DAYS STOLEN FOR SPORT 141 



phere of our surroundings and asked for nothing 

 more. 



Fishing there was in plenty, but not only fishing. 

 We could find pleasure in our picnics on the moor 

 so high above the sea that cooling breezes reached 

 us blow whence they would. We drove to pretty 

 Kynance and to Mullion Cove and to the Lizard, 

 where a day is all too short to visit the quarries 

 in the high, overhanging cliffs from which the 

 " Serpentine " is taken, and the many other points 

 of interest. The Spanish names above the sheds 

 wherein the " Serpentine " is turned and polished, 

 and the raven hair and swarthy faces met with 

 there, are very striking, but, for really pretty Spanish 

 faces, St Ives is the most famous Cornish town. 

 The beauty of its ladies was the excuse of the 

 polygamist of St Ives for having seven wives. 

 This excuse loses nothing of its strangeness if put 

 side by side with that of the Ambassador of Siam 

 who, in answer to the question why he had so 

 many, replied: "Were the ladies of Siam as 

 beautiful as your ladyship, I could well be content 

 with one." 



The boat at our command enabled us to avail 

 ourselves of days when a sail along the coast or 

 up the Helford River was a pleasant change. 

 Sometimes the sail, with the whole party on board, 

 was to Falmouth, where the ladies desired to do 

 shopping and the children to spend their weekly 

 income in a larger market than that afforded 

 by St Keverne. 



It is also a pleasant place to be lazy in and 

 dawdle an hour or so away amidst a wealth of fern 

 bracken and wild bloom, while the more industrious 



