Overview

On the beach below the parade were a succession of small crowds, surrounding the usual oratorsof the seaside; whether niggers or socialists, whether clowns or clergymen. Here would stand a mandoing something or other with paper boxes; and the holiday makers would watch him for hours inthe hope of some time knowing what it was that he was doing with them. Next to him would be aman in a top hat with a very big Bible and a very small wife, who stood silently beside him, while hefought with his clenched fist against the heresy of Milnian Sublapsarianism so wide-spread infashionable watering-places. It was not easy to follow him, he was so very much excited; but everynow and then the words our Sublapsarian friends would recur with a kind of wailing sneer. Nextwas a young man talking of nobody knew what (least of all himself), but apparently relying for publicfavour mainly on having a ring of carrots round his hat. He had more money lying in front of himthan the others. Next were niggers. Next was a children's service conducted by a man with a longneck who beat time with a little wooden spade. Farther along there was an atheist, in a toweringrage, who pointed every now and then at the children's service and spoke of Nature's fairest thingsbeing corrupted with the secrets of the Spanish Inquisition-by the man with the little spade, ofcourse. The atheist (who wore a red rosette) was very withering to his own audience as well. Hypocrites! he would say; and then they would throw him money. Dupes and dastards! andthen they would throw him more money. But between the atheist and the children's service was alittle owlish man in a red fez, weakly waving a green gamp umbrella. His face was brown andwrinkled like a walnut, his nose was of the sort we associate with Judaea, his beard was the sort ofblack wedge we associate rather with Persia. The young woman had never seen him before; he was anew exhibit in the now familiar museum of cranks and quacks. The young woman was one of thosepeople in whom a real sense of humour is always at issue with a certain temperamental tendency toboredom or melancholia; and she lingered a moment, and leaned on the rail to listen.

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