Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/217

 should be trapped and carried home for the "museum." One day "Boy" brings for the old sailor's inspection a beautiful rose-colored sea-anemone which he had managed to detach from the rocks and carry off in his tin pail.

"There y'are, you see!" cries Rattling Jack. "Now ye've made a fellow-creature miserable, y'are as 'appy as the day is long! Eh, eh—why for mussy's sake didn't ye leave it on the rocks in the sun with the sea a-washin' it an' the blessin' of the Lord A'mighty on it? They things are jes' like human souls—there they stick on a rock o' faith and hope maybe, jes' wantin' nothin' but to be let alone; and then by and by some one comes along that begins to poke at 'em, and pull 'em about, and wake up all their sensitiveness-like—'urt 'em as much as possible, that's the way!—and then they pulls 'em off their rocks and carries 'em off in a mean little tin pail! Ay, ay, ye may call a tin pail whatever ye please—a pile o' money or a pile o' love—it's nought but a tin pail—not a rock with the sun shinin' upon it. And o' coorse they dies—there ain't no sense in livin' in a tin pail."

This weary-wise old fellow must be credited to Miss Corelli as one of her best portraits in miniature. His observations are full of sage and seasoning, and we could do with more of him.

Did Miss Corelli's themes allow of it, we might have been treated to a good deal more humor in her works, but she is too good an artist to intrude comic relief when such relief would merely be an