By the Beach.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 9, Issue 640, 4 February 1887, Page 2

By the Beach.

And I like sitting out here. Do I like sitting out here ? — that's just your mistake, I don't care anything about it. What pleasure can 1 have iii seeing children making sand castles? Some of thetn are playing with a small crab. Hallo 1 he's nipped oue of them — all the better. They are tying tbe child s finger up in a pocket handkerchief, and he'B boo-hooing like a young idiot. How I wish they'd keep all the children at home and smacK. 'em well I 1 hate to see them capering about the beach. Pick up things, do they I What good, 1 should like to know, can it do a child to go collecting dead shrimps and bits of stone, and stuffing its pockets with beastly sea weed 1 Isosh 1 Their elders are just as bad. There's a young cad scaling the cliff to cut his name in the chalk. That name ought to be •' Jackass 1" Dome of them break their necks at that kiu.i of foolery, aud a good job too, I s>iy. What on earth pUasure can there be in cutting out Robert Jones, 1886, wiih your penknife 1 Yet fools do it everywhere. There's a boy with a net trying to K«t moths. All ha'U get will be sand flies, and a bus on the ears when he gets home for spoiling his clothes. Moth catching, indeed 1 There are plenty of blue moths on the clilf *, are there 1 Thei c can be plenty of earwigs for what I care, and there are, too. They've been crawling about my ankles for ever s.i long. This you call enjoying yomseif on the beach 1 There's thac old yachtsman talking to the two fellows by the boat. A nice old marine chamois he is. I hate old yachtsmen ; they always smell of dunk and bad tobacco. They alway lie, too. That man's got a yarn about tbe Duke of Edinburgh talking to him that I know's a lie from beginning to er.d. The idiocy of people and the seaside i-i perfectly marvellous. People will be so beastly friendly, too. A man's just been asung me what I think of Sir William Siawell. Now am I such an idiot as to take the trouble to travel down here for the pleasure of talking about him? Bah I You call this amusement. Bathing? I'm not going to bath o. No!! *md if you come near me again I'll box your ears.