But even fifty years ago there was never a volume that had not been defaced out of all knowledge by crooked marks of the most inquisitive interrogation, and straight marks of the most indignant astonishment, by the reading-public in the shadows of the breakwaters. It really read, that public did; and, what's more, it often tore out the interesting bits to take away. I remember great exasperation when a sudden veil was drawn over the future of two lovers just as the young gentleman had flung himself into the arms of the young lady. An unhallowed fiend had cut off the sequel with scissors and boned it! That was done, or much of it, when the books were new, and the railway-station was miles away; when the church wasn't new, but old, which was better. It has been made new since, and has chairs in it, and memorial windows by Stick and Co. In those days its Sunday-folk were fisherfolk mostly, and a few local magnates or parvates--squirophants, they might be called--and a percentage of the visitors. Was St. Sennan glad or sorry, we wonder, when the last two sorts subscribed and restored him? If we had been he, one of us would have had to have the temper of a saint to keep cool about it. Anyhow, it's done now, and can't be undone. But the bathing-machines are not restored, at any rate. Those indescribables yonder, half rabbit-hutch, half dry-dock--a long row for ladies and a short one for gentlemen, three hundred yards apart--couldn't trust 'em any nearer, bless you!--these superannuated God-knows-whats, struggling against disintegration from automatic plunges down a rugged beach, and creaking journeys back you are asked to hold on through--it's no use going on drying!--these tributes to public decorum you can find no room in, and probably swear at--no sacrilegious restorer has laid his hand on these. They evidently contemplate going on for ever; for though their axes grow more and more oblique every day, their self-confidence remains unshaken. But then they think they _are_ St. Sennans, and that the wooden houses are subordinate accidents, and the church a mere tributary that was a little premature--got there first, in its hurry to show respect for _them_. And no great wonder, seeing what a figure they cut, seen from a boat when you have a row! Or, rather, used to cut; for now the new town (which is beastly) has come on the cliff above, and looks for all the world as if _it_ was St. Sennans, and speaks contemptuously of the real town as the Beach Houses.