ng its living in deep-keeled boats, it
perforce took to smuggling, a business in which this old watch-tower
played a prominent part.

This is a special though neglected bit of house architecture in
Hythe. But everywhere, save in the quarters by the railway station
or the Parade, where new residences are beginning to spring up, the
eye is charmed by old brown houses roofed with red tiles, often
standing tree-shaded in a bountiful flower garden, and always
preserving their own lines of frontage and their own angle of gable,
with delightful indifference to the geometric scale of their
neighbour.

The South-Eastern Railway Company have laid their iron hand on
Hythe, and its old-world stillness is already on Bank Holidays and
other bleak periods of the passing year broken by the babble of
the excursionist. In its characteristically quiet way Hythe has
long been known as what is called a watering-place. When I first
knew it, it had a Parade, on which were built eight or ten houses,
whither in the season came quiet families, with children and
nurses. For a few weeks they gave to the sea frontage quite a
lively appearance, which the mariners (when they were not manning
the capstan) contemplated with complacency, and said to each other
that Hythe was "looking up." For the convenience of these visitors
some enterprising person embarked on the purchase of three bathing
machines, and there are traditions of times when these were all in
use at the same hour--so great was the influx of visitors.

Also there is a "bathing establishment" built a long way after
the model of the Pavilion at Brighton. The peculiarity of this
bathing establishment is or was when I first knew the charming
place that regularly at the end of September the pump gets out of
order, and the new year is far advanced before the solitary plumber
of the place gets it put right. He begins to walk dreamily round
the place at Easter. At Whitsuntide he brings down an iron vessel
containing unmelted solder, and early in July the pump is mended.

This mending of the pump is one of the epochs of Hythe, a sure
harbinger of the approaching season. In July "The Families" begin
to come down, and the same people come every year, for visitors to
Hythe share in the privilege of the inhabitants, inasmuch as they
never--or hardly ever--die. Of late years, since the indefatigable
Town Clerk has succeeded in waking up the inhabitants to the
possibilities of the great future that