ashing in the surf. Some
fifty yards away is another school of bathers, whose back hair betrays
their sex, and who are clad in garments made like those worn by
feminine bathers at Long Branch, etc. There is no commingling of the
sexes in the water, as our American custom is, but on the score of
modesty I must confess to a prejudice in favor of the American plan,
nevertheless. The British theory evidently presumes that men have no
modesty among themselves. Custom regulates these matters, I suppose.
I have never felt disposed to blush for my naked feet and arms while
conversing with a lady on the beach at Long Branch, being snugly clad
from head to foot in a flannel costume. But I confess to a shrinking
sense of the incompleteness of the prescribed fig-leaves as I stand
in the door of the bathing-machine at Tenby. To cover myself with the
water as quickly as possible appears to be the only remedy, however,
and I take a header from the doorsill. Ugh! The water is like ice! To
one accustomed to the warm American bathing-suit the linen substitute
of Tenby is a most insufficient protection. At home I have on occasion
extended the revels of the surf for a full hour, being a pretty strong
swimmer and exceedingly fond of the exercise. I get enough at Tenby
in precisely two minutes, and hasten to don my customary clothing.
Nevertheless, it is contended that the surf at Tenby is pleasant for
bathers as late as Christmas, and I am told there really are Britons
who bathe daily in the sea here quite up to the first snow. It is
certain that the fashionable season does not end till November, and
some stay straight on through the winter.

Among the lions of Tenby none is more interesting than St. Catharine's
Island, a great rugged hill of solid limestone almost devoid of
verdure and rent into innumerable fissures, with a succession of dark
romantic coves and caverns and jagged projecting crags fringing its
sides completely round. At high tide this islet is separated from the
mainland by a deep rolling sea. At low tide its shores are left dry by
the receding waters. It is a curious sight to watch this daily advance
and retreat of the sea. To see the tides of ocean come and go is no
novelty, but it becomes a novelty under circumstances like these,
where every day a dry bridge of yellow sand is stretched forth from
the islet to the mainland, across which a stream of humanity pours the
moment the path is clear. At first only one person at a