There are winding walks as I have said, down to Babbacombe, but for all their circumbendability (what a lovely word that is!) they are so steep that by far the easiest way to descend would be to get down on to your hinder parts, and slide. To those who are not so young as they were, the view down upon the beach of Babbacombe, and upon the roof-tops of its few houses is the better part, for the walking down jolts the internal machinery most confoundedly. Why, there are few more pitiful sights on this earth—which we know, on eminent authority, to be a “wale”—than that of a middle-aged _and_ stout gentleman gingerly descending these walks, and sighing with envy as a troop of children dash, whooping, past him. _Their_ actions have not yet begun to be regulated by their digestive apparatus! But for all that indiarubber-like infantile irrepressibility, I have seen a little childish disaster here. It was a fall and a bruise and a scratched face that meant little, after all; but the howls of that child were worthy of an occasion infinitely more tragical. It were not worth dwelling upon, except that it opened out some rustic Devon talk, when a son of the soil set that injured innocent upon his feet again and said: “Well done! My eymers: ’av ’ee valled down?” [Illustration: BABBACOMBE.] With so much sympathy on tap, my young martyr began to pity himself infinitely, and sobbed the more. “Did ’ur, then?” said that kindly comforter: “puir liddle bye, puir liddle bleed. You ’m proper ’urted yo’self, have ’ee. Where’s his mammy, then? Where do ’ee live tu? Coom ’ee up-along an’ zittee on this zeat,” and much else. The neighbourhood of these exploited seaside towns are, however, not the places, as a general rule, in which to look for such fine survivals of old Devon talk. The villages and the hamlets are the last homes of it, and, generally speaking, the only times when an indweller hears the Doric is when a servant, fresh-caught from “Dartymoor” or other remote district, comes into residence. Then, indeed, one hears strange phrases. _Then_ you learn, if you did not know it before, that in Devon all girls are “maads” and all boys “byes,” large or small; or I should say, in the Devon tongue, “gert” or “liddle.” In Devon most things that are thorough, or difficult, or to be expressed in terms of bigness or admiration are “proper,” and this expression, among some others, is not, like much else of the rustic talk, obsolescent. It is, indeed, common in towns, and seems, like the Devonian soft burring inflection, to be, after a period of disuse, coming back again.