Well, as I was saying, he slipped down between two rocks and sprained his ankle. He didn’t, like those (I fear) apocryphal artists in the stories, lie there gracefully and quote Shakespeare and Dr. Watts about it, until two lovely heiresses to untold millions came along in a boat and rescued him from the rising tide, and fell in love with him and married the fellow (one of them, I mean; the other--in the stories--dies of a broken heart). No! He lay there and swore dreadfully, until some fishermen came along and refused to take him off in their boat until he had paid them a sov., money down, when he swore (if possible) more dreadfully than before. No beautiful girls came and rescued him at all; only one old maid passed, who, thinking he was drunk, gave him a tract, warned him against the evils of intemperance, and went away, shocked at the “language” he used. This is a very sad and unromantic episode, I know, but things do fall out thus in real life. If this simple story should prove of any use to realistic novelists, I’m sure I should be only too proud for them to use it. Meanwhile, let us away to Torquay. Here a steep and rugged path, leading up the face of the cliff, brings us to Labrador. Every visitor to Teignmouth goes also to Labrador, a name not usually coupled with sunshine and sparkling sea, _al fresco_ teas, and roses at a penny a piece. He was a romantic mercantile Jack, who, retiring from the Newfoundland and North American seas, laid out his precarious little estate and built this little house on it, and named his domain after an inhospitable coast. He has voyaged long since into the Unknown, and his romance has gone with him, for the place is now but a superior sort of tea-garden, where you drink your tea and eat your cream and strawberries in the open-air arbours and the society of innumerable centipedes and spiders. You cannot fare farther along the coast-line, just here, without becoming bedevilled amid fallen rocks and rising tides; and to climb the cliffs at a venture might haply result in being hung up on some impracticable ledge, whence advance or retreat would be alike impossible. So we climbed the usual, though precipitous, path past Labrador on to the cliff-top, and from thence across ruddy fields to the dusty highway, along which, to our surprise, came two Italians with a piano-organ. O Herrick! The minstrels from the town are gone-- On Devon roads you’ll find ’em; They play “Ta-ra,” “He’s Got ’em On” (Those cursed tunes), and grind ’em, Both day and night, in curly chords, On organs called “piano;” They hail, these handle-turning hordes, From Tiber, or the Arno. To “Get Your Hair Cut” they incite, In thrilling shakes and catches, With notes that thunder day and night; They grind ’em forth in batches. “’Ow _you’d_ like ’Awkins for your other name,” They play “_expressione_”-- Away! you errant sons of song, To home, and--macaroni.