hamlet.

The entire premises were surrounded, so to speak, by a cordon of flies. Once within the circle, an overpowering odor of raw sugar infected the atmosphere. Within the house every article was covered with the stuff. After the briefest interview, which etiquette demanded should be performed seated, the visitor sallied from the house so incrusted with a saccharine deposit that clouds of flies pursued, hovering with mortifying persistence over that portion of the visitor which had been nearest in contact with the seat of the chair. Betrayed en évidence, as it were, his progress, which necessarily lay through the most populous part of the village, was greeted with derisive chaff by those who at that very moment had every available domestic utensil filled to overflowing with the plunder. At one time it is sugar, at another brandy, at another the whole country about is carpeted with India matting, and a Chinese idol grins from every dooryard.

Then, again, there may be years of wreckless monotony, to be followed by a plethora of damaged mackerel and domestic prints. But no man should grudge these people an occasional wreck. In winter, when all otherwise would be idle, a

wreck throws these little hamlets and villages into spasms of remunerative activity. Money circulated by wrecking companies brings comforts to the hearth as much appreciated as by those whose good fortune enables them to look with critical superciliousness on this struggle for existence. A life by the sea begets a spirit of sturdy independence. Should one, out of pure wantonness and a voluptuous disregard for expense, present his neighbor with eight or ten clams, an equivalent in kind is immediately given. There is nothing offensive in this reactive generosity; it is simply intended to convey an honest appreciation of services rendered. Neither do little acts of kindness from one to another ever fail to meet with thoughtful recognition, as the following anecdote will attest.

On a certain winter's day, not many years since, an uncommonly cold northwester blistered the Atlantic coast. Over toward the sand-dunes which protect a particular bay from the sea a man is fighting his way across the frozen surface in the face of the bitter gale. His objective is a house on the mainland near the shore. The contrast between the luxurious warmth and coziness of the interior of this house

He enters the kitchen of this particular house, and with merely a nod to the cook seats himself in silence by the fire. He is perhaps sixty years of age-an ancient mariner whom many battles with the elements have rendered uncommonly reticent and uncommunicative. His head is bald, but an enormous tuft upon the chin makes amends for this deficiency, and adds to the grim solemnity of his appearance. At a recent revival, after fifty years' practical contemplation of life in various portions of the globe, he experienced religion. Friends and his dead wife's mother had hoped that under this soothing influence he might develop more genial methods of expression; but he was

congregation. With no change of countenance he arose in his place, faced to the northeast, the point from which he had always encountered the hardest gales, and roared out, as if addressing a man at the mast-head, "Look a here! I want religion, and I'm bound to have it!" This said, he dropped back into his seat, silent and grim. No change was observed in his deportment; he had satisfied the exigencies of the conventional village life. Under no influence could he be induced to alter or soften the angles of his brief but emphatic vocabulary. On the particularly cold day which I have mentioned, he was moved by another sentiment, for snugly tucked in blankets on the upper floor of

Many of these are very old men of quaint and grotesque individualities. To each clings some anecdote or legend, many apocryphal, but all, which have some foundation, subject to the embellishments of a succeeding and younger generation. Odd peculiarities of speech and manner are noted, and personal habits are subjected to a criticism both elaborate and incisive. The most biting of these yarns are too acrid for the pages of a magazine. Many

the house in which he was then seated, a newly born infant lay sleeping. From the mother, surrounded by every attainable luxury and comfort, this ancient mariner had once accepted a signal service, for which, up to this time, he had never given any sign of appreciative recognition. On this occasion for twenty minutes or more he sat by the fire grimly ruminating. Finally he started up, and taking from under his arm the package which he had thus jealously guarded during the entire session, he advanced and placed it on the table.

"Look a here," he said to the cook, "I onderstand Y-'s woman" (Anglicè, wife) "is hove to with a baby"-here he paused, and nodded assent to his own statement, in the direction of the northeast. "Look a here" (confidentially), "wimmin is mighty onsartain at them times, so I fetched this 'ere off the beach, a-thinkin' she might like suthin' sorter tasty." This said, he reseated himself in solemn silence by the fire. An examination of the "suthin' sorter tasty," which was enveloped in a thoroughly thumbed copy of the county paper, revealed a well-sanded salt mackerel a waif washed on the beach from a recent wreck off the coast.

On the borders of all these sounds and estuaries reside numbers of professional gunners-men who shoot for market, or hire themselves to amateur sportsmen from the neighboring towns and cities. From the gradual extinction of the wild fowl which formerly frequented all these waters, and the small profit which even the closest and most assiduous application extracts from the pursuit, the veterans have almost all retired from the profession.