‘This is what I like,’ said my husband. ‘Here is all the privacy that we could desire, and the most delightful primitiveness also. A professional man when he takes a holiday ought to give crowded places a very wide berth, and put himself as close to nature--to nature, rugged, homely and roaring, after this pattern,’ said he with a sweep of his hand, ‘as his requirements of eating and drinking and sleeping will permit.’ ‘It seems a very dull place,’ said I when, having reached the top of one of the three steep streets, we turned to retrace our steps. ‘If the weather does not allow me to have plenty of boating I shall soon wish myself home again.’ ‘You will not find a circulating library here,’ said Mary, looking around her. ‘I should not suppose that many people belonging to Piertown are able to read.’ ‘The place is made up of grocers’ shops,’ said my husband. ‘What a queer smell of bloaters!’ I amused myself by counting no less than five grocers’ shops in one street, and I did not see a single person resembling a customer in any one of them. I pulled my husband’s arm to stop him opposite a shop in whose windows I believed I saw three men hanging by the neck. They proved to be complete suits of oilskins, each surmounted by one of those nautical helmets called sou’-westers, and at a little distance, as they dangled in the twilight within the windows, they exactly resembled three mariners who had committed suicide. We now walked down to the pier, and there the great plain of the ocean stretched before us without the dimmest break of land anywhere along its confines, and the white surf boiled within the toss of a pebble from us. The pier projected from a short esplanade; along this esplanade ran a terrace of mean stunted structures, eight in all; and my husband, after looking and counting, exclaimed: ‘Five of them are public-houses. Yes! this is the seaside.’ The pier forked straight out for a short distance, then rounded sharply to the right, thus forming a little harbour, in the shelter of which lay a cluster of boats of several kinds. The massive piles and supports of the pier broke the weight of the seas, which rushed hissing white as milk amongst the black timbers; but the water within was considerably agitated nevertheless, and the boats hopped and plunged and jumped and rubbed their sides one against another, straining at the ropes which held them, as though they were timid living creatures like sheep, terrified by the noise and appearance of the waters, and desperately struggling at their tethers in their desire to get on shore.