MANNERS AND MORALS 151 



Quite recently we had some rather startling mani- 

 festations of this feeling and one amusing instance 

 may be given. Just after a big ship had come to 

 grief on the rocks, at the most dangerous point on 

 the coast, another ship was in great peril near the 

 same spot ; fortunately, towards evening, the weather 

 moderated a little and it began to look as if there 

 was not going to be a second disaster just then. My 

 informant was standing on the shore with some of 

 the fishermen of the place looking at the sea. The 

 sky was clearing and the sun, near the horizon, came 

 forth a great globe of red fire and threw its light 

 over the tumultuous waters. Then all at once one of 

 the men burst out in a storm of execration, and 

 cursed the sun and wind and sea and pretty well the 

 whole universe. For it seemed so hard just when 

 things were looking so well that the sun should shine 

 and the wind begin to fall and the sea moderate ! 

 My informant asked him indignantly how he, a 

 Christian man, could entertain such feelings and 

 how he dared to express them. He answered by 

 putting out his right arm and baring it to the elbow, 

 then, feeling the muscles with the fingers of the left 

 hand, he said with a somewhat rueful expression, " It's 

 in the bone, and we can't help it ! " 



Yet this very man had been foremost in the work 

 of rescuing the people in the ship that had gone on 

 the rocks. 



My informant happens to be one of the English- 

 men in Cornwall who do not experience that antipathy 

 or sense of separation in mind from the people they 



