intimate identification with one of the most
permanently popular books in the English
language.

               FRESH AT FRESHWATER.

MY reason for putting the following plain
statement on paper is a very simple one. I wish
to enter a protest against what appears to me to
be one of the specially crying evils of the day. It
seems to me, then, that anybody who chooses is
allowed to hold out — in programmes, advertisements,
and the like — delusive hopes to his
fellow-creatures, making, on paper, all sorts of
promises to the public which are never to be fulfilled,
as nobody knows better than the promise-maker
himself. Why, to take an instance, are people
allowed to talk to me through the advertising
columns of the newspapers about "Painless
Dentistry" or "luxuriant crops of hair and
whisker"? Is that dentistry painless? Can
any dentistry be painless? It is surely not
right to talk about painless dentistry, any more
than it is to vaunt in print the virtues of that
peculiar specific by the use of which it is alleged
that the luxuriant whiskers can be induced to
sprout. Ask my younger brother? I know
something of what ambitious views in the matter of
whisker have cost him, and I also know that, up
to this very hour, he has never gained so much as
a single hair by all his reckless expenditure.

But it is not upon the subject of advertisements
—newspaper advertisements, that is—that
I propose, just now, to enlarge. My attention
has been called to this system of delusive
promise-making, of which I complain, not exactly
by an advertisement, using the word in its most
ordinary acceptation, but rather by a little local
programme, printed on a card, and widely circulated
in the small watering-place of Freshwater,
where I have been recently staying.

If the reader proposes to go and reside for a
few weeks at this village of Freshwater, in the
Isle of Wight, I should be sorry to say
anything that might deter him from doing so, but
still I must admit that it is a place of few
resources. You can walk along the downs,
certainly, to Alum Bay, or you can retire up the
country and please yourself among the lanes
with their farm-houses covered with myrtle and
fuchsias. There is a coach, again, which runs
twice a day to Yarmouth and back, a distance
of about four miles; you can go to Yarmouth
by that coach, it is certain, but what then?
There is nothing to be done at Yarmouth when
you get there. If you want to vegetate for a
while — and it is good to do so sometimes —
Freshwater is the right place for the purpose; but
when you have vegetated enough, and begin to
stand in need of a little excitement, then are you
apt to find that Freshwater is decidedly the
wrong place.

I did not always think this. For one brief
period, during my stay in this small settlement,
I was under the impression that I had chanced
upon a corner of the world so rich beyond all
others in natural wonders and phenomena, that
those who visited it could never feel inclined to
complain of its being deficient to a certain point
in those more ordinary sources of amusement
and excitement which we poor mortals are
usually apt to crave after. I will at once
acknowledge that I was led to this conclusion by
the document above alluded to, which came into
my hands quite accidentally, and which was, in
fact, to quote the card itself, "An Abstract of
the Beauties and Curiosities seen by Water
from Freshwater Bay to Alum Bay."

I subjoin the list of wonders:

1. Freshwater Cavern.

2. Watcombe Bay: a tall pyramidal rock;
and numerous romantic caverns.

3. Neptune's large Cave, two hundred feet
deep; small, ninety feet.

4. Bar Cave, ninety feet deep.

5. Highdown Cliffs, six hundred and seventeen
feet high.

6. Representation of a Lady sitting in the Cliff.

7. Frenchman's Hole, ninety feet deep.

8. Lord Holmes's Parlour and Kitchen.

9. Roe's Hall, six hundred feet high.

10. Old Pepper Rock.

11. Main Bench: principal nesting-place for
the birds called puffins, willocks, razor-birds,
cormorants, choughs, &c.

12. Preston's Bower.

13. Scratchell's Bay: cliffs celebrated for
their beautiful stratification, and a magnificent
recess, which presents the exact appearance of
a grand arch, awfully overhanging the beach
two hundred feet.

14. The Needles Cave, three hundred feet deep,

15. The five Needle Rocks and Alum Bay.

From the moment when this "Abstract" came
into my hands, a new life seemed to develop
itself within me. Shall I own that the old life was
flagging a little, that I was beginning to doubt
whether another week of Freshwater might not
prove too much for me? Frankly, then, it was
so. When the "Abstract" was handed to me
by the suicidally disposed person who keeps the
bazaar, I was just beginning to ask myself
whether there was anything besides a fractional
sacrifice of lodging-rent to hinder me from
leaving the place next day, nay, that very afternoon,
if I chose. I asked myself the question
in an indignant fashion, for I think that I had
begun to fall — it is one of the effects of certain
dull places on the human subject — into a state
of mental paralysis which made me feel that I
couldn't go away, however much I might wish it.

Such was the state of my feelings before
reading the "Abstract." But how rapid are the
changes to which our mental condition is liable.
By the time that I had read that list of "beauties
and curiosities," nay, by the time that I had
got to Number 6 in the list, "Representation
of a Lady sitting in the Cliff," I believe that no
earthly inducement could have persuaded me to
leave the place till I had done full justice to
every one of those natural phenomena, beginning
at Number 1, and ending at Number 15.

My impatience to begin was very great. I
wanted to go on the afternoon of the very day
which had brought me acquainted with the