tting back to first
principles, though I fancy I look like the little old woman who fell
asleep on the king's highway and woke up with abbreviated drapery; and
you look funnier still, Aunt Pen," said Debby, as she tied on her
pagoda-hat, and followed Mrs. Carroll, who walked out of her
dressing-room an animated bale of blue cloth surmounted by a gigantic
sun-bonnet.

Mr. Leavenworth was in waiting, and so like a blond-headed lobster in
his scarlet suit that Debby could hardly keep her countenance as they
joined the groups of bathers gathering along the breezy shore.

For an hour each day the actors and actresses who played their different
_roles_ at the ---- Hotel with such precision and success put off their
masks and dared to be themselves. The ocean wrought the change, for it
took old and young into its arms, and for a little while they played
like children in their mother's lap. No falsehood could withstand its
rough sincerity; for the waves washed paint and powder from worn faces,
and left a fresh bloom there. No ailment could entirely resist its
vigorous cure; for every wind brought healing on its wings, endowing
many a meagre life with another year of health. No gloomy spirit could
refuse to listen to its lullaby, and the spray baptized it with the
subtile benediction of a cheerier mood. No rank held place there; for
the democratic sea toppled down the greatest statesman in the land, and
dashed over the bald pate of a millionnaire with the same white-crested
wave that stranded a poor parson on the beach and filled a fierce
reformer's mouth with brine. No fashion ruled, but that which is as old
as Eden,--the beautiful fashion of simplicity. Belles dropped their
affectations with their hoops, and ran about the shore blithe-hearted
girls again. Young men forgot their vices and their follies, and were
not ashamed of the real courage, strength, and skill they had tried to
leave behind them with their boyish plays. Old men gathered shells with
the little Cupids dancing on the sand, and were better for that innocent
companionship; and young mothers never looked so beautiful as when they
rocked their babies on the bosom of the sea.

Debby vaguely felt this charm, and, yielding to it, splashed and sang
like any beach-bird, while Aunt Pen bobbed placidly up and down in a
retired corner, and Mr. Leavenworth swam to and fro, expressing his firm
belief in mermaids, sirens, and the rest of the aquatic sisterhood,
whose warb