th whom we have a pleasant chat about Charles Dickens.
Harry Ford (the name of our friend) well remembers the great novelist,
when in early days he used to come on his annual excursions with his
family to Broadstairs. "Bless your soul," he says, "I can see 'Old
Charley,' as we used to call him among ourselves here, a-coming flying
down from the cliff with a hop, step, and jump, with his hair all flying
about. He used to sit sometimes on that rail" (pointing to the one
surrounding the harbour), "with his legs lolling about, and sometimes on
the seat that you're a-sitting on now" (adjoining the old Look-out
House opposite the Tartar Frigate Inn), "and he was very fond of talking
to us fellows and hearing our tales--he was very good-natured, and
nobody was liked better. And if you'll read" (continues our informant)
"that story that he wrote and printed about _Our Watering Place_, _I_
was the man who's mentioned there as mending a little ship for a boy.
_I_ held that child between my knees. And what's more, sir, _I_ took
'Old Charley,' on the very last time that he came over to Broadstairs
(he wasn't living here at the time), round the foreland to Margate, with
a party of four friends. I took 'em in my boat, the _Irene_," pointing
to a clinker-built strong boat lying in the harbour, capable of holding
twenty people. "The wind was easterly--the weather was rather rough, and
it took me three or four hours to get round. There was a good deal of
chaffing going on, I can tell you."

[Illustration: Old Look-out House Broadstairs]

Mrs. Long, of Zion Place, Broadstairs, the wife of an old coastguardman,
who was stationed at the Preventive Station when Dickens lodged at Fort
House, also remembered the novelist. The coastguard men are also
immortalized in _Our English Watering Place_, as "a steady, trusty,
well-conditioned, well-conducted set of men, with no misgiving about
looking you full in the face, and with a quiet, thorough-going way of
passing along to their duty at night, carrying huge sou'wester clothing
in reserve, that is fraught with all good prepossession. They are handy
fellows--neat about their houses, industrious at gardening, would get on
with their wives, one thinks, in a desert island--and people it too
soon."

Mrs. Long says "Mr. Dickens was a very nice sort of gentleman, but he
didn't like a noise." The windows of Fort House, she reminds us,
overlooked the coastguard station, and whenever the children playing