like a marine ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and
stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and
what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and
thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly. The
air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one
might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick
people went down to be dipped into the sea. A little fishing was
done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by night, and
looking seaward: particularly at those times when the tide made,
and was near flood. Small tradesmen, who did no business
whatever, sometimes unaccountably realised large fortunes, and it
was remarkable that nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a
lamplighter.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, which had
been at intervals clear enough to allow the French coast to be
seen, became again charged with mist and vapour, Mr. Lorry’s
thoughts seemed to cloud too. When it was dark, and he sat before
the coffee-room fire, awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his
breakfast, his mind was busily digging, digging, digging, in the live
red coals.
A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red
coals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw him
out of work. Mr. Lorry had been idle a long time, and had just
poured out his last glassful of wine with as complete an
appearance of satisfaction as is ever to be found in an elderly
gentleman of a fresh complexion who has got to the end of a bottle,
when a rattli