I AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have said so before) at one or other of the Uies. o these my choice would fix me at some woody spot, such as the neighbourhood of Henley affords in abundance, upon the banks of my beloved Thames. But somehow or other my cousin trives to wheedle me on three or four seasons to a watering place. Old attats g to her in spite of experience. We have been dull at Worthing one summer, duller at Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourn a third, and are at this moment doing dreary pe Hastings -- and all because we were happy many years ago for a brief week at Margate. That was our first sea-side experiment, and many circumstances bio make it the most agreeable holyday of my life. We had her of us seen the sea, and we had never been from home so long together in pany.
I fet thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy weatherbeaten, sun-burnt captain, and his rough aodation -- ill exged for the foppery and fresh-water niess of the modern steam-packet? To the winds and waves thou ittedst thy goodly freightage, and didst ask no aid of magic fumes, and spells, and boiling cauldrons. With the gales of heaven thou we swimmingly; or, when it was their pleasure, stoodest still with sailor-like patiehy course was natural, not forced, as in a hot-bed; nor didst thou go poisoning the breath of o with sulphureous smoke -- a great sea-chimera, eying and furnag the deep; or liker to that fire-god parg up Sder.
I fet thy ho, yet slender crew, with their coy relut responses (yet to the suppression of anything like pt) to the raw questions, which we of the great city would be ever and anon putting to them, as to the uses of this or that strange naval implement? `Specially I fet thee, thou happy medium, thou shade e between us and them, ciliating interpreter of their skill to our simplicity, fortable ambassador between sea and land whose sailor-trowsers did not more vingly assure thee to be an adopted denizen of the former, than thy white cap, and whiter aprohem, with thy -fingered practi thy ary vocation, bespoke thee to have been of inland nurture heretofore -- a master cook of Eastcheap? How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation, ariner, attendant, chamberlain; here, there, like another Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of the deck, yet with kindlier ministrations -- not to assist the tempest, but, as if touched with a kindred sense of our infirmities, to soothe the qualms which that untried motion might haply raise in our crude land-fancies. And when the oer-washing billows drove us below deck (for it was far gone in October, and we had stiff and blowiher) how did thy offiinisterings, still catering for our fort, with cards, and cordials, and thy more cordial versation, alleviate the closeness and the fi of thy else (truth to say) not very savoury, nor very inviting, little !
With these additaments to boot, we had on board a fellow-passenger, whose discourse iy might have beguiled a longer voyage than we meditated, and have made mirth and wonder abound as far as the Azores. He was a dark, Spanish plexioned young man, remarkably handsome, with an officer-like assurance, and an insuppressible volubility of assertion. He was, in fact, the greatest liar I had met with then, or since. He was none of your hesitating, half story-tellers (a most painful description of mortals) who go on sounding your belief, and only giving you as much as they see you swallow at a time -- the `nibbling pickp