The study of seaside “holiday amusements,” from the time when the sea and the countryside themselves palled, and the holiday-maker ceased to be able to amuse himself, might form an interesting theme for the social philosopher. Here we can but glance at the subject, and slightly trace the first footsteps of the nigger-minstrel and the barrel-organist, down to the German bands who extract unwilling tribute from a long-suffering public, and the piano-organ men, the immediate precursors of the “pierrots” aforesaid. It should not be difficult to become a “pierrot.” You procure a silly suit of white linen clothes, of no particular fit, that might have been made for a person four times your own size, whiten your silly face, place on your idiotic head a foolish sugar-loaf white felt hat, and, with a garnish of red or black balls, according to fancy, there you are, plus a little native impudence, fully equipped. I do not love the old burnt-cork nigger minstrel more, I only dislike him less than this ostensibly French importation that is already so hackneyed; but I declare I could welcome the return of even _his_ extravagant figure, beery breath, and untutored banjo, by way of relief. But these are, doubtless, the views of an unreasonable recluse. They are not shared by the holiday crowds, nor by the ruling powers that control the destinies of Ilfracombe. Entertainers fill a “felt want,” felt very acutely by the class of people who most resort to the town in these days, and the governing body of the town develops it along these lines of least resistance. Only, as I stand, when darkness has fallen over the summer evening, a little aloof, and look down from some convenient height upon the garish lights and the blatant merriment, the black hills seem, to this observer, to frown reproachfully upon the scene, and the twinkling stars seem like so many bright tear-drops for the folly of it all. In short, the romantic natural setting of Ilfracombe is utterly unsuited to this sort of thing. One may deplore, yet not resent, it at Yarmouth or at Blackpool, where Nature is at her tamest, but found amid the bold rocks and frowning cliffs of North Devon, one does both. Nor is there any easy escape anywhere within the town. The brilliantly-lighted Pavilion glitters across the lawns, under the Capstone Hill, and across the intervening space you dimly see, maybe, a jigging figure within, executing a clog-dance. You may even hear the clatter of his clogs, drowned at last in a very hurricane of applause. If you remain, you must, perforce, listen to the celebration of mysterious sprees, in this wise: (_Confidentially_) “I went out on the tiddly-hi. Oh, fie! On the sly! I came home with a head; I put me boots in the bed An’ slep’ on the mat instead; Yus (_proudly_) I’d bin out on the tiddly-iddly, twiddly, fiddly, hi, hi, HI. (_Crescendo_).