he rough and rude old pier has
given place to one better adapted to the wants and requirements of an
increasingly well-to-do community. Far more Dutch than English was the
Yarmouth of half a century ago, I again say.

As to the Yarmouth Independent parson, I shall never forget him. He was
a very big man, with great red cheeks that hung over his collar like
blown bladders, and was always on stilts. He preached in a big
meeting-house, now no more, the pillars of which intercepted alike the
view and the sound. One winter evening he was holding forth, in his
usual heavy style, to a few good people--with whom, evidently, all
pleasure was out of the question--who came there, as in duty bound, and
sat like martyrs all the while, and all were as grave as the preacher,
when a wicked boy rushed in and, in a hurried manner, called out, 'Fire!
fire!' The effect, I am told, was electrical. For once the good parson
was in a hurry, and moved as quickly and spoke as rapidly as his fellows;
but never had there been so much excitement in his chapel since he had
been its pastor. Once, I remember, he came to town, and dropped in at
the close of a party rather convivially inclined, in the Old London
Coffee House. As the reverend gentleman advanced to greet his friends, a
London lawyer, with all the impudence of his class, muttered, in a
whisper intended to be heard, and which was heard, by everyone, 'Yarmouth
bloater.' The good man said nothing, but it was evident he thought all
the more, as the group were more or less tittering over the fitness of
the comparison. The lawyer who made the remark was also the son of a
London minister, and, therefore, might have been expected to have known
better. I fear the Yarmouth minister never forgave him. Well, it only
served him right, as he had a horrible way of making young people very
uncomfortable. 'Well, Master James,' said he to me on one occasion, when
all the brethren had come to dine at Wrentham, and when I was admitted,
in conformity with the golden maxim in all well-regulated family circles,
that little children were to be seen and not heard (perhaps in our day
the fault is too much in an opposite direction), 'can you inform me which
is the more proper form of expression--a pair of new gloves, or a new
pair of gloves?' Of course I gave the wrong answer, as I blushed up to
the ears at finding myself the smallest personage in the room, publicly
appealed to by the biggest. He meant