20 STUDIES OF NATURE 



boats, or hanging over the quay. He is a 

 very small, brown, barefooted, and amphibious 

 creature. On a survey of him you would say 

 that he was three-fourths trousers, and nearly 

 one-fourth blue bonnet. Both the trousers and 

 the bonnet appear to have been originally the 

 property of some much larger person. An 

 adaptive ingenuity, however, has brought them, 

 more or less, into harmony with his necessities. 

 Probably he knows that his attire is not of a 

 fashionable character ; but we can imagine him 

 saying, as our facetious member puts it, ' What's 

 the odds, so long's you're happy ? ' 



