SOME NOTES AT STARMOUTH.
Views after Breakfast.—Now to lay down the lines for my Drama.... Eleven—and the only lines I have laid down, as yet, are "Act I., Scene I!" I must stimulate my imagination by the sight of salt water.
On the Sands.—Dense crowd. Deafening noise. Penny bagpipes, comb and paper. Italian girls with accordion, trumpet from sailing-boat. '"Ere y'are for a jolly sail out, Sir!"—which happens to be just the precise thing I am not here for. Nor (I should have thought) do I look the kind of person likely to buy that "strong and emusing toy, one penny, the little Chinese Bandalore"—but these fellows have no eye for character. Several shoeblacks very anxious to black my boots, which, as I tell them, would be "painting the lily." Don't think they understand me. Stop thoughtlessly to look at a cage containing a tree-frog and two Japanese rats. Proprietor approaches with plate: "This little Jubilee Menagerie open free to the Public," he says—"we ope the Public will respond by a similar liberality." Well, well, if I must—but it really was not worth a penny.
Join a crowd: a conjuror—good, I am fond of conjuring. Conjuror now going to introduce his "celebrated and favourite Shell-trick." Crowd very obligingly make way for me—capital place in front row. Conjuror takes a large Nautilus shell. I have never seen this trick—it looks a good one.... It appears this is his way of making a collection—he comes to me first. He is sure, he says (he is an impudent dog), that I shall feel hurt if he passes me over. No change. He begs me not to get flurried—sooner than deprive me of the pleasure of patronising him, he will give me change—he does. This is the end of the performance. Singular how depressed I feel by this petty incident. Blazers in great force on the sands. Teasing half-offended nursemaids, playing penny "nap" on newspapers, or lying in pits scooped out of sand, with their heads on the laps of their fair ones, or pursuing the fair ones, and putting sand down their backs.
