The Open Air 



cliffs were white, that a lady passing had a dark blue 

 dress on, which did not suit with the green sea, not 

 because it was blue, but because it was the wrong 

 tint of blue. I informed him that the Pavilion was 

 once the residence of royalty, and similar novelties; 

 all in a string without a semicolon. His eyes opened; 

 he fumbled with his lozenge-box, said " Good morn- 

 ing/' and went on up the pier. I watched him go 

 English - Americano - Germano-Franco-Prussian-Rus- 

 sian-Chinese-New Zealander that he was. But he 

 was not a man of genius; you could choke him off 

 by talking. Still he had effectually jogged me and 

 spoiled my contemplative enjoyment of the bathers' 

 courage; upon the whole I thought I would go down 

 on the beach now and see them a little closer. The 

 truth is, I suppose, that it is people like myself who 

 are in the wrong, or are in the way. What business 

 had I to make a note in the Tower yard, or study in 

 the Louvre? what business have I to think, or 

 indulge myself in an idea? What business has any 

 man to paint, or sketch, or do anything of the sort? 

 I suppose the joggers are in the right. 



Dawdling down Whitehall one day a jogger nailed 

 me they come to me like flies to honey and got 

 me to look at his pamphlet. He went about, he said, 

 all his time distributing them as a duty for the 

 safety of the nation. The pamphlet was printed in 

 the smallest type, and consisted of extracts from 

 various prophetical authors, pointing out the enormity 

 of the Babylonian Woman, of the City of Scarlet, 

 or some such thing; the gist being the bitterest 

 almost scurrilous attack on the Church of Rome. 

 The jogger told me, with tears of pride in his eyes 

 and a glorified countenance, that only a few days 

 before, in the waiting-room of a railway station, he 



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