lent
lawns set with brilliant beds of flowers; and the turf rivals that of
Newport; but without a tree or shrub anywhere along the shore the aspect
is too unrelieved and photographically distinct. Here as elsewhere the
cottage life is taking the place of hotel life.

There were few handsome turn-outs on the main drive, and perhaps the
popular character of the place was indicated by the use of omnibuses
instead of carriages. For, notwithstanding Elberon and such fashion as
is there gathered, Long Branch lacks "style." After the White Sulphur,
it did not seem to King alive with gayety, nor has it any society. In
the hotel parlors there is music in the evenings, but little dancing
except by children. Large women, offensively dressed, sit about the
veranda, and give a heavy and "company" air to the drawing-rooms. No,
the place is not gay. The people come here to eat, to bathe, to take the
air; and these are reasons enough for being here. Upon the artist, alert
for social peculiarities, the scene made little impression, for to an
artist there is a limit to the interest of a crowd showily dressed,
though they blaze with diamonds.

It was in search of something different from this that King and Forbes
took the train and traveled six miles to Asbury Park and Ocean Grove.
These great summer settlements are separated by a sheet of fresh water
three-quarters of a mile long; its sloping banks are studded with pretty
cottages, its surface is alive with boats gay with awnings of red and
blue and green, and seats of motley color, and is altogether a fairy
spectacle. Asbury Park is the worldly correlative of Ocean Grove, and
esteems itself a notch above it in social tone. Each is a city of small
houses, and each is teeming with life, but Ocean Grove, whose centre
is the camp-meeting tabernacle, lodges its devotees in tents as well as
cottages, and copies the architecture of Oak Bluffs. The inhabitants
of the two cities meet on the two-mile-long plank promenade by the sea.
Perhaps there is no place on the coast that would more astonish the
foreigner than Ocean Grove, and if he should describe it faithfully he
would be unpopular with its inhabitants. He would be astonished at the
crowds at the station, the throngs in the streets, the shops and stores
for supplying the wants of the religious pilgrims, and used as he might
be to the promiscuous bathing along our coast, he would inevitably
comment upon the freedom existing here. He would s