1 86 ALONGSHORE w 



air of busyness and jollity to work in. But they 

 employ no one regularly; they cannot provide 

 work In the slack seasons when they have little or 

 none themselves. Hands often lent become soon 

 unfit to sell. A drink, which establishes no pre- 

 cedent of pay, Is all they are worth. Is all they 

 get; and perhaps some fish thrown out with a 

 'There thee a't for thy supper!' It Is no good 

 to make a parade of starvation along the beach. 

 There Is no one there to appreciate it as a spectacle, 

 unless It be visitors who are as likely as not to say, 

 'Nasty man! why don't you keep him out of 

 sight?' (Not so likely, however, as those who 

 make money out of visitors.) Nearly every one else 

 has had an acquaintance with emptiness at one time 

 or another, and may easily experience it again; 

 which spoils it as a show. To become fixed in men's 

 minds as a proper beachcomber, as a man of odd 

 jobs, a man waiting for what may turn up. Is to 

 find the whole little world in an unconscious con- 

 spiracy to preserve that standing. Every greeting, 

 every copper In payment and the way It is handed 

 over, every kindness even, frames Itself naturally 

 to that end. When a man can be chaffed publicly 

 on his being a beachcomber, then Indeed he is 

 one, and only a more than human energy, or 



