The Toilers of the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

been thrust there by the hand of a giant. The ravines form the streets, with flights of steps providing shortcuts. The excellent Anglo-Norman carriages gallop up and down the steep streets. In the main square the market women, sitting out in the open, are exposed to the winter showers, while a few paces away is a bronze statue of a prince. 10 A foot of water falls on Jersey every year, ten and a half inches on Guernsey. The fish merchants are better off than the sellers of farm produce: the fish market, a large covered hall, has marble tables with magnificent displays of fish, for the fishermen of Guernsey frequently bring in miraculous drafts. There is no public library, but there is a Mechanics’ Institution and Literary Society. There is a college.
    The town builds as many churches as it can, and when they are built they must be approved by the Lords of the Council. It is not unusual to see carts passing through the streets of the town carrying arched wooden windows presented by some carpenter to some church. There is a courthouse. The judges, in purple robes, give their judgments in open court. Last century butchers could not sell a pound of beef or mutton until the magistrates had chosen their meat.
    There are many private chapels in protest against the official churches. Go into one of these chapels, and you will hear a countryman expounding to others the doctrines of Nestorianism (that is, the difference between the Mother of Christ and the Mother of God) or teaching that the Father is power, while the Son is only a limited power—which is very much like the heresy of Abelard. There are large numbers of Irish Catholics, who are not noted for their patience, so that theological discussions are sometimes punctuated by orthodox fisticuffs.
    Sunday is, by law, a day of stagnation. Everything is permitted, except drinking a glass of beer, on Sunday. If you felt thirsty on the “blessed Sabbath day” you would scandalize worthy Amos Chick, who is licensed to sell ale and cider in the High Street. The law on Sunday observance permits singing, but without drinking. Except when praying people do not say “My God”: they say instead “My Good”—the word
good
replacing God. A young French assistant teacher in a boarding school who picked up her scissors with the exclamation “Ah mon Dieu!” was dismissed for “swearing.” People here are more biblical than evangelical.
    There is a theater. The entrance is a doorway in a deserted street giving access to a corridor. The interior is rather in the style of architecture adopted for haylofts. Satan lives here in very modest style and is poorly lodged. Opposite the theater is the prison, another lodging of the same individual. On the hill to the north, in Castle Carey (a solecism: the right form is Carey Castle), there is a valuable collection of pictures, mainly Spanish. If it were publicly owned it would be a museum. In some aristocratic houses there are curious specimens of the Dutch painted tiles with which Tsar Peter’s chimneypiece at Saardam is faced and of those magnificent tile paintings known in Portugal as
azulejos,
products of the high art of tin-glazed earthenware that has recently been revived, finer than before, thanks to initiators like Dr. Lasalle, manufactories like the one at Premières, 11 and pottery painters like Deck and Devers.
    The Chaussée d’Antin of Jersey is Rouge-Bouillon; the Faubourg Saint-Germain 12 of Guernsey is Les Rohais. Here there are many handsome streets, finely laid out and intersected by gardens. St. Peter Port has as many trees as roofs, more nests than houses, and more sounds of birds than of carriages. Les Rohais has the grand patrician aspect of the fashionable quarters of London and is white and clean. But cross a ravine, pass over Mill Street, continue through a narrow gap between two tall buildings, and climb a narrow and interminable flight of steps with tortuous bends and