Pirefore

We were to learn in the days to come, when it was too late, that George was a miserable impostor, who could evidently have known nothing whatever about the matter. If you had seen theseclothes after – but, as the shilling shockers say, we anticipate.

We got a big Gladstone for the clothes, and a couple of hampers for the victuals and the cooking utensils.

Andtravellers from Japan will buy up the ‘Presents from Ramsgate’, and ‘Souvenirs of Margate’, that may have escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English curios.

Harris saidthat, as an object to hang over a flower-bed in early spring to frighten the birds away, he should respect it; but that, considered as an article of dress for a human being, except a Margatenigger, it made him ill.

Then he flew off about lemonade, and ‘such-like Sunday-school slops’, as he termed them, ginger-beer, raspberry syrup, etc., etc.

HARRIS (standing up infront of piano and addressing the expectant mob): I’m afraid it’s a very old thing, you know. I expect you all know it, you know. But it’s the only thing I know. It’s the Judge’s song out ofPinafore – no, I don’t mean Pinafore – I mean – you know what I mean – the other thing, you know. You must all join in the chorus, you know.

It contained a party of provincial ‘Arrys and‘Arriets, out for a moonlight sail.

We had a good deal of trouble with steam-launches that morning. It was just before the Henley week, and they were going up in large numbers; some bythemselves, some towing house-boats.

I remember Harris telling me once of a bathing experience he had at Boulogne.

The Conservancy of late seems to have constituted itself into a societyfor the employment of idiots. A good many of the new lock-keepers, especially in the more crowded portions of the river, are excitable, nervous old men quite unfitted for their post.