rriages, and all sorts of wheeled creatures, all looking as if they
had been in a whirlwind of red dust.

Cousin Dempster had sent his carriage ahead, and there his handsome bay
horses stood sweating themselves black, and dropping foam into the dusty
road. We got in, helter-skelter--no one cared which was first--and were
driven toward the sea-shore.

When we got in sight of the water the horses made a sudden turn, and
wheeled into a wide, dusty street, that runs right along the edge of the
water. It was an awful grand sight, but the waves didn't seem to have
strength enough to move, only gave out a lazy sob once in a while, as if
they were tired of carrying so many loafing ships about that hadn't
spirit enough to flap their own sails.

Long Branch is a real nice place after all; and just the broadest,
coolest, and most scrumptious tavern in it is the Ocean Hotel, which
stands just back of the sea-shore, stretching its white wings widely,
from the centre building a quarter of a mile, I do believe, each way.
Before the house is a great green lawn, with walks and carriage roads
cut through it that lead from the house to the high bank, against which
the ocean keeps beating all the year round.

On each side the walks are great white marble flower-pots--vases they
call them here--choke full and running over with flowers and vines, and
great broad-leaved plants that looked cool and green, hot as it was.

"Oh," says Cousin E. E. "Isn't that beautiful? So fresh, so bright, it
is like a moving garden."

So it was. All along those deep verandahs that run clear across the
front of the hotel in double rows, were swinging baskets full of flowers
and cool green leaves--hundreds of them--brightening the whole broad
front of the hotel, and under them was a crowd of people--gentlemen,
ladies, and children--reading, chatting, sleeping in the great easy
willow chairs, or walking up and down on the soft grass.

Sisters, I know now exactly the way an Arab feels when he finds a bright
spring--which they call an oasis--in the deserts of Sahara, and hears
the leaves shiver and the waters murmur. This hotel looked cool, still,
and refreshing like that. All the front was in shadow, before it lay the
deep blue water. Inside was Mr. Leland, a potentate among hotel-keepers,
ready to make us at home.

There it was again. Ovations will follow me. I had but just taken off my
dusty clothes, bathed my face and hands with cold water, and stepped o