It being market-day, we sought the bar of our hotel for a while, in order to study any odd characters we might perchance find gathered there, and we discovered a curious mixture of agricultural and town folk, with a sprinkling of seafaring men. The talk was as varied as the company. During the general hum of conversation we could not help noticing how many expressions were used manifestly of nautical origin, though they were employed apparently wholly by landsmen in concerns having no connection with the sea or shipping. We jotted down some of these as follows, just as they came to us:—"He's been on the rocks so lately"; "he's in smooth water now"; "it's all plain sailing"; "it's not all above board"; "he had to take in sail"; "now stow that away"; "it took the wind out of his sails"; "any port in a storm, you know"—and others of a like nature. A civil engineer with whom we got into conversation here, and who we gleaned was employed on the Fen drainage, expressed his unstinted admiration for the old Roman embankment that still follows the contour of a goodly portion of the Lincolnshire coast, and was designed and constructed as a bulwark against the encroachments of the sea, a purpose it has admirably served. This embankment, he told us, was in the main as strong and serviceable, in spite of ages of neglect, as when first raised all those long and eventful centuries ago; and furthermore, he stated as his honest opinion that, in spite of all our boasted advantages and progress, we could not to-day construct such enduring work.
Wandering in a desultory fashion about the
