266 OCCASIONAL HAPPY THOUGHTS. 



quently folded it up and stowed it away, in order to prove to 

 your friends what a valuable acquisition your new purchase 

 is, and thus whatever shape it might have had to start with, 

 has been clean taken out of it. This results in '• blocking and 

 cleaning" — a process which will cost about four guineas 

 more, per annum. So, on the whole, if the hat does last your 

 lifetime, as it undoubtedly will unless you destroy it, or lose 

 it, you will bequeath a valuable heirloom to your family. 

 Say you purchase it when you are thirty, and live till seventy, 

 then the original cost being four guineas, and " blocking and 

 cleaning " four more j>er annum, we get a total of about a 

 hundred and seventy-two pounds, which represents the cost 

 of the Panama hat at the time of your lamented decease. 



Costume at the sea-side is everything, especially at Cowes, 

 where you are nothing unless nautical ; or, rather, as that's 

 too much of a rough sea-doggy word, I should say yachtical. 

 In Cowes the toy-shops are generally of a marine turn — toy 

 sailors, dolls in yachting costume, boats of all sizes, cutters, 

 yawls, and luggers. I noticed a brightly-painted Noah's ark 

 on a shelf, in dock, as it were, being as much out of date as 

 Nelson's flag-ship among the ironclads. Shops having pro- 

 fessionally nothing of a nautical character about them, go in 

 for it by hanging up the picture of a fearful wreck. 



As for the tailors, the haberdashers, bootmakers, and the 

 linen-drapers, they display in every available space blue 

 cloth, straw hats with names of yachts on the ribands, deck 

 shoes, and sailor costumes for ladies. Skippers meet you on 

 every turn, as do also first and second mates, with sailors 

 carrying provision-baskets. The conversation everywhere is 



