The Argosy — page 70: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Eo On Board the ‘‘ Batavia.” We landed in a small boat, humbly, quietly. No royal salute, no clashing of bells. The place had not altered in the least. It would be difficult for Gibraltar to change its appearance. In one sense of the word, it may emphatically be said that there is no room for improvement. An earthquake might rend the rock asunder, reduce the fortifications to ashes, and devastate the Alameda; but nothing short of a convulsion of nature can alter the aspect of this Pillar of Hercules. The very shops were unaltered, and seemed to display the very same wares as of old. It was just as if they had been to sleep for six years, and wakened up again. We went into most of them for the sake of renewing old impressions, and the owners all declared they knew me again perfectly. It is astonishing how habit becomes second nature, and people will tell stories with every appearance of truth. Yet they ought to have remembered me, if only out of gratitude, as being one of those who had bought up the whole town, whereby they had made sufficient to retire comfortably upon for the next five years at least. To-night we had at least one consolation—there was nothing new to tempt us. Fashions do not seem to change in this part of the world. They are not like the Paris windows, with their confections de nouveautés to allure the weak and unwary. A hundred years hence, as far as one can judge, when he who writes and you who read these lines will have passed into realms where the centuries are not, the shops of Gibraltar will look exactly as they look now, and the third and fourth generation will probably have inherited all the characteristics of the present, even to the happy faculty of drawing facts from their imagination. Mauleverer was much amused at an announcement over a chemist’s shop of ‘‘ Economical Druggist;” for if there is one thing above others in which economy ought not to be studied, it surely is in the taking of physic : of which, nevertheless, it is said people take a great deal too much. Total abstinence here is probably better even than moderation, though in the matter of strong waters and the fermented grape juice moderation is the greater virtue. A certain cook of our parental home, who had lived seven years with the celebrated Dr. Cockroach, was wont to tell us that never during that period of servitude was a single box of his world-famed boluses ever seen to enter the house. Of course, it might possibly have been only another exemplification of the old truth that a prophet has no honour in his own country. It is so generally the fact that we believe either too much or too little in ourselves. It was a short visit, yet a sad one, this evening visit to Gibraltar. However happy present circumstances and surroundings may be there must inevitably be an element of intense sadness in all things and events that remind one of the past, and suggest comparisons with bygone days. They are chapters closed in our lives. They COMIC OOOKS.CO