Wilfred Pickles, I happened to notice by chance in an
evening paper, was at Land's End on Wednesday night. A turn of the knob and I was there with him. Fortunately it wasn't Land's End really, but Sennen Cove, where there are live men and women, not simply rocks and waves. And first-class men and women they were. The first was called Nicholas—exactly as it should be ; when I first knew the Cove more than fifty years ago they were all Nicholases and Penders and Georges. And of course they all married each other, so to speak. On Wednesday there were one or two Thomases, too, and one of them gave the best answer of the evening. Had he ever been out of Cornwall, he was asked. Well, he was in the Jameson Raid, before the Boer War. That surprised Mr. Pickles a bit. It reminded me of a story I believe firmly to be true. Sennen Cove at the end of last century was a world of its own. Even Penzance was hardly on the fringe of it. Just before the South African War broke out the fishermen congregated by the slipway were discussing the outlook. " If it do come to a war " they explained to a member of the artists' colony who happend to stroll up, " us chaps have decided us'll be on the side of England." And they quite certainly were. Brains Trust for highbrows ; Wilfred
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