MacMillan's Magazine

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE CHARM OF THE LOWER THAMES It was my privilege, some few years ago, to own a friend whose talents were most clearly wasted amid the ledgers of a City office. The steam and oil of an engine-room, tempered by the river breezes, spelled happiness, and the dull routine of business keen misery to that...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE CHARM OF THE LOWER THAMES It was my privilege, some few years ago, to own a friend whose talents were most clearly wasted amid the ledgers of a City office. The steam and oil of an engine-room, tempered by the river breezes, spelled happiness, and the dull routine of business keen misery to that unfettered soul. Hence it followed that in his hours of relaxation a steam-launch was necessary to his content; and, since neither his funds nor his studied recklessness of apparel were suited to the Upper Thames, he turned his attention to the wilder river below bridges. It was the habit of my brother and myself to share his follies, and thus, when a chance-read advertisement lured him to Rotten Row in the West India Docks, we formed his escort. There, where the derelicts of the river lie in an ease that is not dignified and plead for purchase, we found the Lydia, who straightway won our hearts, and from that hour the Lower Thames had claimed us for its own. In no sense of the word was the Lydia an up-river craft; that fact, at least, was made apparent by the merest glance. I would that I had space for an adequate catalogue of her virtues and defects, ?-especially her defects. She had grown old in Government service, but her narrow, forty-foot hull was of good oak and still fairly sound; and there perhaps her soundness ended. She carried a high unsightly cabin aft, not unremotely resembling the roof of an antiquated bathing-machine, and forward was a flush forepeak, always abrim with lumber. In the former three very weary men might with difficulty contrive to sleep. Between these two was the tiny iron-roofed engine- room, a very inferno in warm weather when the fires were full. There, in its majesty, stood the aged single engine, always bad to cope with, and the boiler, not se...