the roots of existence. This is real work, real labour of man, to draw
forth food from the deep as the plough draws it from the earth. It is in
utter contrast to the artificial work--the feathers, the jewellery, the
writing at desks of the town. The writings of a thousand clerks, the busy
factory work, the trimmings and feathers, and counter attendance do not
touch the real. They are all artificial. For food you must still go to
the earth and to the sea, as in primeval days. Where would your thousand
clerks, your trimmers, and counter-salesmen be without a loaf of bread,
without meat, without fish? The old brown sails and the nets, the anchors
and tarry ropes, go straight to nature. You do not care for nature now?
Well! all I can say is, you will have to go to nature one day--when you
die: you will find nature very real then. I rede you to recognise the
sunlight and the sea, the flowers and woods _now_.

I like to go down on the beach among the fishing-boats, and to recline on
the shingle by a smack when the wind comes gently from the west, and the
low wave breaks but a few yards from my feet. I like the occasional
passing scent of pitch: they are melting it close by. I confess I like
tar: one's hands smell nice after touching ropes. It is more like home
down on the beach here; the men are doing something real, sometimes there
is the clink of a hammer; behind me there is a screen of brown net, in
which rents are being repaired; a big rope yonder stretches as the horse
goes round, and the heavy smack is drawn slowly up over the pebbles. The
full curves of the rounded bows beside me are pleasant to the eye, as any
curve is that recalls those of woman. Mastheads stand up against the sky,
and a loose rope swings as the breeze strikes it; a veer of the wind
brings a puff of smoke from the funnel of a cabin, where some one is
cooking, but it is not disagreeable, like smoke from a house chimney-pot;
another veer carries it away again,--depend upon it the simplest thing
cooked there is nice. Shingle rattles as it is shovelled up for