DOI issue:
September 15, 1883
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17755#0141
METROPOLITAN PRIZE PUZZLES. No. 8.
The Billingsgate Market Puzzle. (Problem 1.) How to get into the Market. {Problem 2.) How to get out of the Market.
(Problems.) How to find your way Westward. (Problem 4.) How to get rid of this Obstruction.
A WET DAY AT THE SEA-SIDE.
Why does not some benefactor to his species discover and publish
to a grateful world some rational way of spending- a wet day at the
Sea-side ? Why should it be something so unutterably miserable
and depressing that its mere recollection afterwards makes one
shudder ?
This is the first really wet day that we have had for a fortnight,
but what a day! From morn to dewy eve, a summer’s day, and far
into the black night, the pitiless rain has poured and poured and
poured. I broke the unendurable monotony of gazing from the
weeping windows of my Sea-side lodging, by rushing out wildly and
plunging madly into the rainy sea, and got drenched to the skin both
going and returning. After changing everything, as people say but
don’t mean, and thinking I saw something like a break in the dull
leaden clouds, I again rushed out, and called on Jones, who has
; rooms in an adjacent terrace, and, with some difficulty, persuaded
him to accompany me to the only Billiard Table in the miserable
place. We both got gloriously wet on our way to this haven of
amusement, and were received with the pleasing intelligence that it
was engaged by a private party of two, who had taken it until the
rain ceased, and, when that most improbable event happened, two
other despairing lodgers had secured the reversion. Another rush
home, another drenching, another change of everything, except the
weather, brought the welcome sight of dinner, over which we fondly
lingered for nearly two mortal hours.
But one cannot eat all day long, even at the Sea-side on a wet day,
and accordingly at four o’clock I was again cast upon my own
resources. I received, I confess; a certain amount of grim satisfac-
tion at seeing Brown—Bumptious Brown, as we call him in the
City, he being a Common Councilman, or a Liveryman, or something
; of that kind—pass by in a fly, with heaps of luggage and children,
all looking so depressingly wet;—and if he had not the meanness to
bring with him, m a half-dozen hamper, six bottles of his abominable
Gladstone Claret! He grinned at me as he passed, like a Chester
cat, I think they call that remarkable animal, and I afterwards
learnt the reason. He had been speculating for a rise in wheat, and,
1.
as he vulgarly said, the rain suited his book, and he only hoped it
would last for a week or two ! Ah! the selfishness of some men !
What cared he about my getting wet through twice in one day, so
long as it raised the price of his wretched wheat ?
My wife coolly recommended me to read the second volume of a
new novel she had got from the Library, called, I think, East
Glynne, or some such name, but how can a man read in a room with
four stout healthy boys and a baby, especially when the said baby is
evidently very uncomfortable, and the four boys are playing at leap-
frog ? Women have this wonderful faculty, my wife to a remarkable
extent. I have often, with unfeigned astonishment, seen her appa-
rently lost in the sentimental troubles of some imaginary heroine,
while the noisy domestic realities around her have gone on unheeded.
I again took my place at the window, and gazed, upon the melan-
choly sea, and remembered, with a smile of bitter irony, how I had
agreed to pay an extra guinea a week for the privilege of facing the
sea !—and such a sea ! It was, of course, very low water—it gene-
rally is at this charming place; and the sea had retired to its
extremest distance, as if utterly ashamed of its dull, damp, melan-
choly appearance. And there stood that ridiculous apology for a
Pier, with its long, lanky, bandy legs, on which I have been dragged
every evening to hear the Band play. Such a Band! The poor
wheezy cornet was bad enough, but the trombone, with its two notes
that it jerked out like the snorts of a starting train, was a caution.
Oh, that poor “ Sweetheart,” with which we were favoured every
evening! I always pictured her to myself sitting at a window list-
ening, enraptured, to a serenade from that Trombone !
But there ’s no Band to-night, not a solitary promenader on the
bandy-legged Pier, I even doubt if the Pier Master is sitting as
usual at the receipt of custom, and I pull down the blind, to shut
out the miserable prospect, with such an energetic jerk that I bring
down the whole complicated machinery, and nearly frighten Baby
into a fit, while the four irreverent boys indulge in a loud guffaw.
Thank goodness, on Saturday I exchange our miserable, wheezy,
asthmatic Band for the grand orchestra of the Covent Garden
Promenade Concerts, and the awful perfume of rotten seaweed for
the bracing atmosphere of glorious London. Outsider.
Vol. 85.
The Billingsgate Market Puzzle. (Problem 1.) How to get into the Market. {Problem 2.) How to get out of the Market.
(Problems.) How to find your way Westward. (Problem 4.) How to get rid of this Obstruction.
A WET DAY AT THE SEA-SIDE.
Why does not some benefactor to his species discover and publish
to a grateful world some rational way of spending- a wet day at the
Sea-side ? Why should it be something so unutterably miserable
and depressing that its mere recollection afterwards makes one
shudder ?
This is the first really wet day that we have had for a fortnight,
but what a day! From morn to dewy eve, a summer’s day, and far
into the black night, the pitiless rain has poured and poured and
poured. I broke the unendurable monotony of gazing from the
weeping windows of my Sea-side lodging, by rushing out wildly and
plunging madly into the rainy sea, and got drenched to the skin both
going and returning. After changing everything, as people say but
don’t mean, and thinking I saw something like a break in the dull
leaden clouds, I again rushed out, and called on Jones, who has
; rooms in an adjacent terrace, and, with some difficulty, persuaded
him to accompany me to the only Billiard Table in the miserable
place. We both got gloriously wet on our way to this haven of
amusement, and were received with the pleasing intelligence that it
was engaged by a private party of two, who had taken it until the
rain ceased, and, when that most improbable event happened, two
other despairing lodgers had secured the reversion. Another rush
home, another drenching, another change of everything, except the
weather, brought the welcome sight of dinner, over which we fondly
lingered for nearly two mortal hours.
But one cannot eat all day long, even at the Sea-side on a wet day,
and accordingly at four o’clock I was again cast upon my own
resources. I received, I confess; a certain amount of grim satisfac-
tion at seeing Brown—Bumptious Brown, as we call him in the
City, he being a Common Councilman, or a Liveryman, or something
; of that kind—pass by in a fly, with heaps of luggage and children,
all looking so depressingly wet;—and if he had not the meanness to
bring with him, m a half-dozen hamper, six bottles of his abominable
Gladstone Claret! He grinned at me as he passed, like a Chester
cat, I think they call that remarkable animal, and I afterwards
learnt the reason. He had been speculating for a rise in wheat, and,
1.
as he vulgarly said, the rain suited his book, and he only hoped it
would last for a week or two ! Ah! the selfishness of some men !
What cared he about my getting wet through twice in one day, so
long as it raised the price of his wretched wheat ?
My wife coolly recommended me to read the second volume of a
new novel she had got from the Library, called, I think, East
Glynne, or some such name, but how can a man read in a room with
four stout healthy boys and a baby, especially when the said baby is
evidently very uncomfortable, and the four boys are playing at leap-
frog ? Women have this wonderful faculty, my wife to a remarkable
extent. I have often, with unfeigned astonishment, seen her appa-
rently lost in the sentimental troubles of some imaginary heroine,
while the noisy domestic realities around her have gone on unheeded.
I again took my place at the window, and gazed, upon the melan-
choly sea, and remembered, with a smile of bitter irony, how I had
agreed to pay an extra guinea a week for the privilege of facing the
sea !—and such a sea ! It was, of course, very low water—it gene-
rally is at this charming place; and the sea had retired to its
extremest distance, as if utterly ashamed of its dull, damp, melan-
choly appearance. And there stood that ridiculous apology for a
Pier, with its long, lanky, bandy legs, on which I have been dragged
every evening to hear the Band play. Such a Band! The poor
wheezy cornet was bad enough, but the trombone, with its two notes
that it jerked out like the snorts of a starting train, was a caution.
Oh, that poor “ Sweetheart,” with which we were favoured every
evening! I always pictured her to myself sitting at a window list-
ening, enraptured, to a serenade from that Trombone !
But there ’s no Band to-night, not a solitary promenader on the
bandy-legged Pier, I even doubt if the Pier Master is sitting as
usual at the receipt of custom, and I pull down the blind, to shut
out the miserable prospect, with such an energetic jerk that I bring
down the whole complicated machinery, and nearly frighten Baby
into a fit, while the four irreverent boys indulge in a loud guffaw.
Thank goodness, on Saturday I exchange our miserable, wheezy,
asthmatic Band for the grand orchestra of the Covent Garden
Promenade Concerts, and the awful perfume of rotten seaweed for
the bracing atmosphere of glorious London. Outsider.
Vol. 85.