ke one of the ordinary tall New York houses that
had concluded to lie over on its side and grow, rather than take
the trouble of piling on its stories standing. In this encampment of
wooden pavilions is lived the peculiar life of the place.

[Illustration: ON THE SHINING SANDS.]

We are sure it is a sincere, natural, sensible kind of life, as
compared with that of other bathing-shores. Although there are brass
bands at the hotels, and hops in the evening, and an unequal struggle
of macassar oil with salt and stubborn locks, yet the artificiality is
kept at a minimum. People really do bathe, really do take walks on the
beach for the love of the ocean, really do pick up shells and throw
them away again, really do go yachting and crab-catching; and if they
try city manners in the evening, they are so tired with their honest
day's work that it is apt to end in misery. On the hotel piazzas you
see beauties that surprise you with exquisite touches of the warm and
languid South. That dark Baltimore girl, her hair a constellation of
jessamines, is beating her lover's shoulders with her fan in a state
of ferocity that you would give worlds to encounter. That pair of
proud Philadelphia sisters, statues sculptured in peach-pulp and
wrapped in gauze, look somehow like twin Muses at the gates of a
temple. Whole rows of unmatched girls stare at the sea, desolate but
implacable, waiting for partners equal to them in social position. In
such a dearth a Philadelphia girl will turn to her old music-teacher
and flirt solemnly with him for a whole evening, sooner than involve
herself with well-looking young chits from Providence or New York,
who may be jewelers' clerks when at home. Yet the unspoiled and fruity
beauty of these Southern belles is very striking to one who comes
fresh from Saratoga and the sort of upholstered goddesses who are
served to him there.

Some years ago the Surf House was the finest place of entertainment,
but it has now many rivals, taller if not finer. Congress Hall, under
the management of Mr. G.W. Hinkle, is a universal favorite, while the
Senate House, standing under the shadow of the lighthouse, has the
advantage of being the nearest to the beach of all the hotels. Both
are ample and hospitable hostelries, where you are led persuasively
through the Eleusinian mystery of the Philadelphia cuisine.
Schaufler's is an especial resort of our German fellow-citizens, who
may there be seen enjoying themselves in the