For the spiritual benefit of the fisher-folk and others of the old town, there is planted, by the Stade, a "St. Peter's Mission," established there by well-meaning but stupid folk who look down, actually and figuratively, from the modern town upon this spot, and appear to think it a sink of iniquity. But iniquities are not always, or solely, resident in sinks; they have been found, shameless and flourishing, in high places. There are those among the fisher population who take the creature comforts--the coals and the blankets--of the mission, and pocket the implied affront; but there are also those others who, with clearer vision or greater independence of character, do not scruple to think and say that a mission for the salvation of many in that new town that so proudly crowns the cliffs would be more appropriate. "What," asked an indignant fisherman--"what makes them 'ere hotels pay like they does?" and he answered his own query in language that shall not be printed here. "If them as goes there all had to show their marriage-lines first," he concluded, "it's little business they'd do"; and his remarks recalled and illuminated the story of a week-end frequenter of one of the great caravanserais whose Saturday to Monday spouses were so frequently changed that even the seared conscience of a German hotel-manager was revolted. Folkestone's fishing-harbour is wonderfully picturesque. Beside it stands the Stade, a collection of the quaintest, craziest old sail-lofts and warehouses, timbered and tarred and leaning at all sorts of angles. Down in the harbour itself the smacks cluster thickly. The rise and fall of the tide here is so much as eighteen feet, and at the ebb to descend upon the sand and to look up and along toward the Leas is to obtain the most characteristic and striking view in the whole place. There, perched up against the sky-line, is the ancient parish church of St. Eanswythe, in modern times frescoed and bedizened and given up to high church practices. There, too, the custom has recently been introduced of going in procession, with cross and vestments, to bless the fishing-nets. One wonders what scornful things Ingoldsby would have said of these doings within the Church of England, and indeed the fishery seems neither better nor worse for them. [Illustration: FOLKESTONE HARBOUR.]