“_Herculean Hero! Fam’d for Strength At last Lies here his Breadth & Length._ “_See How the Mighty Man is Fall’n! To Death y^e Strong & Weak are all one._ “_And the Same Judgment doth Befall Goliath Great, as David Small._” Joy, who performed many extraordinary feats of strength, including the pulling against a powerful horse, the lifting of a weight of 2,240 lbs., and the snapping of a rope that had resisted a breaking strain of 35 cwts., was one of the smuggling fraternity, and met his death by drowning when engaged in one of those contraband exploits. His sister was almost as strong as himself, and performed many remarkable feats of strength. This is an authentic memorial, but those irresponsible books, the various Collections of Epitaphs, tell us of the following choice specimen to be found here: “Against his will, Here lies George Hill, Who from a cliff Fell down quite stiff. When it happened is not known Therefore not mentioned on this stone.” It is quite easy to “collect” epitaphs on the terms of inventing them; and this, as might well be supposed, is a pure effort of the imagination. CHAPTER XIII RAMSGATE The old seaport and holiday-resort of Ramsgate may be reached quickly along the desolate Dumpton Park Drive already spoken of; but the pedestrian’s better way from Broadstairs is past that eyesore the Grand Hotel, to the grassy cliffs’ edge. These are interrupted by some of those “gates” and “gaps” characteristic of this part of the coast. Crossing the bridge at Dumpton Gap, and past some fortifications, Ramsgate itself is reached by way of Wellington Crescent, whose name, like that of the thoroughfare near by, called the “Plains of Waterloo,” sufficiently well dates this part of the town to the 1815–20 period. It is well to note here that all these Ramsgate developments at this point, on the East Cliff, and even the busy town and harbour of Ramsgate itself, are only the expansion, since the eighteenth century, of that original village situated one mile inland, where the mother-church of St. Lawrence still may be found. Ramsgate--spelled “Raunsgate” until the time of Edward the First--derives from “Ruim’s Geat,” that is to say, the “marsh gate”; and where the busy harbour now is the fishermen of remote times drew up their boats and dried their nets, going home inland to St. Lawrence. Here the cliffs of Thanet die away to the marshes and levels of Pegwell Bay and Sandwich Flats; and the early fisher-folk, for safety’s sake, preferred to live away from the shore, upon which an enemy might (and often did) unexpectedly land. When Ramsgate first began to grow, its inhabitants, seeking a respectable remote antiquity, affected to believe the place-name derived from “Roman’s Gate,” but even the credulous old Hasted, the eighteenth-century historian of Kent, could not accept that etymology.