171

Church-going Tim.

1.]

TIM BLACK is bedridden, you say?
Well now, I'm sorry. Poor old Tim!
There's not in all the place to-day

A soul as will not pity him.

II.

These twenty years, come hail, come snow,
Come winter cold, or summer heat,

Week after week to church he❜ld go
On them two hobbling sticks for feet.

III.

These years he's gone on crutches. Yet
One never heard the least complaint.

And see how other men will fret

At nothing; Tim was quite a saint.

IV.

And now there's service every day,
I say they keep it up for him;
We busier ones, we keep away—

There's mostly no one there but Tim.

V.

Yes, quite a saint he was. Although
He never was a likely man
At his own trade; indeed, I know
Many's the day I've pitied Nan.

VI.

She had a time of it, his wife,

With all those children and no wage, As like as not, from Tim. The life

She led! She looked three times her age.

VII.

The half he had he'ld give to tramps
If they were hungry, or it was cold-
Pampering up them idle scamps,

While Nan grew lean and pinched and old.

VIII.

He'ld let her grumble. Not a word

Or blow from him she ever hadAnd yet I've heard her sigh, and heard Her say she wished as he was bad.

IX.

Atop of all the fever came;

And Tim went hobbling past on sticks.

Still one felt happier, all the same,

When he'd gone by to church at six.

X.

Not that I wished to go. Not I!

With Joe so wild, and all those boys

It takes my day to clean, and try

To settle down the dust and noise.

XI.

But still-out of it all, to glance
And see Tim hobbling by so calm,

As though he heard the angels' chants

And saw their branching crowns of palm.

XII.

And when he smiled, he had a look,
One's burden seemed to loose and roll
Like Christian's in the picture-book :

It was a comfort, on the whole.

XIII.

It made one easier-like, somehow-
It made one, somehow, feel so sure,
That far above the dust and row

The glory of God does still endure.

XIV.

You say he's well, though he can't stir:
I'm sure you mean it kind-But, see,

It's not for him I'm crying, sir,

It's not for Tim, sir; it's for me.

A. MARY F. ROBINSON.

Strip of Suffolk Seaboard.

On the low coast of Suffolk, just a hundred miles from London, lies in sweet seclusion from the noisy highway the pretty village of Dunwich. Its double row of cottages and farmhouses stands a little back from the sea on the southern edge of a crescent-shaped tract of emerald marshland and immediately under a sweep of higher ground which shuts it in on the south and west. Its dwellings are mostly prim, modern-looking buildings of genuinely red brick, and have enough similarity of form to suggest the presence of a controlling authority not devoid of taste in architectural matters; for they are pretty and even ornate-looking, with their tapering roofs, their polygonal chimneys, and the carved woodwork about their gables. They are overgrown with fruit trees or climbing plants, the branches of which all the summer make a festal garland about their projecting porches and casements. A small modern-looking church, well-proportioned to the size of the village, stands at one end of it. In addition to the church the eye easily singles out a well-built school and a fair-sized inn, which last, instead of making a great display of hospitality by a large and glaring signboard, gives a quiet assurance of competence to provide for man and beast by its air of old-fashioned dignity. One other feature strikes the eye in the village itself, and that is a diminutive, toy-like windmill, which seems by its position to have for its function the pumping of water out of the marshes. The little machine, though no doubt able to throw itself into a great flurry on occasion, is on this still day taking things easily enough, only making a languid revolution or two now and again, and then lapsing into complete rest. Beyond the village, close to the beach, we spy a cluster of fishermen's huts, which by their vermilion roofs give a touch of still warmer colouring to the place. Above the village on the higher level near the sea stand the ruins of a church, enough being left to give a pretty complete outline. Further back are extensive ruins of walls, which display here and there a fine arched gateway. These ruins, running just above the line of the village, their outline clearly marked against the sky, form a curious appendage to the prim and thoroughly modern-looking place.

This double row of cottages, it may be said at once, is not the whole of Dunwich. So far we have seen only one of its streets, known as St. James's Street. Detached from this on the higher ground to the southwest, hidden away from view, is another quarter which is designated as the High Street. It is a similar line of picturesque cottages, screened on the seaward side by a thick plantation. Passing through the lower village, and following a sandy lane to the left which runs seawards under

the high ground, we pass below a prominent coast-guard station and presently arrive at the cluster of boatmen's houses. They are wooden structures blackened with tar, which serves admirably to intensify the brightness of their vermilion tile roofs. These sheds or huts form a curious feature of this Suffolk coast. One finds them everywhere, now ranged in rows on the smooth turf inside the beach, now nestling in compact groups under a bit of cliff, and now strewn on the upper levels of the beach itself. They seem to delight in illustrating every absurdity of uncouth form. Their quaintness of structure is enhanced by the ends of old boats, which now, placed vertically, do duty as a side, and now, bottom upwards, eke out the roofing. A finishing touch of grotesqueness is sometimes supplied by a showy figurehead or a board bearing the proud title of a ship, as Emulation or Enterprise, which has a comic pathos in its present humble surroundings. They are storage huts, filled with fishing gear, corks, nets, and so on, and supply interiors which in their rich gloom of blacks and browns would have delighted the eye of Rembrandt. Here at Dunwich the sheds are less unconventional than elsewhere, and seem to have accommodated themselves to the prevailing air of neatness. Turning now to the beach, we find that it is a very ordinary one, made up of shingle and small pebbles with streaks of sand towards the water's edge. Here lie about half a dozen fishing-boats, with their bows pointing straight to the sea.

At this point the low marshy seaboard gives place to a line of cliff. Looking northward, the eye traces the gentle curve of a broad bay. This is bounded at the further extremity by Southwold, which seen from here runs well out into the sea and shuts off the view of the coast further north. It seems to stand quite high above the low coast. It has an irregular pyramidic outline, the apex being constituted by a fine church tower, and on a sunny day it glows with all manner of warm tints. Looking in the other direction, our eye follows a long and tolerably straight sweep of yellowish cliff, down which bright verdure creeps here and there, and above which may be seen tufts of tall yellow wild flowers, and further on a carpet of purple heather reaching the very edge of the declivity. A climb up to the cliff by a path of loose sand takes us presently to the ruins of the church, which we now discover to be only a few yards from the edge. Just beyond this can be seen a span of the plantations which divide the High Street from the sea. These are a part of the squire's estate, and just beyond them, standing well back from the sea, half embowered in woods, is the squire's seat, a picturesque house, like the village, half old and half new in look, and of a pattern which seems to have served as a distant model for all the other buildings of the place.

The neighbourhood of Dunwich offers little in the way of wild or romantic scenery. Yet there is a good deal that is very pleasant to the eye, and there are a few points which have a rare sort of picturesqueness. Like all the lowlying lands of East Suffolk, it is not a very fertile region.