e all types of the skating-rink--an institution which is
beginning to express itself in American manners.

The band was playing on the pier when the steamer landed at Cottage City
(or Oak Bluff, as it was formerly called), and the pier and the gallery
leading to it were crowded with spectators, mostly women a pleasing
mingling of the skating-rink and sewing-circle varieties--and gayety was
apparently about setting in with the dusk. The rink and the, ground
opposite the hotel were in full tilt. After supper King and Forbes took
a cursory view of this strange encampment, walking through the streets of
fantastic tiny cottages among the scrub oaks, and saw something of family
life in the painted little boxes, whose wide-open front doors gave to
view the whole domestic economy, including the bed, centre-table, and
melodeon. They strolled also on the elevated plank promenade by the
beach, encountering now and then a couple enjoying the lovely night.
Music abounded. The circus-pumping strains burst out of the rink,
calling to a gay and perhaps dissolute life. The band in the nearly
empty hotel parlor, in a mournful mood, was wooing the guests who did not
come to a soothing tune, something like China--"Why do we mourn departed
friends?" A procession of lasses coming up the broad walk, advancing out
of the shadows of night, was heard afar off as the stalwart singers
strode on, chanting in high nasal voices that lovely hymn, which seems to
suit the rink as well as the night promenade and the campmeeting:

"We shall me--um um--we shall me-eet, me-eet--um um
--we shall meet,
In the sweet by-am-by, by-am-by-um um-by-am-by.
On the bu-u-u-u--on the bu-u-u-u--on the bu-te-ful shore."

In the morning this fairy-like settlement, with its flimsy and eccentric
architecture, took on more the appearance of reality. The season was
late, as usual, and the hotels were still waiting for the crowds that
seem to prefer to be late and make a rushing carnival of August, but the
tiny cottages were nearly all occupied. At 10 A.M. the band was playing
in the three-story pagoda sort of tower at the bathing-place, and the
three stories were crowded with female spectators. Below, under the
bank, is a long array of bath-houses, and the shallow water was alive
with floundering and screaming bathers. Anchored a little out was a
raft, from which men and boys and a few venturesome girls were diving,
displaying the human form in graceful curves.