" He, too, has obviously fallen a victim to its
charms, and duly comments on the blue birds, which Maeterlinck could
find here in any number without a lengthy and painstaking quest.
As a boy, whilst exploring rock-pools at low water on the west coast
of Scotland, I used to think longingly of the rock-pools in warm seas,
which I pictured to myself as perfect treasure-houses of marine
curiosities. They are most disappointing. Neither in Bermuda, nor in
the West Indies, nor even on the Cape Peninsula, where the Indian and
Atlantic Oceans meet, could I find anything whatever in the
rock-pools. To adopt the Sunday School child's word, there seem to be
no "tindamies" on the beaches of warm seas. Every one must have heard
of the little girl who got her first glimpse of the sea on a Sunday
School excursion. The child seemed terribly disappointed at something,
and in answer to her teacher's question, said that she liked the sea,
"but please where were the 'tindamies?' I was looking forward so to
the tindamies!" Pressed for an explanation the little girl repeated
from the Fourth Commandment, "In six days the Lord made heaven and
earth, the sea and all the tindamies." Tindamies is quite a convenient
word for star-fish, crabs, cuttle-fish and other flotsam and jetsam of
the beach.
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