r; but Miss Whiffle
confirmed the blight. I had fled from the jangle of a city, and the
worries incidental to a life of threepenny sociabilities; and the result
was--

I had rooms on the Parade--a suggestive mouthful. But then the Parade is
such a modest little affair. The town itself is flung down a steep hill,
at the mouth of a verdurous gorge; and lies pitched so far as the very
waterside, a picturesque jumble of wall and roof. Its banked edges
bristle and stand up in the bight of a vaster bay, with a crooked
breakwater, like a bent finger, beckoning passing sails to its
harbourage--an invitation which most are coy of accepting. For the
attractions of King's Cobb are--comparatively--limited, and its nearest
station is a full six miles distant along a switchback road.

Possibly this last fact may have militated against the popularity of
King's Cobb as a holiday resort. If so, all the better; and may
enterprise for ever languish in the matter. For vulgarity can claim
no commoner purpose with fashion than is shown in that destruction of
ancient landmarks and double gilding of new which follows the "opening
out" of some unsophisticated colony of simple souls.

King's Cobb, if "remote and unfriended," is neither "melancholy" nor
"slow"; but it is small, and all its fine little history--for it has had
a stirring one--has ruffled itself out on a liliputian platform.

Than this, its insignificance, I desired nothing better. I wished to feel
the comparative importance of the individual, which one cannot do in
crowded colonies. I coveted surroundings that should be primitive--an
atmosphere in which my thoughts could speak to me coherent. I would be
as one in a cave, looking forth on sea, and sky, and the buoyant glory of
Nature; unvexed of conventions; untrammelled by social observances;
building up my enchanted palace of the imagination against such a
background as only the unsullied majesty of sky and ocean could present.
For the result was to crown with my name an epoch in literature; and
hither in future ages should the pilgrim stand at gaze, murmuring to
himself, 'And here he wrote it!'

I laid my head on my pillow, that first night of my stay, with a brimming
brain and a heart of high resolve. The two little windows, under a
thatched roof, of my sleeping place (_that_ lay over my sitting-room, and
both looked oceanwards) were open to the inpour of sweet hot air; and
only the regular wash of the sea below broke the c