[Illustration: A LANCASHIRE WATERING-PLACE] * * * * * "MERRY MARGIT" (_Another communication from the side of the dear sea waves_) I was told it was greatly improved--that there were alterations in the sea-front suggestive of the best moments of the Thames Embankment--that quite "smart" people daily paraded the pier. So having had enough of "Urn-bye", I moved on. The improvements scarcely made themselves felt at the railway station. Seemingly they had not attracted what Mr. Jeames would call "the upper suckles." There were the customary British middle-class matron from Peckham, looking her sixty summers to the full in a sailor hat; the seaside warrior first cousin to the billiard-marker captain with flashy rings, beefy hands, and a stick of pantomime proportions, and the theatrical lady whose connection with the stage I imagine was confined to capering before the footlights. However, they all were there, as I had seen them any summer these twenty years. But I had been told to go to the Pier, and so to the Pier I went, glancing on my way at the entertainers on the sands, many of whom I found to be old friends. Amongst them was the "h"-less phrenologist, whose insight into character apparently satisfied the parents of any child whose head he selected to examine. Thus, if he said that a particularly stupid-looking little boy would make a good architect, schoolmaster, or traveller for fancy goods, a gentleman in an alpaca-coat and a wide-awake hat would bow gratified acquiescence, a demonstration that would also be evoked from a lady in a dust cloak, when the lecturer insisted that a giggling little girl would make a "first-rate dressmaker and cutter-out."