CHAPTER III 

 MEN AND MANNERS 



EARLY in the QO'S a large and elaborate volume 

 was written by a naturalist, purporting to give a 

 faithful delineation of men and nature on Breydon 

 waters ; but although vigorously written, in parts, it gave us 

 some grossly exaggerated pictures of the hardy men who 

 wrest a precarious living from its depths and its mudflats. 

 To represent these men as drunken and vicious was a distinct 

 calumny. That some of them do frequent taverns in idle 

 moments goes without saying ; for they, like others who 

 follow hazardous pursuits much dependent on the moods of 

 the elements, are perforce often idle ; and having no fitness 

 for intellectual pursuits and hobbies, they naturally drift to 

 those resorts where warmth, kindred spirits, and congenial 

 converse are assured. One who reads the book I refer to 

 might be forgiven if he imagined the author had gathered 

 much of his information in low bar-parlours, or persuaded 

 men to drink until they were merrily and extravagantly 

 reminiscent. I make this apology for a class of hardy and 

 honest toilers who are no worse than other unskilled labourers; 

 who are often intelligent and observant, and to their credit are 

 as a rule sturdily independent and self-reliant. 



The majority of the old Breydoners aged men as I knew 

 them when a lad were wholly illiterate and uneducated ; 

 they had never been to school. Like generations of their for- 

 bears they had tumbled into their fathers' boats, and been 

 made to supplement the family's scanty earnings ere they had 

 picked up sufficient education to fit them for the present-day 

 infant school. Their fingers clasped a boat's oar before some 

 lads of to-day have yet mastered the proper handling of a 

 pen. Their early toddles were to take something to father's 

 boat his dinner, or a bag of shot ; or to carry home some of 

 the fowl that " dad " had killed. They knew the ebbing and 



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