I heard ugly hints of vessels purposely cast away to recover insurance; and I heard a well-dressed townsman, who spoke with considerable warmth, and evidently with knowledge, utter bitter sneers at the rapacity of certain boatmen who had "made salvage a business," and who "always won their actions-at-law against the owners because counsel artfully worked on the jurymen's feelings by glowing accounts of the men's pluck and perils." "And do you deny the peril of the work?" I asked. "No," he admitted, "it's risky enough, but it pays better than fishing, and that's about as risky." "You would not care to do it yourself, I presume?" "Not me!" he answered, with a chuckle; "I should hope I'd got a better mark on. But to make a ten-pound note, those beggars, why, they'd face hell!" * * * * * If there be a devil his name is Money. Fresh from the hands of the gods, we are the exquisite instruments upon which they play divine music. But comes Money to play upon us, and the strings become jangled, harsh, and out of tune. If there were no money--if none were tempted for lack of it to sell themselves, if none were driven by excess of it to wallow in porcine gutters--how brave, noble, and lovable were Man! The stock question that Yorkshire weavers ask of one another on meeting, is one we might fitly ask of our Civilisation, "What soorts are yo' makin' now?" The nearer the knuckle of civilisation we seek, the less shall we find of the cool, fearless, manly air of my Gorleston lifeboatman. Civilisation is not making those "soorts," Nature preserves the monopoly of manufacture; civilisation succeeds only in spoiling them. LONDON PRIDE AND COCKNEY CLAY From drinking fiery poison in a den Crowded with tawdry girls and squalid men, Who hoarsely laugh and curse and brawl and fight: I wake from day dreams to this real night. JAMES THOMSON. Since I met the Lancashire excursionist at Lowestoft I have been wondering what is the essential distinction between the Cockney-tripper and the holiday-maker one meets at New Brighton, Douglas, or Blackpool. We were tightly packed in the shelter on the promenade waiting the end of the thunderstorm. There were two native boys singing a temperance song to the tune of "There's nae luck aboot the hoose," translated to a dirge with a drawling refrain of "No d-r-r-rink! no d-r-r-rink for me!" This they would whisperingly sing, with stealthy inquiring glances at the people who pressed about them, and then hysterically giggle. But the stolid, respectable crowd of "visitors" from London, stiff with the recent dignity of seeing their names printed in the visitors' list (with "Esquire" at the end!) would not stoop to notice these frivolous ebullitions. They stolidly glowered with heavy impassive glare, oblivious, it seemed, not only of the boys, but also of each other.