Ihave always had a strong curiosity about hermits—remember I paid a shilling as a small boy, when I could ill afford it, to see one, somewhere up by Hampstead, a cruel disappointment—used to make shy approaches to lonely turnpike keepers before they were abolished, with no success; finding them always, like Johnson’s “hoary sage,” inclined to cut sentiment short with, “Come, my lad, and drink some beer,” I came to the conclusion long since that the genuine hermit is as extinct as the dodo in the British Isles. I was almost excited, therefore, the other morning, to get a note on a dirty scrap of paper here, asking for the loan of a book on geology, for, on inquiry, I found it came from “the Hermit.” He had suddenly appeared to the man who drives the hack, and sent it in by him. No one could tell me anything more except that the writer was “the Hermit,” and lived, no one knew how, in a shanty four miles away in the forest. I got the book out of the library, “loaned” a pony, and in due course found myself outside a dilapidated snake-fence, surrounding some three acres of half-cleared forest, and the rudest kind of log-hut; evidently the place I was in search of, but no hermit. While I was meditating my next move, a dismal howl, like, I should think, the “lulilooing” of Central Africa, came from out the neighbouring bush. I shouted myself, and in a few moments “the Hermit” appeared, and certainly at first glance “filled the bill” satisfactorily. His head was a tangled mass of long hair and beard, out of which shone two big, blue eyes; a long, lean figure, slightly bent, and clothed in a tattered shirt, and trousers which no old Jew clothesman would have picked off a dunghill. I explained my errand and produced the book.
He thanked me, excused his dress; had other clothes, he said, in the house, which he would have put on had he expected me; was rather excited, so I must excuse him, as his “buck” had gone right off, in disgust, he believed, at the smallness of his flock, as he had only eight ewes. “Buck” I found to beAnglice“ram,” and that it was in the hope of luring back the insufficiently married lord of his flock that he had been howling when I came up. On my doubting whether such a call would not be more likely to speed the flight of the truant “buck,” he rushed awray in the other direction and uplifted it again; and in two or three minutes the eight ewes, with several lambs, were all round him, rubbing against his legs, while an Angora goat looked on with dignity from some yards off. From our talk I found that he was a Shrewsbury man, knew three or four languages, and mathematics up to the differential calculus; found England “too noisy,” and, moreover, could get no land there; had come out and gone to the agricultural class at Cornell University; had now bought this bit of land, on which he could live well, as he was a vegetarian (pointing round to some corn, turnips, etc., in his enclosure); had indigestion at first, but now had found out how to make bread which agreed with him. His trouble was the forest hogs, which were always watching to get at his crops, and his fence, having weak places, would not keep them out, so he had to be always on the watch. If he had any one to keep out the hogs, he could go and find his “buck,” he said, wistfully. The better man within me here was moved to offer to keep watch and ward against hogs while he sought his “buck”; but, on the whole, as the sun was already westering, and I had doubts as to when he might think of relieving guard, my better man did not prevail, and I changed the subject to the book I had brought. He glanced at the title-page, was pleased to find that it was of recent date, as his geology was rusty. Then, as he did not invite me into his log-hut, I rode away. Next evening, as I was strolling down our street, my attention was called to the noticeboard outside the chief store, kept by an excellent, kindly New Englander, Tucker by name, who very liberally allows any of his neighbours to use it. Here I found the following notice from “the Hermit,” which had been sent up by the hackman, to be posted. It opens, you will remark, in the true prophetic style. It ran: “Ho! all ye passers by! Strayed—like a fool!—a Ram (a male sheep,) butts like a nipper, and runs after! God will bless the seer if he lets Isaac Williams, of Sedgemoor Road, know. That is all. Please, Mr. Tucker, post this. Oh, I forgot,—Buy of Tucker!” I think you will agree that I have struck abona fidehermit in my old age.
But to return to my loafing idyll. Perhaps, if I had to select out of several the ideal loafing haunt in these parts, it would be the verandah of our doctor, another bright New Englander, a graduate of Harvard, and M.D., who, after fourteen years’ practice at Boston, was driven South by threatenings of chest troubles, and happily pitched on this tableland amongst the mountains. Not that he is a loaf-brother, except on rare occasions; a man diligent in his business, and prompt to answer any professional call; but as nobody seems ever to be ill, his leisure is abundant. The greater part of this he spends in the study and practice of grape-culture, in which he has, in the five years since he took it up, earned a high reputation. But in these autumn months, all the pruning, thinning, and tending are over in the forenoon, and in the hours which follow, which are delightfully hot and enjoyable to all sun-lovers, he is generally to be found in his verandah, well supplied with rocking-chairs. In front of the verandah is his principal vineyard, sloping south, and at the bottom of the slope, right away to the distant mountain-range (with Pike’s Peak soaring to the clouds, the centre of the military telegraph system in the war, from which messages were flashed to Look-out Mountain, over Chattanooga, in the critical days of battle, before Sherman started on his march to the sea), wave beyond wave, as it were, of many-coloured forest, each taking fresh tints as clouds flit over, and the triumphant old sun slopes to the West. There one may find the doctor in his rocker, his feet higher than his head on one of the verandah supports—and all who have learnt to appreciate the rocking-chair will agree that “heels up” is half the battle—his tobacco and a book on vines on a small table by his side, and over his head, within easy reach, a rope depending from the verandah roof. At first I took it for the common domestic bell-pull, but soon discovered its more subtle bearing on the luxury of loafing. The doctor had been much exercised by the visits of birds of outrageous appetite to his “Norton’s Virginia,” and other precious vines. At first he had resorted to his double-barrelled gun and small shot—indeed, it yet stood in a corner of the balcony, loaded—but had soon abandoned it. Its use was compatible neither with his love for birds nor the enjoyment of his rocking-chair. So, by an ingenious arrangement, he had hung bells at five or six points in the vineyard, connecting each and all with the depending-rope, so that no sooner did a bird settle with a view to lunch or dinner, than it was saluted by a peal from a bell close by, which sent it skirling back to the forest, while the doctor had neither to lower his heels nor take the pipe from his mouth.
Watching the entire discomfiture of the birds adds, I must own, a keener zest even to the delicious view and air, and to the racy stories of Western life poured out by one or another of the loaf-brethren. A specimen or two may amuse your readers. Placard over the piano in a favourite resort of Texan cowboys: “Don’t shoot the musician; he is doing his best.” Cowboy entering the cars at midnight, thermometer below zero, after snorting for a minute, lets down a window, is remonstrated with, and replies, “Wal, I’d as soon sleep with my head in a dead horse as in this car with the windows shut!” Another tale I repeat with hesitation, though it was seriously vouched for by the narrator as going on in his neighbourhood, and within his own cognisance. An eccentric settler, who played the fiddle powerfully, and lived next a man who had thrown a bridge over a creek, in respect of which the knotty question of “right of way” had arisen between them, read, or discovered somehow, that excessive vibration was the cause of the fall of bridges, and that a well-known railway iron bridge had been distinctly felt to vibrate to the notes of a fiddle, all that was necessary being to find the right chord and play up. Thereupon he set himself on the peccant bridge, and fiddled till he had hit on the sympathetic chord to his own satisfaction; since which he has put in all his spare time at the bridge, fiddling on the right chord and looking for the signs of a crash and the discomfiture of his neighbour. A mad world, my masters! And lucky for the world, say I. But for the cracked fellows going up and down, what a dull place it would be!
The whole neighbourhood, or, at any rate, the men of hunting age, have suddenly been roused into unwonted excitement and activity by the presence of a specimen of the larger carnivora close to this town. It is either a large panther or what they call a Mexican lion—at any rate, as big a beast of this kind as are bred over here, as his footprint, seen of many persons, clearly proves. He has been heard to roar by numbers, and Giles, the saw-mill man, who, passing along wholly unarmed, saw him gliding through the bush close by, puts him at five feet from nose to tail (root, not tip) at least. Giles adds that, at the sight, his hair stood up and distinctly lifted his straw hat—so perhaps his evidence must be discounted considerably. Any way, a party, now collecting dogs to bring him to bay, start to-morrow at dawn to give an account of him. It is more than a year since one has ventured down this way. A slaughter-house which has lately been set up in the woods near by would seem to have drawn him. Let us hope that no cunning old sportsman will watch there to-night and bag him single-handed, and I may possibly have to tell you of a memorable hunt next week.
That panther-hunt went off in a “fizzle.” Our contingent of determined sportsmen kept tryst at daylight, fully armed, but some neighbours who were to bring the proper dogs failed. The sun rose, broad and bright, and so, after a short advance in skirmishing order over the ground where the sawmill man had been so scared—just to save their credit as Nimrods—the chase was abandoned; wisely, I should think, for I can scarcely imagine a more hopeless undertaking than the pursuit of a panther in a Tennessee forest in broad daylight without dogs. Whether Sawyer Giles had grounds for his scare, and what was the length of that panther, must now remain for all time in that useful category of insoluble questions—like the identity of “Junius,” and Queen Mary’s guilt—which innocently employ so much of the spare time of the human race.
I have been back for the last fortnight “in amongst the crowd of men,” and if the things they have done are but “earnest of the things that they shall do,” well, our grandchildren will have a high old time of it! At any rate, our cousins hold this faith vigorously. Take, for instance, the case of a leading dry-goods man who has been sitting by me in the smoking-room of this ship, which has been carrying us for the last four days against a head-wind at the average rate of twenty miles an hour. Recollect, sir, that this ship is about 400 feet in length, of 8800 tons register, with engines of 14,000 horse-power, and must at this moment be as heavy as (say) lour big luggage-trains. I ventured to suggest that, whatever may be in store for us in the way of flying, science has about said her last word in the direction of driving steam or any other ships on the Atlantic. I felt almost inclined to resent the pity tinged with scorn with which he said, “Why,sir!this is the hundred and twenty-eighth time I have crossed this ocean. The first time it took me twenty-two days. This vessel does it in six days and a half, and I shall do it in half that time yet,—yes,sir!” My friend must be at least sixty!
The New York hotels were crammed as I came through with men who had come from all parts of the States for the yacht-race. I went out on a friend’s steam-yacht on the Thursday, when the second day’s race should have come off. There was fog and no wind off Sandy Hook, so after lying-to in a lopping sea for a couple of hours, we just steamed back, some hundred of us. But the game had been well worth the candle. Anything so beautiful as the movements of those two yachts in and out amongst the expectant fleet of sightseers, I never beheld. There were several old yachtsmen (Americans) on board, who seemed rather to think theThistlethe more perfect of the two, and when the second and deciding race had been sailed, still guessed that if their Commodore, Pain, or Malcolm Forbes had sailed theThistle, she would not have been twelve, or any, minutes behind.
As to more serious matters, you may be sure I lost no chance of talking on our crisis with every intelligent American or Canadian,—and I happened upon a great number of the latter. Amongst the majority of Americans I was much struck, and, I own, surprised, to find a sort of lazy fatalism prevailing, so far as they troubled their heads at all about the Irish question. Not a man of them believed in the tyranny of the British Government or the wrongs of the Irish; but they seemed to think it was somehow destiny. They knew the Irish—were likely to have at least as bad a time with them as we are having—but, unless you made up your minds to shoot, there was no putting them down or bringing them to reason. They had had to shoot—in New York during the war, and at other times—and might probably have to shoot again \ but then, that was over vital matters. We should never make up our minds to shoot over letting them have a Parliament at Dublin, and so they would get it by sheer insolence and intrigue. Such views would have depressed me had I not found, on the other hand, that the few men who had mastered the situation, without a single exception saw that it was a matter, nationally, of life or death, and hoped our Government would shrink from no measure necessary to restore the rule of law, and preserve the national life.
Amongst the Canadians, on the other hand, I did not happen upon a single Home-ruler—in fact, was obliged to own to myself that they seemed to set more store by the unity of the Empire than we do in the as-yet-United Kingdom. Indeed, if my acquaintances are at all representative of the views of our Canadian fellow-subjects, I feel very sure that the slight bond which holds the Dominion to us would part within a few months of the triumph of the Home-rule agitation. This possible fiasco, however, did not seem to them much worth thinking about; but what was really exercising them was the probability of a more intimate union or federation with the Mother-country. For defensive purposes, I was glad to find that they saw no difficulty whatever; believed, indeed, that that question was already solved. But all felt that the really difficult problem was a commercial union, which, nevertheless, must be managed somehow, if the Empire is to hold together. On this there were wide differences of opinion, but, on the whole, a decided inclination to a plan which I will endeavour to put in a few words. It is, that every portion of the Empire shall be free, as at present, to impose whatever tariff of customs it might think best for raising its own revenue; but an agreed discount (say, ten per cent) should be allowed on all goods the manufacture or product of the Mother-country, or any of its possessions. Inasmuch, it was argued, as such à plan would allow the free admission of all food and raw material, it ought not to hurt the Free-trade susceptibilities of England, while leaving the self-governing Colonies and India free to raise their own revenue as might suit their own views or circumstances. On the other hand, it would give an equal and moderate advantage to all subjects of the Empire. A similar advantage might also, under this plan, be given to importations made in ships belonging to any portion of the Empire.
You, sir, may very probably have heard of and considered this plan, as I have been told that it, or one almost identical, has been submitted both to the London Chamber of Commerce, and to the Colonial Office, by Sir Alexander Galt. I do not remember, however, to have ever seen it discussed in your columns, as I think it might be with advantage. One’s brain possibly is not so fit for the examination of political problems on even such a magnificent ship as theUmbriaas on shore; but “after the best consideration I can give it,” it does seem to me to be a solution which might go far to satisfy the scruples of all but fanatics of the “buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market” gospel.
We have run 435 miles in the teeth of the wind, in the last twenty-four hours.
The proverb that “The early bird gets most worms” has no truer application than in travelling, considered as a fine art. Of course to him who uses locomotion as a mere method of getting from one place to another, it matters nothing whether he starts at 3 A.M. or at noon. But to the man who likes to get the most he can out of his life, and looks upon a journey as an opportunity for getting some new insight into the ways and habits and notions of his fellowmen, there is no comparison between their value. The noonday travelling mood, like noonday light, is commonplace and uniform; while the early morning mood, like the light when it first comes, is full of colour and surprise. Such, at any rate, has been my experience, and I never made an out-of-the-way early start without coming upon one or more companions who gave me a new glimpse into some corner of life, and whose experience I should have been the poorer for having missed. My last experience in this matter is very recent. In the midst of the wild days of last December I received an unexpected summons on business to the north. My appointment was for eleven o’clock on the morrow, 200 miles from London. It was too late to make arrangements for leaving home at once, so I resolved to start by the first morning train, which leaves Euston Square at 5.15 A.M. Accordingly, soon after four next morning I closed the house door gently behind me, and set out on my walk, not without a sense of the self-approval and satisfaction which is apt to creep over early risers, and others who pride themselves on keeping ahead of their neighbours.
It was a fine wild morning, with half a gale of wind blowing from the north-west, and driving the low rain-clouds at headlong speed across the deep clear sky and bright stars. The great town felt as fresh and sweet as a country hillside. Not a soul in the streets but an occasional solitary policeman, and here and there a scavenger or two, plying their much-needed trade, for the wet mud lay inches deep. I was early at the station, where a sleepy clerk was just preparing to open the booking-offices, and a couple of porters were watering and sweeping the floor of the big hall. Soon my fellow-passengers began to arrive, labouring men for the most part, with here and there a clerk, or commercial traveller, muffled to the eyes.
Amongst them, as they gathered round the fire, or took short restless walks up and down the platform, was one who puzzled me not a little. He had arrived on foot just before me, indeed I had followed him for the last quarter of a mile through Euston Square, and had already begun to speculate as to who he could be, and on what errand. But now that I could get a deliberate look at him under the lights in the hall, my curiosity was at once raised and baffled. He was a strongly built, well-set young fellow of five feet ten or eleven, with clear gray eyes, deep set under very straight brows. His hair was dark, and would have curled but that it was cropped too short. He was clean shaved, so that one saw all the lower lines of his face, which a thick nose, slightly turned up, just hindered from being handsome. He wore a high sealskin cap, a striped flannel shirt with turn down collars, and a slipknot tie with a rather handsome pin. His clothes were good enough, but had a somewhat dissipated look, owing perhaps to the fact that only one button of his waistcoat was fastened, and that his boots, good broad double-soled ones, were covered with dry mud. His whole luggage consisted of the travelling-bag he carried in his hand, one of those elaborate affairs which generally involve a portmanteau or two to follow, but swelled out of all gentility and stuffed to bursting point.
An Englishman? I asked myself. Well, yes,—at any rate more like an Englishman than anything else. A gentleman? Well, yes again, on the whole; though not of our conventional type—at any rate a man of some education, and apparently a little less like the common run of us than most one meets.
Here my speculations were cut short by the opening of the ticket-window by the sleepy clerk, and the object of them marched up and took a third-class ticket for Liverpool. I followed his example. My natural aversion to eating money raw in railway travelling inclining me to such economy, apart from the interest which my problem was exciting in my mind. I am bound to add that nothing could be more comfortable than the carriages provided on the occasion for the third-class passengers of the N.W.K. I followed the sealskin cap and got into the same carriage with its owner. As good luck would have it, no one followed us. He put his bag down in a corner, and stretched himself along his side of the carriage with his head on it. I had time to look him well over again, and to set him down in my own mind as a young English engineer, who had been working on some continental railway so long as to have lost his English identity somewhat, when he started up, rubbed his eyes, took a good straight look at me, and asked if any one coming from abroad could cut us off in the steamer that met this train. I found at once that I was mistaken as to nationality.
I answered that no one could cut us off, as there was no straighter or quicker way of getting to Liverpool than this; but that he was mistaken in thinking that any steamer met the train.
Well, he didn’t know about meeting it, but anyway there was a steamer which went right away from Liverpool about noon, for he had got his passage by her, which he had bought at the tobacco-store near the station.
He handed his ticket for the boat to me, as if wishing my opinion upon it, which I gave to the effect that it seemed all right, adding that I did not know that tickets could be bought about the streets as they could be in America.
Well, he had thought it would save him time, perhaps save the packet, as she might have sailed while he was after his ticket in Liverpool, which town he didn’t know his way about. But now, couldn’t any one from the Continent cut her off? He had heard there was a route by Chester and Holyhead, which would bring any one who took it aboard of her at Queenstown.
I answered that this was probably so, beginning to doubt in my mind whether my companion might not, for all his straightforward looks and ways, have come by the bag feloniously. Could it be another great jewel robbery?
I don’t know whether he noticed any doubtful look in my eyes, but he added at once that he was on the straight run from Heidelberg. He had come from there to London in twenty-six hours.
I made some remark as to the beauty of Heidelberg, and asked if he knew it well.
Why, yes, he said he ought to, for he had been a student at the University there for the last nine months.
Why then was he on the straight run home? I ventured to ask. Term wasn’t over?
No; term wasn’t over; but he had been arrested, and didn’t want to go to prison at Strasburg, where one American student was in for about two years already.
But how did he manage to get off? I asked, now thoroughly interested in his story.
Well, he had just run his bail. When he was arrested he had sent for the doctor at whose house he lodged to bail him out. That was what troubled him most. He wouldn’t have the Herr Doctor slipped up anyway. He was going to send the money directly he got home, and there were things enough left of his to cover the money.
What was he arrested for?
For calling out a German student.
But I thought the German students were always fighting duels.
So they were, but only with swords, which they were always practising. They were so padded when they fought that they could not be hurt except just in the face, and the sword arm was so bandaged that there was no play at all except from the wrist. You would see the German students even when out walking, miles away from the town, keeping playing away with their walking-sticks all the time, so as to train their wrists.
What was his quarrel about?
Well, it was just this. The American students, of whom there were a large number there, kept pretty much to themselves, and no love was lost between them and the Germans. They had an American Club to which they all belonged, just to keep them together and see any fellow through who was in a scrape. He and some of the American students were sitting in the beer garden, close to a table of Germans. Forgetting the neighbourhood, he had tilted his chair and leant back in it, and so come against a German head. The owner jumped up, and a sharp altercation followed, ending in the German’s calling him out with swords. This he refused, but sent a challenge to fight with pistols by the President of the Club, a real fine man, who had shot his two men down South before he went to Heidelberg. The answer to this was his arrest, and arrest was a very serious thing now. For some little time since, a German and an American fought, with swords first and then with pistols. The American had his face cut open from the eye right down across the mouth, but when it came to pistols he shot the German, who died in an hour. So he was in jail, and challenging with pistols had been made an offence punishable by imprisonment, and that was no joke in a German military prison.
Did he expect the University authorities would send after him then?
No; but his folk were all in Germany for the winter. He had a younger brother at Heidelberg who had taken his bag down to the station for him, and would have let his father know, as he had told him to do. If he had telegraphed the old gentleman might come straight off and stop him yet, but he rather guessed he would he so mad he wouldn’t come. No; he didn’t expect to see his folk again for three or four years.
But why? After all, sending a challenge of which nothing came was not so very heinous an offence.
Yes, but it was the second time. He had run from an American university to escape expulsion for having set fire to an outhouse. Then he went straight to New York, which he wanted to see, and stopped till his money was all gone. His father was mad enough about that.
I said plainly that I didn’t wonder, and was going to add something by way of improving the occasion, but for a look of such deep sorrow which passed over the boy’s face that I thought his conscience might well do the work better than I could.
He opened his bag and took out a photograph, and then his six-shooter—a self-cocking German one, he said, which was quicker and carried a heavier ball than any he had seen in America; and then his pipes and cigar tubes; and then he rolled a cigarette and lighted it; and, as the dawn was now come, began to ask questions about the country. But all in vain; back the scene he was running from came, do what he would. His youngest brother, a little fellow of ten, was down with fever. He had spoilt Christmas for the whole family. It would cut them up awfully. But to a suggestion that he should go straight back he could not listen. No, he was going straight through to California, the best place for him. He had never done any good yet, but he was going to do it now. He had got a letter or two to Californians from some of his fellow-students, which would give him some opening. He wouldn’t see his people for four or five years, till he got something to show them. He would have to pitch right in, or else starve. He would go right into the first thing that came along out there, and make something.
As we got further down the line the morning cleared, and we had many fellow-passengers; but my young friend, as I might almost call him by this time, stuck to me, and seemed to get some relief by talking of his past doings and future prospect. I found that he had been at Würzburg for a short time before going to Heidelberg, so had had a student’s experience of two of the most celebrated German Universities. My own ideas of those seats of learning, being for the most part derived from the writings of Mr. Matthew Arnold, received, I am bound to own, rather severe shocks from the evidently truthful experience of one medical student.
He had simply paid his necessary florins (about £1 worth) for his matriculation fee, and double that sum for two sets of lectures for which he entered. He had passed no matriculation examination, or indeed any other; had attended lectures or not, just he pleased—about one in three he put as his average—but there was no roll-call or register, and no one that he knew of seemed to care the least whether he was there or not. However, he seemed to think that but for his unlucky little difficulty he could easily at this rate have passed the examination for the degree of doctor of medicines. The doctor’s degree was a mighty fine thing, and much sought after, but didn’t amount to much professionally, at least not in Germany, where the doctor has a State examination to pass after he has got his degree. But in America, or anywhere else, he believed they could just practise on a German M.D. degree, and he knew of one Herr Doctor out West who was about as fit to take hold of any sick fellow as he was himself. Oh, Matthew, Matthew, my mentor! When I got home I had to take down thy volume on Universities in Germany, and restore my failing faith by a glance at the Appendix, giving a list of the courses of lectures by Professors, Privabdocenten, and readers of the University of Berlin during one winter, in which the Medical Faculty’s subjects occupy seven pages; and to remind myself, that the characteristics of the German Universities are “Lehrfreiheit und Lernfreiheit,” “Liberty for the teacher, and liberty for the learner”; also that “the French University has no liberty, and the English Universities have no sciences; the German Universities have both.” Too much liberty of one kind this student at any rate bore witness to, and in one of his serious moments was eloquent on the danger and mischief of the system, so far as his outlook had gone.
By the time our roads diverged, the young runaway had quite won me over to forget his escapades, by his frank disclosures of all that was passing in his mind of regret and tenderness, hopefulness and audacity; and I sorrowed for a few moments on the platform as the sealskin cap disappeared at the window of the Liverpool carriage, from which he waved a cheery adieu.
As I walked towards the carriage to go on my own way, I found myself regretting that I should see his ruddy face no more, and wishing him all success “in that new world which is the old,” for which he was bound, with no possessions but his hand-bag and self-reliance to make his way with. I might have sat alone for thrice as long with an English youngster, in like case, without knowing a word of his history; but then, such history could never have happened to an Englishman, for he never would have run his bail, and would have gone to prison and served his time as a matter of course.
How much each nation has to learn of the other! But I trust that by this time my young friend has seen to it that the good-natured Herr Doctor who went bail for him hasn’t “slipped up anyway.”
Iwonder if you will care to take a seaside letter, at this busiest time of the year? Folk have no business to be “on the loaf” before Easter, I readily admit. Still, there is much force and good-sense, I have always held, in that tough, old regicide Major-General Ludlow’s action, when he found England under Cromwell too narrow to hold him. He migrated to Switzerland, and characteristically changed his family motto to “Ubi libertas, ibi patria” (“Where I can have my own way, there is my country”) or (if I may be allowed a free rendering to fit the occasion), “Whenever man can loaf, then is long vacation.”
But my motive for writing is really of another kind. In these later years, a large and growing minority of my personal friends and acquaintances seem to be afflicted with that demon called Neuralgia,—some kind of painful affection connected with the nerves of the head and face, which makes the burden of life indefinitely heavier to carry than it has any right to be. To all such I feel bound to say, Give this place a trial in your first leisure. In one case, at any rate, and that an apparently chronic one, in which every east wind, and almost every sudden change of temperature, brought with it acute suffering, I have seen with my own eyes a complete cure effected by a few days in this air. The experiment was tried three months since, and from that time the demon seems to have been exorcised, and has been quite unable to return, though we have had a full average in these parts of sudden changes of temperature,—east winds, cold rains, and the other amenities of early spring in England.
Can I account for this? Well, so far as I can judge, the peculiar conformation of the shore must have much to say to it. From the open window where I am sitting, there lies between me and the sea (it being low water) an almost level stretch of sand of more than half a mile in depth. Beyond that there is a narrow strip of sea, on which a fleet of tiny fishermen’s craft, with their ruddy-brown sails, are plying their trade; and again, beyond that, between channel and open sea, is another long sand-bank. Now I am told, and see no reason to doubt, that the evaporation from this great expanse of wet sand is charged with double the amount of ozone which would rise from the like area of salt-water. But whatever the cause, the fact stands as I have stated above. In another hour or two the sea will be close up to these windows, lapping against the sea-wall, and spoiling the view for the time, but, happily, only for a short time. For while it is up, there is nothing but very shallow, muddy water to be seen, on which the faithful old sun, try as he will, can paint no pictures. Whereas at low tide, the colours of these sandy wastes—the steely gleam of the wet parts, the bright yellow of the dry, and the warm and rich tints of brown of the intermediate, and the quaint, black line of the pier, running out across them all till it reaches the pale blue of the channel, where the fishing-boats all lie at anchor round the pier-head at sunset—are one perpetual feast, even to the untrained eye. What the delight must be to a painter, when the level sun turns the blacks into deep purples, and glorifies all the yellows and browns, and gives the steely gleams a baleful and cruel glint, I can only guess, unless, indeed, it should make him hang himself, in despair of reproducing them on mortal canvas. That long, black pier is our favourite place of resort. Probably the ozone is stronger there than elsewhere. It is three-quarters of a mile long, and at the end, at noon, a most attractive, daily performance comes off gratis. At that hour the gulls are fed by an official of the pier company, and afterwards, at intervals, by children, who bring scraps of viands in their pockets for this purpose.
I am not defending the practice, which tends, no doubt, to pauperise a number of these delightful birds. I have watched them carefully, and never seen one of them go off to earn his honest, daily fish. There they sit lightly on the water, with heads turned to the pier-head, and float past with the tide, rising for a short flight back again, as it carries them too far past to see when the doles are beginning to be served. When these begin, they are all in the air, wheeling and crossing each other in perfect flight to get the proper swooping-point. It seems to be a rule of the game that they pick up the fragments in their swoop, for when this is neatly done by any one, the rest leave him alone, though he may carry off a larger prize than he is able to swallow on the wing. But in a high wind there is trouble. Not one in a dozen of them can then be sure of his prey in his swoop, and after one or two attempts the greedy ones alight and attack the viands on the water. But this seems to be against the rules of the game, and instantly others alight by the side of the transgressor, and strive eagerly for whatever of the desired morsel is still outside his yellow beak. I noted with pleasure that there are generally a few who will take no part in these squabbles, but if they failed in their swoop, soared up again with dignity, to wait for another chance. These must, I take it, be undemoralised gulls, from a distance. Always play your game fair, or there will be trouble, whether amongst birds or men.
At other seaside places the shallowness of the sand limits the pure delight of children in their castle-building. Here it seems boundless. I saw one sturdy urchin yesterday throwing out stoneless sand from a hole some four feet deep. The castles and engineering works are therefore on a splendid scale, several of them from five to ten yards across, inside which bits of old spars (portions, I fear, of wrecks) are utilised for causeways and bridges. The infant builders are ambitious, for I have seen frequent attempts, not wholly unsuccessful, at putting sand steeples on the churches. These higher efforts were all made by girls, who, indeed, I regret to say, seemed to do not only the decorative, but the substantial work. The boys employed themselves mainly in creeping through the holes which the girls had dug under the spars, to represent bridges, and in knocking down the boundary walls. Is this a sign of our topsy-turvy times? In my day, we boys did all the building and engineering, and the girls used to come and sit on our walls, and destroy our castles. On this highest part of the sands, the children’s playground, there stand also certain skeletons of booths, to be covered with canvas, I presume, in the summer, for the sale of ginger-beer and cakes. These, the largest especially, some nine feet high, attracted the boys, several of whom essayed to reach the highest cross-bar. Only one succeeded while I watched, a born sailor-boy, who was not to be foiled, and succeeded in getting on to it. There he sat, and looked scornfully down on the sand-diggers, in the temper, no doubt, of the chorus of the old sea song—
We jolly sailor boys a-sitting up aloft,
And the land-lubbers funking down below.
After a time he descended, and, looking for a few moments at the diggers, went straight away across the sands towards the sea. I saw that he had only a wooden spade, while most of theirs had iron heads.
There is another kind of amusement which is strange to me, being necessarily confined to great expanses of sand. A boat on wheels, called theFlying Dutchman, careers along at a splendid pace when there is wind enough, and I am told can tack handily, and never runs into the sea. If it did, it would not matter, as it must at once upset in such case in very shoal water. When the Royal Society was here, several eminent philosophers were reported to be disporting themselves in theFlying Dutchman, when the President, Professor Cayley, called on them to read papers, or make promised speeches.
This flat sandy coast is far from being so innocent as it looks. There are the wrecks of two vessels in sight even now. One of these, I hear, it took the lifeboat fourteen hours’continuous hard workto reach, and they brought off every man of the crew, twenty-five in number—a feat deserving wider fame than it has attained. They must be glorious sea-worthies, these Lancashire fishermen! Of the fine public buildings, the four-miles tramway, the Free Library, Botanic Gardens, and the rest, I need not speak. Lord Derby’smoton opening the Botanic Gardens is enough,—that the Southport folk can skate on real ice in July, and sit under palm-trees at Christmas. But I may say that the esplanade is a grand course for tricyclers and bicyclers, who seem fond of challenging and running races with tradesmen’s carts—a somewhat risky operation for other vehicles and passengers.
One word, however, before I close, about the most striking of the churches, St. Andrew’s. I was attracted to it by its good proportions, and the stone tracery of several of the windows, reminding one of the patterns of the early decorated period of Gothic art. It can seat some 1500 people on the floor, there being no galleries. I am sorry to say, however, that appearances are deceitful. It is of no use to have fine proportions and good decoration if they won’t stand; and unhappily, although the church is only twelve years old, the cleristory walls have been blown out of the perpendicular, so that the whole nave roof has to come off that they may be solidly rebuilt. What would an old monkish architect have said to such a catastrophe? The more’s the pity, inasmuch as the necessary closing of the church is going to shelve, probably for months, the most striking preacher I have heard this month of Sundays. I first learnt, sir, in your columns the golden rule, that during prayers the worshipper is responsible for keeping up his own attention, while at sermon-time it is the parson’s business. Well, I have been to St. Andrew’s for the last three Sundays, and during sermons, none of which have lasted less than half an hour, have neither gone to sleep, nor thought about anything but what the preacher was saying. I suspect it is (as Apollo says of Theodore Parker, in the “Fable for Critics”) that—
This is what makes him the crowd-drawing preacher,
There’s a background of God to each hard-working feature,
Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced
In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest.
Whatever be the cause, however, there is the fact; and I own I am somewhat surprised, being rather curious about such matters, that I had never heard the name of Prebendary Cross before I happened to come to this place.