There is nothing that more broadly indicates the Norse strain in the Manx character than the non-sanguine temperament of the Manxmen. Where the pure Celt will hope anything and promise everything, the Manxman will hope not at all and promise nothing. "Middling" is the commonest word in a Manxman's mouth. Hardly anything is entirely good, or wholly bad, but nearly everything is middling. It's a middling fine day, or a middling stormy one; the sea is middling smooth or middling rough; the herring harvest is middling big or middling little; a man is never much more, than middling tired, or middling well, or middling hungry, or middling thirsty, and the place you are travelling to is alwaya middling near or middling far. The true Manxman commits himself to nothing. When Nelson was shot down at Trafalgar, Cowle, a one-armed Manx quartermaster, caught him in his remaining arm. This was Cowle's story: "He fell right into my arms, sir. 'Mr. Cowle,' he says, 'do you think I shall recover?' 'I think, my lord,' I says, 'we had better wait for the opinion of the medical man.'" Dear old Cowle, that cautious word showed you were no Irishman, but a downright middling Manxman. I have one more story to tell, and that is of Manx pride, which is a wondrous thing, usually-very ludicrous. A young farming girl who will go about barefoot throughout the workdays of the week would rather perish than not dress in grand attire, after her own sort, on Sunday afternoon. But Manx pride in dress can be very touching and human. When the lighthouse was built on the Chickens Rock, the men who were to live in it were transferred from two old lighthouses on the little islet called the Calf of Man, but their families were left in the disused lighthouses. Thus the men were parted from their wives and children, but each could see the house of the other, and on Sunday mornings the wives in their old lighthouses always washed and dressed the children and made them "nice" and paraded them to and fro on the platforms in front of the doors, and the men in their new lighthouse always looked across the Sound at their little ones through their powerful telescopes. MANX TYPES