The crowd was an immensely
good-humored one, and enjoyed itself. The sexes mingled together in the
water, and nothing thought of it, as old Pepys would have said, although
many of the tightly-fitting costumes left less to the imagination than
would have been desired by a poet describing the scene as a phase of the
'comedie humaine.' The band, having played out its hour, trudged back to
the hotel pier to toot while the noon steamboat landed its passengers, in
order to impress the new arrivals with the mad joyousness of the place.
The crowd gathered on the high gallery at the end of the pier added to
this effect of reckless holiday enjoyment. Miss Lamont was infected with
this gayety, and took a great deal of interest in this peripatetic band,
which was playing again on the hotel piazza before dinner, with a sort of
mechanical hilariousness. The rink band opposite kept up a lively
competition, grinding out go-round music, imparting, if one may say so, a
glamour to existence. The band is on hand at the pier at four o'clock to
toot again, and presently off, tramping to some other hotel to satisfy
the serious pleasure of this people.

While Mr. King could not help wondering how all this curious life would
strike Irene--he put his lonesomeness and longing in this way--and what
she would say about it, he endeavored to divert his mind by a study of
the conditions, and by some philosophizing on the change that had come
over American summer life within a few years. In his investigations he
was assisted by Mr. De Long, to whom this social life was absolutely new,
and who was disposed to regard it as peculiarly Yankee--the staid
dissipation of a serious-minded people. King, looking at it more
broadly, found this pasteboard city by the sea one of the most
interesting developments of American life. The original nucleus was the
Methodist camp-meeting, which, in the season, brought here twenty
thousand to thirty thousand people at a time, who camped and picnicked in
a somewhat primitive style. Gradually the people who came here
ostensibly for religious exercises made a longer and more permanent
occupation, and, without losing its ephemeral character, the place grew
and demanded more substantial accommodations. The spot is very
attractive. Although the shore looks to the east, and does not get the
prevailing southern breeze, and the beach has little surf, both water and
air are mild, the bathing is safe and agreeable, and the view of the