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The room was great in size, panelled mostly in wood, lit with lampwicks that floated in oil dishes and heated with a sea-coal fire, for though it was April the magister was of a cold disposition of the hands and shins. The inn of the Golden Astrolabe was kept by an Englishwoman, a masterful widow with a broad face and a great mouth that smiled. She stood beside him there.
The water rose to his knees and he sank in it, almost on top of Mr. Wesley. At once he felt the whirl of the current, but not before he had gripped the Rector's collar. The other hand he flung up blindly. By Providence the keel was freighted with sea-coal and low in the water, and as the pair slid past, Johnny's fingers found and gripped the bulwark-coaming.
It was too rough for wheels, but filled with the heavy hoof-marks of donkeys, which were used largely for carrying wood, charcoal, and sea-coal to the mine; and as I stood up by the spot where years before Bob Chowne, Bigley, and I had blown up the big stone and set it rolling down into the valley, it was wonderful what a change had taken place.
As the charcoal-burner worked beside the modern highway, so his trade had come down and was still practised in the midst of modern trades, in these times of sea-coal and steam. He told me that he and his brothers were maintained by charcoal-burning the year through, and, it appeared, in a very comfortable position.
I seem to be tired and sick of the smoke of these sea-coal fires, and I long, with almost childish impatience, once more to breathe a fresher and clearer air. It must, I think, be owned, that upon the whole, London is neither so handsomely nor so well built as Berlin is; but then it certainly has far more fine squares.
"Several attempts," he adds, "have been made to introduce the use of sea-coal in these works instead of charcoal, the former being to be had at an easier rate than the latter; but hitherto they have proved ineffectual, the workmen finding by experience that a sea-coal fire, how vehement soever, will not penetrate the most fixed parts of the ore, and so leaves much of the metal unmelted" Phil.
The tattered tapestry, the worm-eaten shelves, the huge and clumsy, yet tottering, tables, desks, and chairs, the rusty grate, seldom gladdened by either sea-coal or faggots, intimated the contempt of the lords of Osbaldistone Hall for learning, and for the volumes which record its treasures.
But they troubled me near as much, and the sea-coal fire held strange images. The fascination in the window was not to be denied, for it stood in line with the houses and the trees. Suddenly there rose up before me a gate. Yes, I knew that gate, and the girlish figure leaning over it. They were in Prince George Street.
It has been said that it was known to the Anglo-Saxon population, but I am acquainted with no passage in the literature of that people which proves this. The dictionaries explain the Anglo-Saxon word grofa by sea-coal.
"Come hither, neighbor Sea-coal God hath blessed you with a good name: to be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by Nature." Much Ado about Nothing. It has already been said, that the hour at which the action of the tale must re-commence, was early morning.
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