low the landing is a line of broken, ragged, slimy
rocks, as if they had been dumped there for a riprap wall. Fronting this
unkempt shore is a line of barrack-like hotels, with a few cottages of
the cheap sort. At the end of this row of hotels is a fine granite
Casino, spacious, solid, with wide verandas, and a tennis-court--such a
building as even Newport might envy. Then come more hotels, a cluster of
cheap shops, and a long line of bath-houses facing a lovely curving
beach. Bathing is the fashion at the Pier, and everybody goes to the
beach at noon. The spectators occupy chairs on the platform in front of
the bath-houses, or sit under tents erected on the smooth sand. At high
noon the scene is very lively, and even picturesque, for the ladies here
dress for bathing with an intention of pleasing. It is generally
supposed that the angels in heaven are not edified by this promiscuous
bathing, and by the spectacle of a crowd of women tossing about in the
surf, but an impartial angel would admit that many of the costumes here
are becoming, and that the effect of the red and yellow caps, making a
color line in the flashing rollers, is charming. It is true that there
are odd figures in the shifting melee--one solitary old gentleman, who
had contrived to get his bathing-suit on hind-side before, wandered along
the ocean margin like a lost Ulysses; and that fat woman and fat man were
never intended for this sort of exhibition; but taken altogether, with
its colors, and the silver flash of the breaking waves, the scene was
exceedingly pretty. Not the least pretty part of it was the fringe of
children tumbling on the beach, following the retreating waves, and
flying from the incoming rollers with screams of delight. Children,
indeed, are a characteristic of Narragansett Pier--children and mothers.
It might be said to be a family place; it is a good deal so on Sundays,
and occasionally when the "business men" come down from the cities to see
how their wives and children get on at the hotels.

After the bathing it is the fashion to meet again at the Casino and take
lunch--sometimes through a straw--and after dinner everybody goes for a
stroll on the cliffs. This is a noble sea-promenade; with its handsome
villas and magnificent rocks, a fair rival to Newport. The walk, as
usually taken, is two or three miles along the bold, rocky shore, but an
ambitious pedestrian may continue it to the light on Point Judith.
Nowhere on this coast