boats belonging to the coast was to be seen; not a sail even was
visible; not the smoke of a solitary steamer ploughing its own miserable
path through the rain-fog to London or Aberdeen. It was sad weather and
depressing to not a few of the thousands come to Burcliff to enjoy a
holiday which, whether of days or of weeks, had looked short to the
labor weary when first they came, and was growing shorter and shorter,
while the days that composed it grew longer and longer by the frightful
vitality of dreariness. Especially to those of them who hated work, a
day like this, wrapping them in a blanket of fog, whence the water was
every now and then squeezed down upon them in the wettest of all rains,
seemed a huge bite snatched by that vague enemy against whom the
grumbling of the world is continually directed out of the cake that by
every right and reason belonged to them. For were they not born to be
happy, and how was human being to fulfill his destiny in such
circumstances?

There are men and women who can be happy in any--even in such
circumstances and worse, but they are rare, and not a little better
worth knowing than the common class of mortals--alas that they
_will_ be common! _content_ to be common they are not and cannot
be. Among these exceptional mortals I do not count such as, having
secured the corner of a couch within the radius of a good fire,
forget the world around them by help of the magic lantern of a novel
that interests them: such may not be in the least worth knowing for
their disposition or moral attainment--not even although the noise of
the waves on the sands, or the storm in the chimney, or the rain on the
windows but serves to deepen the calm of their spirits. Take the novel
away, give the fire a black heart; let the smells born in a
lodging-house kitchen invade the sitting-room, and the person, man or
woman, who can then, on such a day, be patient with a patience pleasant