PATCHING AND SELSEY 35 



littoral stood out Bognor, and were to be 

 identified bits of Littlehampton, also Worthino- 

 Point. Farther you might really be seeing 

 Beachy Head when you said and thought you 

 did, and very likely your range didn't carry so 

 far by a long way. But there was no mistake 

 about you being able to follow the lines of the 

 Downs farther in that direction than Chancton- 

 bury Ring ; and the face of the highlands from 

 Portsdown through Goodwood, Halnaker, and 

 Highdown — where you know the Miller's Tomb 

 is, if you can't see it — to the range east of the 

 Adur makes a pretty panorama. Round the 

 point, the crook of the Bill, I suppose, by the 

 Marine Hotel you command a run to the barracks 

 on the Hayling side of Southsea Common, and 

 there is the Wight with, glaring white in the 

 sun, the great chalk cliff, which makes you say 

 to yourself Eurydice, and not want to think 

 about it again. 



What a time I could have had, to be sure, 

 taking rn a bit of bathing and boating and admir- 

 ing the wild spinach that, with the yellow horn 

 sea-poppies, sweet little convolvuluses, dwarf 

 nightshades, and other persevering, struggling 

 colonists, will soon clothe the barest shingle 

 beach and make their own soil to grow in if 

 they once effect a lodgment. The hard-working 

 fishermen, too — civil chaps, with no trace of the 

 mouching longshoremen about them, wouldn't 

 they be aids to real holiday-making ? My word ! 

 they would so, and I have not cited the greatest 

 charm of all that took hold when that I was and 

 a little tiny boy, and is strong as ever now, though 

 I never told you about it, good readers. Well, 

 you must know that even in midsummer Selsey's 



