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The love of danger, the thirst for adventure, the thrilling sense of personal responsibility and human dignity not the base love for land and lucre were the governing sentiments which led those bold Dutch and English rovers to circumnavigate the world in cockle-shells, and to beard the most potent monarch on the earth, both at home and abroad, with a handful of volunteers.
The tune he knew, and as he passed through the first room towards the sitting-room that looked on the sea he caught a line: "Wely, wely, but love is bonny, for a little while when it is new." It was an old English ballad, the ballad of the "Cockle-shells," that Edith used to sing often in the old days, when its note of melancholy seemed best to express her happiness.
Should he do so the others exclaim, "You have stolen a purse of gold from your father and mother."" "It is interesting to find," writes Mr. "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? Cockle-shells, and silver bells, And pretty maids all in a row."
"Because the cockle-shells and cowslips are both fading away and dying, just as the dingle-bells did, and papa said when they faded and withered he and the boys would come back to us." Mary's mother knew that the harsh winds had killed the flowers before their time, but she did not like to disappoint her darling, so she only said, with a sigh,
"And how did you know, sweetheart?" he asked, giving her an extra kiss. "Because I watched the flowers; and the dingle-bells and cowslips and cockle-shells are all withered and faded away. And did you not say that, God willing, when this happened you would come back to us?"
Dull streets, small houses everywhere; no gardens, except now and then a single bed, edged with a row of stiff cockle-shells by way of fence, and planted with pert sweet-williams or crown imperials. These Mary thought were worse than no flowers at all. Every thing smelt of fish. The very sea was made ugly by warehouses and shabby wharves.
Upon the swelling bust, that seems fit harbour for a hero's heart, there lies the collar of an order composed of cockle-shells; and this is all the ornament given to the figure. The hands are clasped across a sword laid flat upon the breast, and placed between the legs. It is the apotheosis of human life resolved into undying memory because of one great deed.
It was in shape something like the cloak of a modern hussar, having similar flaps for covering the arms, and was called a "Sclaveyn", or "Sclavonian". Coarse sandals, bound with thongs, on his bare feet; a broad and shadowy hat, with cockle-shells stitched on its brim, and a long staff shod with iron, to the upper end of which was attached a branch of palm, completed the palmer's attire.
In the middle was a small round pond containing gold-fish and surrounded by a cockle-shell border. Out of the centre of the pond rose a fanciful erection clothed in more cockle-shells and topped by a large silvered glass ball that reflected everything all wrong and had a very pleasing effect.
The whole will of the said Nicholas Gimcrack, Esq., is a curious document and exact picture of the mind of the worthy virtuoso defunct, where his various follies, littlenesses, and quaint humours are set forth as orderly and distinct as his butterflies' wings and cockle-shells and skeletons of fleas in glass cases.
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