Not only the seafaring and the coastwise populations indulge in strong language: conversation in general along the roads is decidedly over-proof. There is too much “damyer” about the roadside intercourse of these parts, produced largely by the animosities of motorists and the drivers of chars-à-bancs, who do not love one another, but unite and make common cause against the electric tramways in vituperation. The tramways, the chars-à-banc traffic, and the motor-cars have indeed greatly changed the aspect of Thanet and its seaside resorts. The “oldest inhabitant” of some few years hence will be able to tell strange tales of a time when he knew of rural roads and saw wild-flowers: THE GAFFER’S STORY “Yes, I’m a ’underd an’ six, an’ healthy enough in a general way, But that don’t signify much in these times, when ye meet a couple o’ dozen centurions a day. I can manage a dozen mile afoot; can dig, read, an’ holler, an’ chaw, But, lor’ bless ye! that’s nothing now: lots do all that, an’ more. An’ in Ireland, they tell me, centurions grow on every blackberry-bush, so to speak, An’ corsties the Guv’ment in ole-age pensions thousands an’ thousands a week. I suppose it must be something, don’t ye think, in the hair? For at Brighton, where the hair is, there’s dozens an’ dozens o’ centurions _there_. No, I don’t mean the ’air of yer ’ed, but the hair of the sky-- It’s difficult to make you townsfolk unnerstand, however you try. An’ ‘Centenarians’ _you_ say. Why, no! Centurions _I’ve_ allus carled ’em, an’ allus shell, Although I daresay that way o’ yourn may do ’most as well. I don’t ’old with yer new-fangled words: they’re all very fine-- Like now, when you have your dinner, you say you are ‘going to dine.’ You don’t seem to me to get fatter on ‘dining’ than ‘dinner:’ ’Fact, it seems some’ow to me, you’re all o’ you worried an’ thinner. Eh! what was the country like when I wer’ young? Well, it’s an old, old story now, forgotten ever so long. In them days there was hedges, an’ ellums in the hedge-rows, An’ hazels, an’ blackberry brakes, an’ bracken, an’ goodness knows How many wild-flowers there. The roads suttingly was rather muddy; But the children used to go to the hedges for what they carled ‘Nature Study.’ ‘Not much nature now,’ you say. No: ye see the world got so clever, it ’ad to go, An’ now if ye wanted to see a cowslip or a buttercup, I don’t know what ye could do: P’raps they’ve got a speciment or two in the Natural Mystery Museum, An’ if I was you, I’d go to South Kensington, an’ try an’ see ’em. ‘Hist’ry,’ you say, ‘not Myst’ry’; well, maybe so, ’tis arl the same to me-- _I_ don’t care, not at arl, whichever o’ them it be! Pretty things, an’ simple they was: I ’aven’t seen none fer half a