ty years ago. For small wages these Dissenting ministers did a noble
work, in the way of preserving morals, extending education, promoting
religion, and elevating the aim and tone of |the little community in
which they lived, and moved, and had their being. At home the
difficulties of such of them as had large families were immense. The
pocket was light, and too often there was but little in the larder. But
they laboured on through good and bad report, and now they have their
reward. Perhaps one of their failings was that they kept too much the
latter end in view, and were too indifferent to present needs and
requirements. They did not try to make the best of both worlds. I can
never forget a remark addressed to me by all the good men of the class
with whom I was familiar in my childhood as to the need of getting on in
life and earning an honest penny, and becoming independent in a pecuniary
point of view. I was to be a good boy, to love the Lord, to study the
Assembly's Catechism, to read the Bible, as if outside the village there
was no struggle into which sooner or later I should have to plunge--no
hard battle with the world to fight, no temporal victory to win.

CHAPTER III
LOWESTOFT.

Yarmouth bloaters--George Borrow--The town fifty years ago--The
distinguished natives.

'I'm a-thinking you'll be wanting half a pint of beer by this time, won't
you?'

Such were the first words I heard as I left the hotel where I was a
temporary sojourner about nine o'clock. Of course I turned to look at
the speaker. He wore an oilskin cap, with a great flap hanging over the
back of the neck; his oilskin middle was encased in a thick blue
guernsey; his trousers were hidden in heavy jack-boots, which came up
above his knees; his face was red, and his body was almost as round as
that of a porpoise. When I add that the party addressed was similarly
adorned and was of a similar build, the reader will guess at once that I
was amongst a seafaring community, and let me add that this supposition
is correct. I was, in fact, at Lowestoft, and Lowestoft just now is,
with Yarmouth, the headquarters of the herring fishery. The truth is, as
the poet tells us, 'Things are not what they seem,' and that many of the
Yarmouth bloaters which we are in the habit of indulging in at breakfast
in reality come from Lowestoft.

It is worth going from London at the season of the year when the finest
bloaters are being caught, to real