I spent a week at Broadstairs in the height of a
Dynamite Mystery. We were very proud of the Mystery, we of Broadstairs,
and of the space we filled in the papers. Ramsgate, with its
contemporaneous murder sensation, we turned up our noses at, till
Ramsgate had a wreck and redressed the balance. For the rest, we made
sand-pies, and bathed and sailed, and listened to a band that went wheezy
on Bank Holiday. Broadstairs boasts of one drunkard, who does odd jobs as
well. He is tall, venerable, and melancholy, and has the air of a
temperance orator. "Joe's one of the best chaps on the pier when he's
sober," said his mate to me sorrowfully; "but when he's drunk he makes a
fool of himself." This was not quite true; for Joe was not always
foolish. Why, when two gentlemen came down from London in a gipsy caravan
to teach us Theosophy, and all Broadstairs fluttered towards their
oil-lamp, leaving the band to tootle to the sad sea waves, I could not
get him to mount the Cheap Jack rostrum in opposition! The most I could
spur him to was an indignant defence of London against the lecturer's
denunciation of it as an immoral city, a pit of unrighteousness. "'T
ain't true!" he thundered raucously. "Many's the gent from Lunnon as has
behaved most liberal to me.
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