rists were advised to
go as the best post of observation, a medium point of respectability
between the excursion medley of one extremity and the cottage refinement
of the other, and equally convenient to the races, which attract crowds
of metropolitan betting men and betting women. The fine toilets of
these children of fortune are not less admired than their fashionable
race-course manners. The satirist who said that Atlantic City is typical
of Philadelphia, said also that Long Branch is typical of New York. What
Mr. King said was that the satirist was not acquainted with the good
society of either place.

All the summer resorts get somehow a certain character, but it is not
easy always to say how it is produced. The Long Branch region was
the resort of politicians, and of persons of some fortune who connect
politics with speculation. Society, which in America does not identify
itself with politics as it does in England, was not specially attracted
by the newspaper notoriety of the place, although, fashion to some
extent declared in favor of Elberon.

In the morning the artist went up to the pier at the bathing hour.
Thousands of men, women, and children were tossing about in the lively
surf promiscuously, revealing to the spectators such forms as Nature had
given them, with a modest confidence in her handiwork. It seemed to the
artist, who was a student of the human figure, that many of these people
would not have bathed in public if Nature had made them self-conscious.
All down the shore were pavilions and bath-houses, and the scene at a
distance was not unlike that when the water is occupied by schools of
leaping mackerel. An excursion steamer from New York landed at the
pier. The passengers were not of any recognized American type, but mixed
foreign races a crowd of respectable people who take their rare holidays
rather seriously, and offer little of interest to an artist. The boats
that arrive at night are said to bring a less respectable cargo.

It is a pleasant walk or drive down to Elberon when there is a
sea-breeze, especially if there happen to be a dozen yachts in the
offing. Such elegance as this watering-place has lies in this direction;
the Elberon is a refined sort of hotel, and has near it a group of
pretty cottages, not too fantastic for holiday residences, and even the
"greeny-yellowy" ones do not much offend, for eccentricities of color
are toned down by the sea atmosphere. These cottages have excel