Place. You have no idea how they take it to
heart.

We have a pier—a queer old wooden pier,
fortunately without the slightest pretensions
to architecture, and very picturesque in
consequence. Boats are hauled up upon it, ropes
are coiled all over it; lobster-pots, nets, masts,
oars, spars, sails, ballast, and rickety capstans,
make a perfect labyrinth of it. For ever
hovering about this pier, with their hands in
their pockets, or leaning over the rough bulwark
it opposes to the sea, gazing through
telescopes which they carry about in the same
profound receptacles, are the Boatmen of our
Watering Place. Looking at them, you would
say that surely these must be the laziest
boatmen in the world. They lounge about,
in obstinate and inflexible pantaloons that
are apparently made of wood, the whole
season through. Whether talking together
about the shipping in the Channel, or gruffly
unbending over mugs of beer at the public-house,
you would consider them the slowest
of men. The chances are a thousand to one
that you might stay here for ten seasons, and
never see a boatman in a hurry. A certain
expression about his loose hands, when they
are not in his pockets, as if he were carrying
a considerable lump of iron in each, without
any inconvenience, suggests strength, but he
never seems to use it. He has the appearance
of perpetually strolling—running is too
inappropriate a word to be thought of—to seed.
The only subject on which he seems to feel
any approach to enthusiasm, is pitch. He
pitches everything he can lay hold of, the
pier, the palings, his boat, his house—
when there is nothing else left he turns to
and even pitches his hat, or his rough-weather
clothing. Do not judge him by deceitful
appearances. These are among the bravest
and most skilful mariners that exist. Let a
gale arise and swell into a storm, let a sea
run that might appal the stoutest heart that
ever beat, let the Light-boat on these dangerous
sands throw up a rocket in the night, or let
them hear through the angry roar the signal-guns
of a ship in distress, and these men
spring up into activity so dauntless, so valiant,
and heroic, that the world cannot surpass it.
Cavillers may object that they chiefly live
upon the salvage of valuable cargoes. So they
do, and God knows it is no great living that
they get, out of the deadly risks they run.
But put that hope of gain aside. Let these
rough fellows be asked, in any storm, who
volunteers for the Life-Boat to save some perishing
souls, as poor and empty-handed as themselves,
whose lives the perfection of human
reason does not rate at the value of a farthing
each; and that boat will be manned, as surely
and as cheerfully, as if a thousand pounds
were told down on the weather-beaten pier.
For this, and for the recollection of their comrades
whom we have known, whom the raging
sea has engulfed before their children's eyes
in such brave efforts, whom the secret sand has
buried, we hold the boatmen of our Watering
Place in our love and honor, and are tender
of the fame they well deserve.

So many children are brought down to our
Watering Place that, when they are not out of
doors, as they usually are in fine weather, it is
wonderful where they are put: the whole
village seeming much too small to hold them
under cover. In the afternoons, you see no
end of salt and sandy little boots drying on
upper window-sills. At bathing-time in the
morning, the little bay re-echoes with every
shrill variety of shriek and splash—after
which, if the weather be at all fresh, the sands
teem with small blue mottled legs. The sands
are the children's great resort. They cluster
there, like ants: so busy burying their particular
friends, and making castles with infinite
labor which the next tide overthrows,
that it is curious to consider how their play,
to the music of the sea, foreshadows the
realities of their after lives.

It is curious, too, to observe a natural ease
of approach that there seems to be between
the children and the boatmen. They mutually
make acquaintance, and take individual
likings, without any help. You will come
upon one of those slow heavy fellows sitting
down patiently mending a little ship for a
mite of a boy, whom he could crush to death
by throwing his lightest pair of trousers on
him. You will be sensible of the oddest
contrast between the smooth little creature,
and the rough man who seems to be carved
out of hard-grained wood—between the
delicate hand expectantly held out, and the
immense thumb and finger that can hardly
feel the rigging of thread they mend—between
the small voice, and the gruff growl—and yet
there is a natural propriety in the companionship:
always to be noted in confidence between
a child, and a person who has any merit of
reality and genuineness: which is admirably
pleasant.

We have a Preventive Station at our
Watering Place, and much the same thing
may be observed—in a lesser degree, because
of their official character—of the Coast
Blockade; a steady, trusty, well-conditioned,
well-conducted set of men, with no misgiving
about looking you full in the face, and with a
quiet thorough-going way of passing along to
their duty at night, carrying huge Sou-Wester
clothing in reserve, that is fraught with all
good prepossession. They are handy fellows—
neat about their houses—industrious at gardening
—would get on with their wives, one thinks,
in a desert island—and people it, too, soon.

As to the Naval Officer of the station, with
his hearty fresh face, and his blue eye that has
pierced all kinds of weather, it warms our
hearts when he comes into church on a Sunday,
with that bright mixture of blue coat,
buff waistcoat, black neck-kerchief, and gold
epaulette, that is associated in the minds of all
Englishmen with brave, unpretending, cordial,
national service. We like to look at him in