Harry Jones

“ True, the gems are opaque in the morning—not to say gritty—and will probably be found by the next comer to the lodgings in the drawer of the dressing-table; but they have rubbed a human mind as well as one another. They have perhaps made some crafty soul childlike for a day. Childlike! Give me either science or simplicity. Either a seeing eye, which, however ignorant of geological details, recognises the progress of the world as it rests on a cliff; or the eye which loves the cliff, without a reason indeed, though none the less for that—perhaps the more. ”

“ You can’t throw stones into it; you can’t get your feet wet; you behold it from afar, like a goat: and that is all, unless you repair to some small patch of beach, monopolised by a bathing machine.
Not that patches of beach are bad; give me a shore with hidden little bays, where you may wander alone if you like, and then go back to the beauty and fashion on the promenade. Nothing is worse than one public walk, where you cannot get away from people, and where a conspicuous figure, say some staring snob, with a white hat in half-mourning, meets you on every tack ”

“ Perhaps, while I am peopling a flat valley with ancient monsters, smacking the slime with their great tails, gobbling, sleeping, snorting, fighting—while I hear the shriek and the rustle of strange birds in the air, but see the same blessed sun above our heads, the same harvest moon, though rising on the unreaped earth—while I am thus out of date, or may be picturing to myself the naked battle around the barrows on the windy downs, my friend with the book shouts to me that he thinks he has found a Coleopterum ridiculosum in the shingle. ”

“ The touch of the sheets suggest that we are unclothed, in fact, they are the only remaining test of the outer world. We move about in our dreams, and the bed-clothes hint that our own are put off.
I will not, however, dwell over our sleeping dreams; but I must say, by the way, that I pity the man who does not know when he is “dropping off.” The consciousness of standing on the threshold of sleep when you are at liberty to indulge in it, is delicious. You are awake and not awake. The dream god has his hand upon you, though he has not yet led you away. ”

“ By the sea-side, however, as everywhere else, those only enjoy themselves as they might who dare seek recreation as the innocent whim may lead them; who defy the dressiness of the prigs and puppies, in easy clothing and old shoes indoors and out; who are not ashamed to roll or lounge on the shingle, unattracted by the band and the esplanade; who, having come to rest, idle wisely, with perpetual acted protest against the fuss of affected science and fashionable propriety. ”

“ Other towns in these parts have, it is true, some lamps hung in the middle of the streets with cord at rare intervals, but Dinan is left at night as dark as an old coal-mine, or London in the time of the Saxons. There are a good many beggars in the place; they look wretched enough, and have not the professional power of their class in London. Indeed, the beggars here are frequently very destitute, and a few sous may be charitably bestowed upon them. There is no poor-law in France. A lone and needy man, past his work, must beg or die. ”

“ Did the men who have the greatest influence in Parliament and literature learn it all of philosophers in their boyhood? Pooh! Great men have been their own masters. They have generally learnt much more from the toes than the heads of society. Skill in interpreting the complaints of the small, ears to hear, and sense to understand them, give political power more than the wise sentences and maxims of the great. There is no short cut to be made to statesmanship by living in the society of the rulers alone. ”

“ He flies off, when it is all over, in conceited ignorance of the science whose machinery he has grasped for a minute.
If the student must have an analysis, let him make it himself. An epitome is tolerable only for a grown-up man, whose education has been fragmentary,—who has got together a good many facts and gained experience of the world, but wants some pegs in the storehouse of his memory to hang his goods upon. But to a boy, it is like supplying a larder with nothing but pegs. ”

“ The vulgarity and licence of an English mob is one of the great safeguards of the nation. It feels that it need not be hurtful if it may have its say. Indeed, it cannot well do much harm. There is seldom severe biting when barking is freely allowed. The English crowd has no glut of grievances for a revolution, or even a respectable émeute. It lets its steam off too fast. It never meets without being rude. ”

“ I don’t know which is best, shingle or sand. There is something in the freshness of the flat hard beach, which no rolled gravel or concrete can approach, though the sea break at your feet. There is a grateful sense of escape from the dull road, where your own footprints are the first upon the shore. It seems as if you were a discoverer; you are severed from the world of men ”

“ Then shingle is clean: you do not rise as gritty as if you had been knocked down on a turnpike-road. Moreover, you are lulled by the delicious drawl of the retiring wave, to me inexpressibly soothing. But you can’t walk upon shingle—not, at least, without great fatigue. On the whole, though, I think it is better than sand, as you can always get exercise on firm ground further ashore, if you want it, whereas nothing but shingle gives the seat and couch. In my tramp around the coast I confess to great disappointment at some of the most famous watering places. ”

“ A man who bursts into the mysterious land, like a mad bull through a hedge, with a snore for a bellow, deserves to have a nightmare let loose at him, and be ridden out of the place of dreams with a shriek. Mind, I don’t mean to advocate a passage to sleep which has to be assisted by mental arithmetic, the conception of a windmill, or the fixing of the mind’s eye upon some endless procession of sheep. This is distressing. No, given a natural proclivity, let me neither fall headlong from day to night, nor attempt to help the busy ministers of dreamland. ”

“ Everything is done, and must be done, with true conservative pains: no princely patronage can quicken the pace or the thought of the workers.
But all at once some mighty mind makes a short cut; invents a steam engine, say, and the whole nation, prince and all, masters and scholars, tutors and taught, follow in the wake of the new guide. ”

“ A grin, a wink, will turn a mob, if delivered at some happy pause; but woe betide the man who loses his temper, or attempts to argue with such an audience. It is bad enough to be proved wrong when you are alone, and have to think of the consequences of a rejoinder, but when you are lost in a crowd, and are only “a voice,” conviction is intolerable. ”

“ The first thrill in the pot must be horrible, but it is soon over. Whereas a slow death in an aquarium, with great eyes looking at you and offering quantities of unsuitable food, together with the puzzling resistance of the glass, like the mysterious detention of a dream, must altogether make the last hours of a “specimen” hideous. It must be as bad as dying of nightmare. ”

“ There are many other false short cuts. The most deceptive of all is an inherited good fortune or position in society. Don’t suppose I am going to jest at these things; they carry genuine influence, and are supposed by many to introduce the possessor at once to legislative and political power. They facilitate intercourse with the wit and wisdom of the country. Much of what others, little people, learn by books, these, fortunately born, acquire in the daily society of their lives. They mix with philosophers, statesmen, and lions. But do the noblest beasts themselves thus grow to be famous? ”

“ Now your busy man, or rather your man who really works hard in his profession, will, if he be wise and brave, leave the wonders of the seashore alone when he comes to rest. Lying on the rounded shingle, he lets his mind uncoil and gather unconsciously suppleness and strength ”

“ There is a deal of truth in mob law, and those who are shocked at the mere mention of it are respectable outsiders. But suppose you belong to the mob yourself (and mobs are made of men, women, and children) , how then? Is there no wholesome gratification in the thought that you, addressed in the riot act, dispersed, moved on, &c., &c., have yet after all a quick rough sense of justice. Yes, you don’t want disorder, but only protest against some passing abuse or petty police encroachment. The licence of our English mobs is most useful in resisting this last. ”

“ London beggars, and the like, as I have hinted, are generally bad. You must have noticed that they are very seldom old or thin, but lusty tramps, no doubt with a capital pulse in their veins, and a kettle of rich stew on the hob at home. These rob the poor more than the rich, and I am sure that the habitual copper-giver, who buys selfish blessings from their profane lips, does thereby far more harm than good to his race. ”

“ I can’t conceive a more unhappy, inappropriate fortune befalling any animal. I wonder whether they derive any malicious satisfaction from the consciousness of being goats, and that a ride behind them must displace even the fresh smell of the sea. ”

“ You can’t cook a dream. The skilful speaker can count, with tolerable certainty, upon producing an impression something like that which he wishes upon the waking mind; but, when we sleep, we move out of the reach of his persuasive machinery. ”

“ You feel his magic presence, and the gentle dissolution of your waking thoughts under his touch. To you it is a private setting of the day. The sun goes his own road and at his own time, but you sink in a twilight of your own. ”

“ The bathing at many of our watering-places is anything but this last. Perhaps it is more outrageous at Margate than elsewhere. The first time I saw it I was reminded of some old picture of the landing of the Romans, when the beach was lined with naked natives, half in and half out of the water. There is, moreover, something inexpressibly dismal in the unrobing within a machine, in the flapping of the spray at the outer door, and the shivering station on the gritty ladder, before the leap. ”

“ The most frequently remarked characteristic of dreams is the long series of incidents which are got through in a short time. We do a deliberate dream in several acts, and find we have been asleep for only five minutes. But this is one of the most easily explained phenomena. In dreams we lose our measure of time; while awake we are called to a sense of its passage by the sun, the clock, the appetite, the routine of the day ”

“ Now, I mean to say that this day-dreaming is sometimes desirable and healthy. We thus occasionally come across thoughts which we should never start by deliberate hunting. We air the mind; we get out of the little world in which we commonly move, and go back to it refreshed.
Day-dreaming is all very well, now and then, on a holiday; but a woman who gushes with moonshine and romance is seldom a good judge of butcher’s meat, or a skilful interpreter of accounts ”

“ I pity the man who tumbles into his bed and sprawls away into a dream before the bed-curtains have done swinging at the shock of his plunge. No, it is better far to wait a minute at the palace-gate and let the proper ministers close your eyes and carry you in with irresistible but kindly touch. ”

“ When a young queen-bee is ready to leave a hive, followed by a swarm, scouts are sent out to search for a proper place for her to settle on, or for a suitable abode. Another is, for a certain number of bees to rush out of the hive after the queen that leads forth the swarm, and to follow her wherever she goes. It is an unexplained fact how these are selected, for they are not all young bees. It seems as though a colony formed entirely of youngsters can hardly be trusted among bees, any more than with us. In order to prosper they must have some old heads among them. ”

“ I hold it as certain, that there is a royal road to most ends, if the traveller be a born king. Every successful short cut is made by a regal mind. Some object has been hitherto approached only by tedious pains. ”

“ There is nothing more calm than the repose of a fireman. But a breathless householder, with a mob of little boys at his heels, comes round the corner. In two minutes our friend is driving fourteen miles an hour against the stream of Regent Street, like a flash of brass and red paint. ”

“ Of course you can’t sit on rocks where there are none, nor dig with wooden spades on granite; but there were some features peculiar to sea-side life which connected every watering-place, such as donkeys, white bathing machines, telescopes, mimic nautical phraseology, thumbed novels, and aimless interest in the reflexion of the moon on the water. ”

“ SHORT CUTS.
Did you ever know a path across a level field to be straight, when formed by the feet of wayfarers alone? There is the opposite stile which you seek, there is nothing to turn you to the right hand or to the left, but your own swerving fancy; and that makes the field-path crooked, invariably. It seems as if no one could walk straight alone, nor indeed correct himself, once for all, when wrong. The moment he becomes conscious of a deviation from the true track, he leaves it again in the other direction. ”