The several waterside places I have mentioned are more or less local in character, but there is nothing local about Fortress Monroe, on Old Point Comfort, just across Hampton Roads, which has for many years been one of the most beautiful and highly individualized idling places on the Atlantic Coast.

The old moated fortress, the interior of which is more like some lovely garden of the last century than a military post, remains an important coast artillery station, and is a no less lovely spot now than when our grandparents went there on their wedding journeys, stopping at the old Hygiea Hotel, long since gone the way of old hotels.

The huge Chamberlin Hotel, however, remains apparently unchanged, and is to-day as spacious, comfortable and homelike as when our fathers and mothers, or perhaps we ourselves, stopped there years ago.  The Chamberlin, indeed, seems to have the gift of perennial youth.  I remember a ball which was given there in honor of Admiral Sampson and the officers of his fleet, after the Spanish War.  The ballroom was so full of naval and military uniforms that I, in my somber civilian clothing, felt wan and lonely.  Most of the evening I passed in modest retirement, looking out upon the brilliant scene from behind a potted palm.  And yet, when my companion and I, now in our dotage, recently visited the Chamberlin, there stood the same potted palm in the same place.  Or if it was not the same, it was one exactly like it.

The Chamberlin is of course a great headquarters for army and navy people, and we observed, moreover, that honeymooning couples continue to infest it—­for Fortress Monroe has long ranked with Washington and Niagara Falls as a scene to be visited upon the wedding journey.

There they all were, as of old:  the young husband scowling behind his newspaper and pretending to read and not to be thinking of his pretty little wife across the breakfast table; the fat blonde bride being continually photographed by her adoring mate—­now leaning against a pile on the pier, now seated on a wall, with her feet crossed, now standing under a live-oak within the fortress; also there was the inevitable young pair who simply couldn’t keep their hands off from each other; we came upon them constantly—­in the sun-parlor, where she would be seated on the arm of his chair, running her hand through his hair; wandering in the eventide along the shore, with arms about each other, or going in to meals, she leading him down the long corridor by his “ickle finger”.

* * * * *

I recall that it was as we were going back to Norfolk from Old Point Comfort, having dinner on a most excellent large steamer, running to Norfolk and Cape Charles, that my companion remarked to me, out of a clear sky, that he had made up his mind, once for all, that, come what might, he would never, never, never get married.  No, never!

CHAPTER XXV