trying to see things and depict them
the most exciting form of sport? I am sure it is as interesting; and
that more skill and quickness of hand and eye is required to catch with
brush or pen point a flying impression from a cab window or the train
than in potting stripes in a jungle.

Look you--this I call sport! To catch this nocturne in the train, the
exact tint of the blue-black night, framed in the window of our lamp-lit
carriage; or the soft night effect on field and cliff and sea as we
pass. No academical pot shot this, for we are swinging south down the
east coast past Cockburnspath (Coppath, the natives call it) at sixty
miles the hour, so we must be quick to get any part of the night firmly
impressed. There is faint moonlight through low clouds (the night for
flighting duck), the land blurred, and you can hardly see the farmer's
handiwork on the stubbles; there are trees and a homestead massed in
shadow, with a lamp-lit window, lemon yellow against the calm
lead-coloured sea, and a soft broad band of white shows straight down
the coast where the surf tumbles, each breaker catches a touch of
silvery moonlight. The foam looks soft as wool, but I know two nights
ago, an iron ship was torn to bits on the red rocks it covers.... I must
get this down in colour to-morrow in my attic under the tiles of the
Coburg. Who knows--some day it may be worth a tiger's skin (with the
frame included).... There is the light now on the Farnes, and Holy
Island we can dimly make out.

To the right we look to see if the bison at Haggerston are showing their
great heads above the low mists on the fields.... The night is cold,
there is the first touch of winter in the air. It is time to knock out
my pipe and turn in, to dream of India's coral strand, as we roll away
south across the level fields of England.

[Illustration: A Glimpse of the North Sea]

In London town we arrive very early; an early Sunday morning in
autumn in the East of London is not the most delightful time to be
there. It is smelly and sordid, and the streets are almost empty of
people, but I notice two tall young men in rags, beating up either side
of a street, their hands deep in their pockets as if they were cold;
they are looking for cigarette ends, I expect, and scraps of food; and
we are driving along very comfortably to our hotel and breakfast. An
hour or two later we are in the park at church-parade; a little pale sun
comes through the smoky air, and a chil