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Chaucer's characters were all cleverly drawn and lifelike, while his innkeeper was a man of evidently high "social status," and, as he himself said, "wise and well taught." The Stour flows on to the sea, whose generally low shores are not far away, with the Isle of Thanet to the northward and London's watering-place of Ramsgate on its outer verge.
If I may speak, as coxswain of the lifeboat, I would like to say that all hands concerned in this rescue, them in the tug as well as the crew of the boat, did what might be expected of English sailors for such they are, whether you call some of them boatmen or not; and I know in my heart, and say it without fear, that from the hour of leaving Ramsgate Harbour to the moment when we sighted the wreck's mast, there was only one thought in all of us, and that was that the Almighty would give us the strength and direct us how to save the lives of the poor fellows to whose assistance we had been sent.
On his way back to Ramsgate the captain had discovered another large vessel on her beam-ends, a complete wreck, on that part of the sands named the Shingles. It was the Demerara, and her crew were still seen clinging to the quivering mast on which they had spent the livelong night. More work for the well-nigh worn out heroes! Away they went to the rescue as though they had been a fresh crew.
It was now 4 a.m., and the Deal coxswain, cool and sturdy as his native Kentish oak, knowing that the combination of an easterly gale with neap tides sometimes produces an 'in-tide' at high-water, and seeing the Ramsgate lifeboat carried to leeward, gave the order to 'down foresail! when well outside the wreck, and anchored E. by S. of her.
It is perhaps permissible to disagree with the historian Green when he says that no spot should be more sacred to modern Englishmen than the neighbourhood of Ramsgate, where the Schleswig people are supposed to have landed; or when he suggests that their appearance is the real beginning of our island story. It would be rather more true to say that it was nearly, though prematurely, the end of it.
Look at our vast miserable slums, our sprawling, ugly, aimless industrial centres, inhabited by millions who have just enough education to be able to buy their thinking ready-made through the halfpenny Press and just enough leisure for a weekly attendance at the local football match and an annual excursion to Blackpool or Ramsgate; who seldom, if ever, see the glorious face of Nature and, when they do, gaze into it with blank unrecognising eyes; whose whole life is one long round of monotony monotonous toil, monotonous amusements, monotonous clothes, monotonous bricks and mortar; until the very heaven itself, with its trailing cloud-armadas and its eternal stars, is forgotten, and the whole universe becomes a cowl of hodden grey, "where-under crawling cooped they live and die."
Build a theatre of moderate dimensions; give it great facility of approach; take care that the performances never exceed three hours; let lions and dwarfs pass by without any endeavour to get them within the walls; lay aside all ambition of making stage waves which may almost equal real Ramsgate waves to our cockney apprehensions. Of course there must be good players and good plays. Ellesmere.
Hewson, and found that Wilcox, the sailor who had been with him when they so nearly fell into the hands of the natives, was still in his service; and when, some time afterwards, the ship in which he was in returned to port, he had Wilcox down to Ramsgate, and installed him in the place of gardener and general factotum there.
He had not much to spare, however, for he had, among other things, set himself energetically to the study of arithmetic and navigation under the united guidance of old Jeph and Bluenose. Lucy Burton paid a long visit to Mrs Foster, and roamed over the Sandhills day after day with her friend Amy, until her father, the missionary, came and claimed her and carried her back to Ramsgate.
Of both I shall have more to say hereafter, but at present we are at the time of my first visit to them at Upper Norwood, whither they had removed from Ramsgate. Kindly greeting was given by both, and on Mr.
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