The Traveller.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 42, 13 January 1894, Page 6

The Traveller.

AN ENGLISH WATERING PLACE. (By Aurora.) '■ Let it be understood at the outset that Morecambe is not a fashionable watering' place. On its crowded promenade one mostly sees and hears pallid, broad-vowelled Yorkshire mill Lands who have exchanged for a brief ®nace the roar of the Bradford looms and the Sheffield engines for the ■deeper roar of the sea. Not that there is any lack of decent society here —your correspondent s presence proves that —but there is certainly an •excellent opportunity for studying “ man in the lump ” —humanity in the vulgar mass. By the way, to what an enormous extent the holiday fever has spread of late years! There ave people, and not the oldest inhabitants either, who remember the time when variety palaces, pleasure gardens, and white-headed niggers were things unimagined. But the faster the clock goes the sooner it runs down, and in these days of competition and strikes the luxuries of fathers have become the necessities of their children. The “ great unwashed ” must have its eight hours day and its annual bath “ on the shores of the sounding sea.” And what does the oay “ tripper ” find to do f Stroll along the sands with me, fingering a few necessary pennies in your pocket as you go. Elbow your way past the long lines of bathing vans, up to the rocks of the old pier, “ where people most do* congiegate.” In one corner the fluent quack vends his unimpeachable pills, working on the emotions of the crowd by a pitiable narration of his physical sufferings while serving “ under the widow’s colours ” in Egypt. He declares that he is no doctor, but merely a man desirous of benefitting his fellow-men. The doctors had all given him up, when by some chance he lighted on an infallible remedy—not for every disease under the sun, mind you, but for the following six comprehensive, all-em-bracing afflictions. And then he produces the inevitable wonder-working pills. You may buy if you feel dyspeptic or have the toothache 5 or, if the quack’s address has left you sound in wind and limb, you may swell the crowd that gathers around the gentleman who demonstrates, with mathematical accuracy and laudable temperance, how a man by halving his dinner and supper beer may save enough xnonev in a y~ear to convey himself and family to the sea-side for a week. Close by there is to be seen alive a -curious sea monster “one of the wonders of the deep,” says the juvenile proprietor’, and all for one penny. Further on is the only sea-shell model of Canterbury Cathedral in the world, ■exhibited by a painfully bibulous gentleman in pseudo-naval attire. For one penny you may look through a covered aperture, while the owner turns a handle, and chants monotonously. “Weddin’ party leavin’ the halter arfter serrymowney, chorister boys follerin arfter, dressed in white, aged pilgrim arf way up the aisle leanin’ on his starf doin’ pennunce in the reign of King ’Enery II—(slowly) Saint —Thomas—a-Beckett —etc., etc. This way round, ladies. Change ’ere for yer silver. We beat the world at the fisheries.” And so on with glib audacity. Dirty Italians with icecreams, barrel-organs and dispirited monkeys, confectioners with “the only original Morecambe Rock, cheap Jacks with phenomenal purses and everlasting pocket-books —“ not sold, but positively thrown away!”—occupy the field, or rather strew the sand. And the niggers ! Then we have summer gardens and winter gardens, new pier and .promenade ] and when we tire of then* attractions we may seek rural blessedness at the delightful village of Heysham. But even in this rustic retreat there are appeals to the visitor s inexhaustible pocket, six-legged sheep, and corner “ pop,” and pear stalls being very much in evidence. I, unthinkingly, mentioned the roar ,

of the sea ; I was perhaps a little too previous, for there has unfortunately been nothing considerable beyond the mild and monotonous “ swish ” of the incoming tide. - Bathers have frollicked in the briny, and there has been nothing to deter the most timid from fearlessly accepting, the invitation of the brown and jerseyed mariners. But, after all, a peaceable person comes to these places for rest, and for such a one it is pleasanter to sit or saunter on the promenade with Stead’s latest in one’s hand, or if you should chance to be a gentleman a “ fragrant weed ” for choice. There, lulled by the sweet strains (no sarcasm !) of an up-to-date street-piano, one passes easily into a day-dream regardless of obtrusive minstrels and exciting pony races, and seeing only the marvel of the setting sun across the ba} r . Then twilight falls, and with it a chiller air, and we betake ourselves to supper and a lodger’s bed, casting lingeringly a last look beyond the water at the dim and hazy blue of the Cambrian Hills.