might peep at pictures of naked beauty-for this was the bait upon the sign-, although the pictures were neither naked nor beautiful. The little movie ended, as you turned the crank, just at the absorbing moment beside the tub when the lady still buttoned lifted up her foot. But at Hastings a maid is prodigal enough if she bares her beauty to the moon; nor would a jolt upon the crank dislodge a scandalous sequel.

And all the world is eager to know its weight, lest sugar tarts catch them unawares. A chair hangs upon a beam with compensating bars of metal which are thrown in a trough behind until the contrivance hangs even. A placard announces that these scales were used at the Derby for weighing ponies or jockies, perhaps, for there would have been trouble in stuffing ponies in the chair. An expert stands ready to clasp a lady's arm or jest about her leg. He then proclaims his guess to the grinning crowd, with money refunded if the estimate is wrong.

An oriental personage who chews gum sells tickets to a booth inside of which there reposes a Princess of Siam, announced as traveling now in England on a holiday, who has consented to be seen for a contemptible sixpence only. "Ladies and Gentlemen, step this way! The chance of a lifetime! A Princess of Siam! Queen of the Emperor's Harem!" Beezer went in to see her, as he said it would help him in his geography.

Then comes a turnstile where payment is made to gain the outer promenade and theater. Against the railing of this promenade are chairs and benches and, although one might think that the advantage of the

place was an uninterrupted view of the ocean surf, all of these benches turn their backs upon the water and give their whole attention to the moving cockney throng. Fishing rods may be hired by those who have the inclination, and a line of silent folk leaned on the outer rail with a dark discouraged eye upon the unfruitful sea.

This picture of Hastings stands, I think, for most of the popular watering resorts of England and Wales. I have tried the Isle of Thanet, which is the grossest of all, Brighton, two or three places in Wales and on the eastern coast; and the British sands always reveal the crudity of those thousands who infest them in the summer months. Eastbourne is better. Cromer is not bad, although I saw it when a raw day drove the crowds indoors. Lyme Regis I like, and most of the pebbly sands of Devon and Cornwall which are too far from London to draw a week-end throng. These resorts, too, possess cliffs; and high rocks temper vulgarity.

"Well," said Bill, "that's done. Get me out of this!" And now, having had our dinner ministered to us by the crooked waiter in the soiled shirt front, armed with the hotel key-for the door was to be locked at ten o'clock, we set out to the pier again to witness a performance called "The Poppies" to be given by a company of London favorites.

I have read considerable of Leonard Merrick, and many of his stories deal with actors who have failed to gain success in London's west end and have fallen step by step to these shows upon a pier. These are

tales beneath whose grinning surface there lies a depth of tragedy of ambition broken and disillusionment, of hunger and illness, of kindness, too, and charity toward those who need it. Merrick himself must have shared this life to know it with such sympathy and understanding.

I recall that Conrad once fell in with a company like this in the quest of his youth. The town was Blithepoint, which perhaps was Brighton. "Before the footlights," he wrote, "two comic men were bawling a duet; I knew they were comic because they had made their faces so repulsive. . . ." And then a lady sang "What is the use of loving a girl

When you know she don't want yer to?"

And this show at Hastings, but cheaper still, was of the kind that he weaves inside his plots. There was a voice or two that had been of promise once, now coarsened by misuse; an actress whose face had been pretty in her youth and, even as she screeched and capered, there was a remnant of former daintiness that heightened the pathos of her antics; a comedian who could not quite conceal a cough beneath a ribald speech; a pianist who thumped at William Tell with a callous thumb that slid down the white keys because her fingers did not have the agility to make an honest run. The audience was moved to bursts of hilarity, but under the painted surface and the empty gesture disillusionment lay apparent, days perhaps of hunger.

We debated at the close whether we would not step around to the stage entrance and invite the company

out to supper. Did not Conrad order a châteaubriand and pommes soufflées for two ladies of the Kiss-and-Tell company when it went upon the rocks at Blithepoint? But Conrad sought his youth, and mine was over seas. We stood indecisively at the stage door, then turned away.

And now a rainstorm burst upon us and we pelted to St. Leonards-three men under one umbrella, with trickles of water inside the outside collars.

A dance was in progress at our hotel, the kind of dance one expects of purple turbans; and, as we waited for sleep to descend on us, there arose from the dining room below the sound of a saxophone I Want to be Happy- and so we drifted off.

I thought I missed Gwendoline from the pasture

CHAPTER XIII

T had been our intention to walk to Pevensey

I

through Battle Abbey, but laziness cast a vote at

breakfast for the direct road along the coast. Such idleness is usual to cool a hot decision. In the winter, when you meditate upon a map with wind in the chimney, you feel a vast energy at leaping hills and a journey is planned with detour and wayward course.

Miles are easy to the slippered feet that sit at home. A morning's toil is but a space across the palm, and valleys are bridged with the tracing of a finger. The brain runs free without a load and pounds with strength merely because its gears have not been shifted to the legs. On a winter night a man in smoking jacket runs at lions. Only in dreams do we tread lightly the exult