ther promenaders, who were
good enough ladies and gentlemen in this friendly mist.

The next day Mr. King made a worse mistake. He remembered that at high
noon everybody went down to the first beach, a charming sheltered place
at the bottom of the bay, where the rollers tumble in finely from the
south, to bathe or see others bathe. The beach used to be lined with
carriages at that hour, and the surf, for a quarter of a mile, presented
the appearance of a line of picturesquely clad skirmishers going out to
battle with the surf. Today there were not half a dozen carriages and
omnibuses altogether, and the bathers were few-nursery maids, fragments
of a day-excursion, and some of the fair conventionists. Newport was not
there. Mr. King had led his party into another social blunder. It has
ceased to be fashionable to bathe at Newport.

Strangers and servants may do so, but the cottagers have withdrawn their
support from the ocean. Saltwater may be carried to the house and used
without loss of caste, but bathing in the surf is vulgar. A gentleman
may go down and take a dip alone--it had better be at an early hour--and
the ladies of the house may be heard to apologize for his eccentricity,
as if his fondness for the water were abnormal and quite out of
experience. And the observer is obliged to admit that promiscuous
bathing is vulgar, as it is plain enough to be seen when it becomes
unfashionable. It is charitable to think also that the cottagers have
made it unfashionable because it is vulgar, and not because it is a cheap
and refreshing pleasure accessible to everybody.

Nevertheless, Mr. King's ideas of Newport were upset. "It's a little off
color to walk much on the cliffs; you lose caste if you bathe in the
surf. What can you do?"

"Oh," explained Miss Lamont, "you can make calls; go to teas and
receptions and dinners; belong to the Casino, but not appear there much;
and you must drive on the Ocean Road, and look as English as you can.
Didn't you notice that Redfern has an establishment on the Avenue? Well,
the London girls wear what Redfern tells them to wear-much to the
improvement of their appearance--and so it has become possible for a
New-Yorker to become partially English without sacrificing her native
taste."

Before lunch Mrs. Bartlett Glow called on the Bensons, and invited them
to a five-o'clock tea, and Miss Lamont, who happened to be in the parlor,
was included in the invitation. Mrs. Glow was as graciou