f national evolution, and as regards
the things that really matter, the educated man has more to learn of
the poor man than to teach him. Even Nietzsche, the philosopher of
aristocracy, went so far as to say that _in the so-called cultured
classes, the believers in 'modern ideas,' nothing is perhaps so
repulsive as their lack of shame, the easy insolence of eye and hand
with which they touch, taste, and finger everything; and it is possible
that even yet there is more_ relative _nobility of taste, and more tact
for reverence among the people, among the lower classes of the people,
especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading_ demi-monde
_of intellect, the cultured class_.

S. R.

SEACOMBE, 1908.

_A POOR MAN'S HOUSE_

I

EGREMONT VILLAS,
SEACOMBE, _April_.

1

The sea is merely grinding against the shingle. The _Moondaisy_ lies
above the sea-wall, in the gutter, with her bottom-boards out and a
puddle of greenish water covering her garboard strake. Her hunchbacked
Little Commodore is dead. The other two of her old crew, George Widger
and Looby Smith are nowhere to be seen: they must be nearly grown up
by now. The fishermen themselves appear less picturesque and salty
than they used to do. It is slack time after a bad herring season.
They are dispirited and lazy, and very likely hungry.

These old lodgings of mine, with their smug curtains, aspidestria
plant, china vases and wobbly tables and chairs....

But I can hear the sea-gulls screaming, even here.

2

[Sidenote: _GEORGE GONE TO SEA_]

Yesterday morning I met young George Widger, now grown very lanky but
still cat-like in his movements. He was parading the town with a couple
of his mates, attired in a creased blue suit with a wonderful yellow
scarf around his neck, instead of the faded guernsey and ragged
sea-soaked trousers in which he used to come to sea. What was up? I
asked his father, and Tony had a long rigmarole to tell me. George had
got a sweetheart. Therefore George had begun to look about him for a
sure livelihood. George was not satisfied with a fisherman's prospects.
"Yu works and drives and slaves, and don't never get no forarder." So
George had gone to the chief officer of coastguards without saying a
word to his father and had been found fit. George had joined the Navy.
He was going off to Plymouth tha