in Brighton; fish remains at precisely the same price as before all this
ridiculous trumpeting. But while the fishmongers charge twopence each for
fresh herrings, the old women bring them to the door at sixteen a
shilling. The poor who live in the old part of Brighton, near the
markets, use great quantities of the smaller and cheaper fish, and their
children weary of the taste to such a degree that when the girls go out
to service they ask to be excused from eating it.

The fishermen say they can often find a better market by sending their
fish to Paris; much of the fish caught off Brighton goes there. It is
fifty miles to London, and 250 to Paris; how then can this be? Fish
somehow slip through ordinary rules, being slimy of surface; the maxims
of the writers on demand and supply are quite ignored, and there is no
groping to the bottom of this well of truth.

Just at the corner of some of the old streets that come down to the
King's Road one or two old fishermen often stand. The front one props
himself against the very edge of the buildings, and peers round into the
broad sunlit thoroughfare; his brown copper frock makes a distinct patch
of colour at the edge of the house. There is nothing in common between
him and the moving throng: he is quite separate and belongs to another
race; he has come down from the shadow of the old street, and his
copper-hued frock might have come out of the last century.

The fishing-boats and the fishing, the nets, and all the fishing work are
a great ornament to Brighton. They are real; there is something about
them that forms a link with the facts of the sea, with the forces of the
tides and winds, and the sunlight gleaming on the white crests of the
waves. They speak to thoughts lurking in the mind; they float between
life and death as with a billow on either hand; their anchors go down to