.
+
+It was a middle course that turned out so happily.
+
+We shot our nets--seven forty-fathom nets we had aboard--between the
+dying sunlight and the rising moon. Very still was the sea, and quiet,
+except where the other drifters were shooting their nets. Their talk
+lingered on the water; small voices that yet sounded strong. By the
+light of the moon I counted twenty-seven drifters, some of them great
+harbour craft from Cornwall, carrying fifteen or more nets. It seemed
+as if not a herring on that little fishing ground could escape the long
+fleets of nets.
+
+We lighted the paraffin flare; supped on sandwiches and oily tea. We
+stamped about the stern-sheets to try and warm our feet. We sat awhile
+beneath the cutty. We thought we smelt fish, but it might have been
+only the smoke from our oil fire and the herring roe plastered about
+the boat. Despairing of sleep in such a cold, we sang and smoked.
+
+Presently a plash of oars. Little punts were detaching themselves from
+the larger drifters and flitting about on the sea like slow-winged
+moon-butterflies. One came alongside.
+
+"Whu's that there?"
+
+"Tony an' John Widger--Have 'em been catching much to Hallsands?--Be
+they Plymouth drifters up t'night?--What price yu been making?--How
+deep yu got yer nets?--Have 'ee catched holt the bottom?--How's Aaron
+an' Charles?--Did he get back ort o' his gear?--Us an't done a gert
+deal eet. Few thousands thees week. Be yu going to haul in
+soon?--Better, be her? Thought her was dead by now...."
+
+[Sidenote: _HAULING IN_]
+
+The fish-gossip over, we knew all the news of our stretch of coast.
+After taking another cigarette and another pull at our 'drop o' summut
+short,' the man in the punt rowed off to his drifter.
+
+"D' yu know your fourth buoy's awash?" he shouted back.
+
+"Is it, by God!" said John.
+
+"I can see 'tis," said Tony.
+
+"G'out! why didn' 'ee see 'twas afore then? Let's go an' luke."
+
+We buoyed the end of the road and started rowing alongside the
+net-buoys. The fourth was bobbing up and down. The fifth appeared now
+and then. None of the others was visible.
+
+"Damn'd if us bain't going to see some sport!" shouted John as we
+hastened back to take up the road.
+
+We tugged on oilskins and then waited watchfully--for the inside net to
+fill as well. The third buoy disappeared. The second went awash. "Now
+'tis time, ain't it?"
+
+"Iss, I reckon."
+
+We bent to it, and began to haul.
+
+The road come in heavy: John hauled and Tony coiled. As the net rose we
+saw a shimmer in the water, not of sea-fire--it was too cold--but of
+silver-sided herring. Then John took the foot of the net, Tony the mesh
+and myself the headrope. One strain. Altogether! Net and fish came in
+over the gunwale.
+
+"No use to try and pick 'em out yer!" said John.
+
+"Us 'ould never ha' got 'em in wi' two," panted Tony.
+
+"Haul, casn'! Trim the boat. We'm going to hae all us can carry if
+t'other nets be so full as thees yer."
+
+We hauled, and pulled, and puffed and swore. The fish came over the
+side like a band of jewels, like shining grains on a huge and
+never-ending ear of corn, like a bright steel mat.... It was as if the
+moonlight itself, that flooded air and water, was solidifying into fish
+in the dimmer depths of the sea. A good catch must have dropped back
+out of the net. At times, it seemed as if nothing could move the
+headrope. I jammed a knee against the gunwale, waited till the dipping
+of the boat gave me a foot or two of line, then jammed again to hold
+it. The sea-birds screeched at their feast.
+
+Tony, an inflated mannikin, danced on the piled-up nets and fish.
+"Help, help!" he cried to the next drifter. "Us got a catch."
+
+"Hould yer row!"
+
+"Help, help!"
+
+"Shut up, yu fule!--We'm not done yet.--Thee doesn't want to pay for
+help, dost?"
+
+[Sidenote: _THE CATCH OF THE SEASON_]
+
+We hauled, pulled, puffed and swore again. Yard by yard the nets came
+up, now foul, now broken, now tangled, now wound about the headrope and
+almost solid with fish.
+
+"Oh, my poor back."
+
+"Lord, my arms!"
+
+"Casn' thee trim a boat better'n that?"
+
+"Where 'er down tu?"
+
+"There's only two strakes to spare."
+
+The water was within less than a foot of the gunwale, and we were five
+or six miles from home.
+
+"Help, help!" shouted Tony again, and this time we let it pass. Five
+out of our seven nets were aboard; we could not take the remaining two.
+
+Another drifter came alongside and took in the sixth net.
+
+"Come on! here's the seventh--the last."
+
+"Can't take no more."
+
+"Ther's on'y thees yer outside net. Casn' thee take thic?"
+
+"Can't du it. We'm leaking now. Here's your headrope. Good-night."
+
+Tony gave a gesture of despair. "What shall us du? Us can't take in
+much more.
+
+"Hould yer row, an' haul!"
+
+The last net was fuller than ever. We hauled in half of it. A punt came
+near. "Can 'ee take one net?" yelled Tony.
+
+"Us got 'en half in now," said John.
+
+"Iss, but the wind's gone round--north-easterly--dead against us. An'
+luke at the circle round the mune. Ther's wind in thic sky, I tell 'ee.
+Us got so much now as we can carry home on a calm sea, let 'lone
+choppy."
+
+We cut the net.
+
+"Hurry up! Hoist sail and get in out o'it 'fore the wind rises. Come
+on!"
+
+With two oars out to windward we started beating home. We made a tack
+out to sea. There the waves skatted in over the bows, for the
+deeply-laden boat was down by the head because the heavy pile of net
+and fish prevented the water from running aft where we could have
+bailed it out. If we had had to tack much farther to sea.... We should
+have lost the catch, and perhaps ourselves.
+
+We put the boat round towards Seacombe. "Luff her up all yu can," said
+John. "Luff her up, I tell thee, or we'm never going to fetch. The
+sea's rising an' us an't got nort to spare."
+
+By keeping the luff of the sail in a flutter, sometimes too much into
+the wind, I just fetched. Then we rowed into smoother water.
+
+"'Tis fifteen thousand if 'tis one," said John.
+
+"'Tis more'n that," said Tony with a note of respect in his voice.
+
+[Sidenote: _PACKING THE FISH_]
+
+"Better wait till they sends some boats out. Us can't baych the boat
+wi' thees weight in her."
+
+We yelled, anchored, then waited; swore, yelled and waited. Someone
+came at last. The great heavy mast was sent ashore. Two boatloads of
+net and fish followed, and finally the drifter herself was beached.
+
+The crowd that had gathered on the shingle worked at the winch and
+ropes. We walked about among them answering questions, but for the
+moment doing nothing. We felt we had a right to watch the landlubbers
+work in return for the herrings we threw out to them. We had been to
+sea; had caught the catch of the season.
+
+I came in house and fried some herrings for supper. Tony and John went
+back to the boat. All night long they worked under the moon, drawing
+out the net and picking the fish from it, standing knee-deep in fish,
+spotted with scales like sequins. Far into Sunday they worked, counting
+and packing the fish while the Sunday folk in their best clothes
+strolled along the sea-wall and sniffed.
+
+Twenty-two long-thousand herrings--squashed, dirty and
+bloodstained--were carted away in the barrels. Twenty-eight hours Tony
+and John had worked. Then they washed, picked herring scales off
+themselves, and rested. The skin was drawn tightly over their faces
+and, as it were, away from their eyes. I saw, as I glanced at them,
+what they will look like when they are old men: the skull and
+crossbones half peeped out. And I said to myself: "When we feed on
+herrings we feed on fishermen's strength. Though we don't cook human
+meat, we are cannibals yet. We eat each other's lives."
+
+Rightly considered, that's not a nasty thought. Nor a new one either.
+
+
+7
+
+New Year's Eve last night.... Tony did not go to sea. He announced that
+he would turn over a new leaf, and be a gen'leman, and not do no work
+no more. "Summut'll turn up," he said when I asked him how he was going
+to feed his family. "Al'ays have done an' al'ays will, I s'pose. Thees
+yer ol' fule 'll go on till he's clean worked out. Thee casn' die but
+once, an' thee casn' help o'it nuther.
+
+"Shut thee chatter an' bring in some wude," said Mrs Widger. "Now then
+yu children, off yu goes! Up over, else my hand'll be 'longside o'ee!"
+
+"Gude-night!" say the children in chorus. "Gude-night! Gude-night! See
+yu t'morrow morning. Du us hae presents on New Year's Day, Mam?"
+
+"Yu'll see. P'raps a cracker...."
+
+"Coo'h...."
+
+"Up over!"
+
+"What 'tis tu be a family man," said Tony.
+
+"Whu's fault's that?" Mam Widger retorted.
+
+"There, me ol' stocking, don't thee worry a man! Gie us a kiss...."
+
+"G'out!"
+
+[Sidenote: _DREE-HA'P'ORTH_]
+
+The Christmas decorations and the little spangled toys from the
+children's crackers were still hanging from clothes-lines across the
+kitchen. We piled wood on the fire; it had barnacle shells on it; with
+the wreckage of good ships we warmed ourselves. Mam Widger laid the
+supper. The steam from the kettles puffed merrily into the room.
+Herrings were cooking in the oven. A faint odour--they were being
+stewed in vinegar--stole out into the room to give us appetite and for
+the moment a sense of plenty. Mrs Widger took a penny-ha'penny from the
+household purse and handed it, together with a jug to Tony.
+"Dree-ha'p'orth o' ale an' stout. Go on."
+
+Tony returned with tupence-ha'p'orth. He had added a penny out of his
+own pocket because he is ashamed to ask for less than a pint. Grannie
+Pinn came in at the same time. "I got the t'other pen'orth for me
+mither-in-law," said Tony.
+
+"Chake again!" Grannie Pinn cried. "I wants more'n a pen'orth, I du."
+
+Tony slipped off his boots just in time. It was I who had to fetch an
+extra dree-ha'p'orth.
+
+We supped with the uproariousness that Grannie Pinn always brings here.
+Some other people dropped in to see how we were doing. Not staying to
+clear the supper, we sang. The songs, as such, were indifferently good,
+but we meant them and enjoyed them. For a while Grannie Pinn contented
+herself with humming and nodding to the chorus. She started singing:
+swore at us for laughing at her. "I cude sing a song wi' anybody once,"
+she said; and therewith she struck up a fine, very Rabelaisian old song
+in many verses. She lifted up her face to the ceiling, blushed (I am
+sure the Tough Old Stick blushed), and in a high cracked voice that
+gradually gathered tone and force, she trolled her verses out. With an
+infectious abandonment, we took up the chorus. After all, 'twas a song
+of things that happen every day--one of those pieces of folk-humour
+which makes life's seriousness bearable by carrying us frankly back to
+the animal that is in us, that has been cursed for centuries and still
+remains our strength.
+
+Grannie Pinn's song was the event of the evening. Excited by her
+efforts to the point of hardly knowing whether to laugh or cry, she
+told us we were 'a pack o' gert fules,' and went. The other visitors
+followed after.
+
+"Don' know what yu feels like," said Tony when they were all gone. "I
+feels more-ish. 'N hour agone I wer fit for bed, now I feels 's if I
+cude sing for hours on end...."
+
+[Sidenote: _THE NEW YEAR_]
+
+"May as well welcome in the New Year now 'tis so late as 'tis," said
+Mrs Widger, taking from one of her store-places a bottle of green
+ginger-wine and another of fearful and wonderful 'Invalid Port' which,
+as she remarked, 'ain't so strengthening as the port what gentry has.'
+Tony added hot water to his ginger-wine, lay back in the courting
+chair, plumped his feet on Mrs Widger's lap, and sang some more of
+those sea songs that have such melancholy windy tunes and yet most
+curiously stimulate one to action. I think it must be because they echo
+that particular sub-emotional desperation which causes men to do their
+reckless best--the desperation that the treacherous sea itself
+engenders.
+
+At a minute or two before twelve by the clock, the three of us went out
+to the back door. When the cats had scuttled away, the narrow walled-in
+garden was very still. By the light of the stars, shining like points
+in the deep winter heavens, I could see the beansticks, the balks of
+wood and the old masts and oars. I could also smell the drain. Tony, in
+his stockinged feet, leant on his wife's shoulder while he raised first
+one foot from the cold stones, and then the other. We were a little
+hushed, with more than expectancy. So we waited; to hear the church
+clock strike and to welcome in the New Year.
+
+And we waited until Tony said that his feet were too cold to stay there
+any longer. The church clock struck--_ting-tang, ting-tang_--in the
+frosty air.... A quarter past! The New Year had been with us all the
+while. It was our German-made kitchen clock had stopped.
+
+We laughed aloud because the strain was relaxed; then bolted the door
+and began putting away the supper things.
+
+"If anybody wants to make me a New Year's Gift," said Tony, "they can
+gie me a thousand a year."
+
+"And then yu'd be done for," I said. "Yu cuden' stand a life o' nort to
+du. Nor cude I. We'm both in the same box, Tony. We've both got only
+our strength and skill and health, and if that fails, then we'm done.
+We'm our own stock-in-trade, and if we fail ourselves, then we've both
+got only the workhouse or the road."
+
+"Iss," said Mam Widger, "an' I don' know but what yu'm worse off than
+Tony. He _cude_ get somebody to work his boats--for a time. An' I cude
+work. But afore yu comes to the workhouse yu jest walk along thees way,
+an' if us got ort to eat yu shall hae some o'it."
+
+"Be damn'd if yu shan't!" said Tony. (I was putting away the pepper-pot
+at the moment). "Us 'ouldn't never let thee starve, not if us had it
+ourselves for to give 'ee."
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+So there 'tis. I'd wish to do the same for him, that he knows. How much
+the spirit of such an offer can mean, only those who have been without
+a home can understand fully. This New Year's Day has been happier than
+most. Life has made me a New Year's Gift so good that I cannot free
+myself from a suspicion of its being too good.
+
+It has given me home.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+POSTSCRIPT
+
+
+                                                          SEACOMBE.
+
+I am often asked why I have forsaken the society of educated people,
+and have made my home among 'rough uneducated' people, in a poor man's
+house. The briefest answer is, that it is good to live among those who,
+on the whole, are one's superiors.
+
+It is pointed out with considerable care what ill effects such a life
+has, or is likely to have, upon a man. It is looked upon as a kind of
+relapse. But to settle down in a poor man's house is by no means to
+adopt a way of life that is less trouble. On the contrary, it is more
+trouble.
+
+It is true that most of what schoolmasters call one's accomplishments
+have to be dropped. One cannot keep up everything anywhere.
+
+It is true that one goes to the theatre less and reads less. Life,
+lived with a will, is play enough, and closer acquaintance with life's
+sterner realities renders one singularly impatient with the literature
+of life's frillings. I do not notice, however, that it makes one less
+susceptible to the really fine and strong things of literature and art.
+
+It is true that one drops into dialect when excited; that one's manners
+suffer in conventional correctness. I suppose I know how to behave
+fairly correctly; I was well taught at all events; but my manners never
+have been and never will be so good, so considerate as Tony's. 'Tisn't
+in me.
+
+It is true that one becomes much coarser. One acquires a habit of
+talking with scandalous freedom about vital matters which among the
+unscientific educated are kept hid in the dark--and go fusty there. But
+I do not think there is much vulgarity to be infected with here.
+Coarseness and vulgarity are incompatibles. It was well said in a book
+written not long ago, that "Coarseness reveals but vulgarity hides."
+Vulgarity is chiefly characteristic of the non-courageous who are
+everlastingly bent on climbing up the social stairs. Poor people are
+hardly ever vulgar, until they begin to 'rise' into the middle class.
+
+[Sidenote: _WISDOM_]
+
+It is true that, so far as knowledge goes, one is bound to be cock o'
+the walk among uneducated people--which, alone, is bad for a man. But
+knowledge is not everything, nor even the main thing. Wisdom is more
+than knowledge: it is _Knowledge applied to life, the ability to make
+use of the knowledge well_. In that respect I often have here to eat a
+slice of humble-pie. For all my elaborate education and painfully
+gained stock of knowledge, I find myself silenced time after time by
+the direct wisdom of these so-called ignorant people. They have
+preserved better, between knowledge and experience, that balance which
+makes for wisdom. They have less knowledge (less mental dyspepsy too)
+and use it to better purpose. It occurs to one finally that, according
+to our current standards, the great wise men whom we honour--Christ,
+Plato, Shakespeare, to name no more--were very ignorant fellows.
+Possibly the standards are wrong.
+
+[Sidenote: _DIFFERENTIAL EVOLUTION_]
+
+To live with the poor is to feel oneself in contact with a greater
+continuity of tradition and to share in a greater stability of life.
+The nerves are more annoyed, the thinking self less. Perhaps the
+difference between the two kinds of life may be tentatively
+expressed--not necessarily accounted for--in terms of Differential
+Evolution,[23] somewhat thus:
+
+    (1) The first, the least speculative, evolutionary criterion of an
+    animal is its degree of adaptation to its environment.
+
+    (2) Man exhibits a less degree of adaptation to environment than
+    any other animal; principally because (_a_) he consists, roughly
+    speaking, incomparably more than any other animal, of three
+    interdependent parts--body, thinking brain, and that higher mental
+    function that we call spirit--the development of any one of which,
+    beyond a certain stage, is found to be detrimental to the other
+    two; and because (_b_) he is able possibly to control directly his
+    own evolution, and certainly to modify it indirectly by modifying
+    the environment in which he evolves. He is able to make mistakes in
+    his own evolution.
+
+    (3) The typical poor man is better adapted to his environment, such
+    as it is, than the typical man of any other class; for he has been
+    kept in closer contact with the primary realities--birth, death,
+    risk, starvation;--in closer contact, that is to say, with those
+    sections of human environment which are not of human making and
+    which are common to all classes. He has fewer mistakes to go back
+    upon.
+
+          [23] Evolution is at present the last refuge of unscientific
+          minds which think they have explained a process when they
+          have given it a new name, just as chemists used to call an
+          obscure chemical action _catalytic_ and then assume that its
+          nature was plain. _Evolution_ means an _unfolding_. In that
+          sense it is an observed fact, though exactly how the
+          unfolding is brought about is still conjectural. But it does
+          not matter for the purposes of my argument whether human
+          beings evolve by the transmission to offspring of acquired
+          characteristics, or by bequeathing to them as birthright an
+          environment that their fathers had to make. The material for
+          constructing any theory of mental, or joint mental and
+          physical evolution, is so hazy that one cannot do more than
+          speculate. It may be noted, however, that acquired mental
+          characteristics appear to be more transmissible, and less
+          stable, than acquired physical characteristics; and that
+          mental evolution (in the broad sense again) proceeds faster
+          and collapses more readily than physical evolution.
+
+    It might be said, of course, that mal-adaptation at any given
+    moment is more than counterbalanced by greater evolutional
+    potentialities, or by greater inducement to evolve; and that the
+    above chain of reasoning simply goes to prove that the poor man is
+    more of an animal--less evolved. On the other hand, from an
+    evolutionary standpoint, the animal faculties are the most basic of
+    all. A sound stomach is more necessary than a highly developed
+    brain, and good reproductive faculties are essential; because the
+    first demand of evolution is plenty of material. It does not follow
+    that our typical poor man is more of an animal, is less evolved, or
+    has a smaller potentiality to evolve, because he has preserved
+    better the animal faculties which lie at the basis of evolution.
+
+Furthermore:
+
+    (4) There is a reasonable probability that an interior balance,
+    between body, brain, and spirit, is more needful for realising the
+    potentialities of evolution than rapidity of development in any
+    single respect. _Mens sana in corpore sano--animaque integra_
+    is an ideal as sound as it is unachieved. More haste less speed, is
+    probably true of human evolution. A healthy baby is more hopeful
+    than a mad adult.
+
+    (5) The typical poor man does, now, exhibit a better balance
+    between these three components of him. Less evolved in some ways,
+    he is on the whole, and for that reason, more forward. His
+    evolution is proceeding with greater solidity. It is more stable,
+    and more likely to realise its potentialities.
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+That is a speculation among probabilities and possibilities; an attempt
+to go in a bee-line across fields that are mainly hidden ditches; a
+first spying out of a country that wants mapping; a course over a sea
+that can never perhaps be buoyed, where bearings must be taken afresh
+from the sun for each voyage that is made. In any case, my belief grows
+stronger that the poor have kept essentially what a schoolboy calls the
+better end of the stick; not because their circumstances are
+better--materially their lives are often terrible enough--but because
+they know better how to make the most of what material circumstances
+they have. If they could improve their material circumstances and
+continue making the most of them.... That is the problem.
+
+Good Luck to us all!
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A POOR MAN'S HOUSE***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #26126 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26126)