operly
constituted young person in Tenby would venture upon without express
warrant in words. Receiving information on this point from you, the
probability is that she imparts to you in return the information that
the house is full. Such, indeed, is the chronic condition of the
hotels at Tenby in the season; and unless you have written beforehand
and secured accommodations, you are not likely to find them. In the
life of a Welsh watering-place hotels do not fill the important place
they do in American summer resorts. Nobody lives at an hotel in Tenby.
If their stay be longer than a day or two (and very few indeed are
they who come to-day and are off to-morrow), visitors inevitably go
into lodgings. Such is the custom of the country, and there is no
provision for any other, no encouragement to a prolonged stay at an
hotel. The result is, that the hotels are in an incessant state of
bustle and change: there is a never-intermitting stream of arrivals,
who only ask to be made comfortable for a night or two while they are
looking for lodgings, and then make way for the next squad. Tenby
abounds in lodging-houses, the expenses of which are smaller than
hotel expenses, while their comforts are greater, their cares actually
less and their good tone unquestionable. The various lodging-house
quarters vie with each other in genteel cognomens and aristocratic
flavor. The Esplanade is but a row of lodging-houses. The various
Terraces, each with a prenomen more graceful than the other, are the
same. The windows of Tudor Square and Victoria street, Paragon Place
and Glendower Crescent, bloom with invitations to "inquire within." A
handsome parlor and bedroom may be had for two pounds a week, and the
cost of food and sundries need not exceed two pounds more for two
persons moderately fond of good living; which means, at Tenby, the
fattest and whitest of fowls, the freshest and daintiest salmon and
john dories, the reddest and sweetest of lobsters and prawns. Those
who prefer to take a house have every encouragement to do so. A bijou
of a furnished cottage, all overrun with vines and flowers, may be had
for three pounds a month, the use of plate and linen included. These
things are fatal to hotel ambition, for although the hotels are not
expensive, from an American point of view, they cannot compete with
such figures as these. Hence there is nothing to induce a change in
the customs of Tenby, which have prevailed ever since it became a