impossible questions in wanton parody of her simple London self. Between these two extremes her moods vary from second to second, and she plays upon them as Pan upon his pipes, and to much the same tune. She loves the long tresses of seaweed and the pink shells like the nails of her own little hands; and her coloured pail, when she is not the architect of sea-girt palaces, is a treasury of salty wonders. To climb the rough rocks and call them mountains, to drive back the waves with a chiding foot, and to alter the face of Nature with a wooden spade, these were not tasks for the domesticated creature who shares the hearth-rug with the cat at home. But the spirit of the sea has changed Dorothy; she is now a little more and a little less than child; and she recognises no comrades but those other nymphs of the sea, who hold the beach with the sparkle of wet feet and careless petticoats, who run hither and thither in search of the big adventure, while their parents and guardians sleep in the sun. It is hard that age should deprive us of so many privileges, and least of all can we spare the glamour of the sands of the sea. Yet to the adult mind Brighton beach, sprinkled with newspapers and washed by a sea whose surface is black with smuts, brings little but disgust. We insist on having our fairy-lands clean and end, too often, by finding no fairy-land at all. The sea, after all, is no more than water that may be caught in a bucket; the sand may glitter on a child’s spade, and we who believe that the essential knowledge of the thing is ours are no wiser than the children. For me the sea is a restless and immeasurable waste of greens and blues and greys, and I know that its strength lies in its monotony. It is not the noisy turbulence of storms that moves me to fear, but the dull precision of the tides and the tireless succession of waves. And my impression is no truer than the children’s and lends itself less readily to a sympathetic manner of living. I feel that if I could once more hold the ocean in my bucket, if the whole earth might be uprooted by my spade, I should be nearer to a sense of the value of life than I am now. I see the children go trooping by with their calm eyes, not, as is sometimes said, curious, but rather tolerant of life, and I know that for them the universe is merely an aggregate of details, some agreeable and some stupid, while I must needs depress myself by regarding it as a whole. And this is the proved distinction between juvenile and adult philosophies, if we may be permitted to regard a child’s very definite point of view as the effect of a philosophy. Life is a collection of little bits of experience; the seaside bits are pleasant, and there is nothing more to be said. ON GOING TO BED