“Going it!” is said to be the note of Margate. No one who has been there in August will dispute that. Those who do not wish to “go it,” and would rather enjoy a quiet, contemplative holiday, had better go elsewhere. Margate makes merry (this alliteration is positively infectious) from early morn till dewy eve. You awake to a concert of sounds, in which the bugling and clarionetting of early brake-parties is brassily prominent, and at night are sent to sleep by the slowly expiring minstrelsy of varied bands. Let it be added that the air of Margate is so forceful that even those constitutionally and mentally averse from all that “going it!” may be taken to mean let themselves go here. There was once a highly respectable curate who “went it!” to such an extent--but that is not our business. Both Ramsgate and Margate claim the story of the typically pursy, Perkyn Middlewick type of city man who, stepping on to the railway platform on the arrival of the train and feeling already the enliving effect of the atmosphere, exclaimed, “Isn’t this invigorating?” “No, sir,” returned a porter, “it’s Margate” (or Ramsgate, as the case may be). Some few have not the capacity for enjoyment. Sometimes you see, along these crowded sands, tearful small boys who have somehow missed the note of the place. “I have brought you out to enjoy yourself, sir,” said a robustious father to such an one; “and if you don’t begin to do it pretty quick, you’d better go home!” Margate has a wonderful reputation for its rough, vigorous, revivifying air; it is also known at one season of the year--may it be hinted without offence?--for its very rough, vigorous coast population. A once well-known actor who long since joined the great majority and exchanged his fame for oblivion used to illustrate this in one of his breezy anecdotes. He and a friend, in a sailing-vessel, found themselves in difficulties in a fog. Suddenly conscious, by sounds and dim lights, that they were off a coast town, they hailed the shore: “Ahoy! ahoy! Where are we?” A thunderous voice responded through the fog, “Go to ----,” whereupon Ryder, the actor in question, turning to his friend, exclaimed: “All right, my boy--Margate!” Somewhat similar testimony--although not specifically limited to Margate--may be found in the pages of a familiar novelist; Mr. Thomas Hardy remarking, in that beautiful story “A Pair of Blue Eyes,” that “it has been calculated by philosophers that more ‘damns’ go up to heaven from the Channel, in the course of a year, than from all the five oceans put together.” It is a profane way of stating a fact of which no one will be concerned to deny the truth.