“When you’ve bin out on the tiddly-hi. Oh, my! (You try!) You feel confoundedly cheap, and dry. ‘You’ve bin on the bend,’ the guv’nor said, ‘_You’ve_ bin painting it red.’ _I’d_ bin wanting a rise, But ’_e_ giv me a nasty surprise;-- For (_dolefully, dimuendo_) I got the push instead; An’ _that’s_ the result of goin’ out-on-the-blooming-- tiddly, iddly (_but, with returning confidence, fortissimo_) HI, TI-HI.” But, wearying for local colour, rather than for more of this sort of thing, which, after all, is done very much better in the London music-halls, you resort to the harbour. There indeed--if anywhere--you look for something characteristically Devonian. But even there the streets are brilliant till late at night with dining-rooms and the like--merciful powers, how every one must eat and drink at Ilfracombe--and the fishermen, if the samples heard by the present auditor are representative, are pre-eminently the foulest-mouthed to be found on many a varied coast-line. I know not what the quiet holiday-maker may find to do at night at Ilfracombe. He may, at any rate, go to bed, but even there he is pursued by sounds of revelry. He undresses to the refrain of tiddly-iddly, diddy-dum-dey, or something equally intellectual, and his first dreams mingle with the distant, but distinctly audible, “I ’eard the pitter-patter of ’er feet, Oh, so neat! Pitter-patter on the pyvement of the street. On ’er fyce I tried to look, An’--good grycious, ’twas the cook!”-- And thus, in the Cockney celebration of mean intrigue, the melody merges into the mesh of visions. What, indeed, shall the lonely visitor to Ilfracombe do with himself in the evenings? He may wander around the walks of the Capstone Parade or the Tors, and feel himself reduced to a singular loneliness amid the amorous couples who there most do congregate; or feel not less lonely in exploring the endless “gardens,” “terraces,” and “crescents,” where every house is a boarding-house; or, in the finer flavour of euphonious avoidance of the commonplace truth, “an establishment for the reception of visitors.” There, alas! he feels himself lonely indeed, as, passing the endless array of lighted rooms with open windows, he sees the holiday-making families assembled.