To stay at the seaside properly, one should not think.  But even in staying at the seaside there are intervals, waking moments when meals come, even if there are no appointed meal-times.  Moreover, now and then, one must go to buy tobacco, a matter one can trust to no hireling, lest he get it dry.  It cannot be always seaside, even as it cannot be always May, and through the gaps thought creeps in.  Going over the cliff and along the parade, and down by the circulating library to the cigar divan, where they sell Parique tobacco, the swinging of one’s legs seems to act like a pendulum to the clockwork of one’s brain.  One meditates all the way, and chiefly on how few people there are who can really—­to a critical adept—­be said to stay at the seaside.

People seem to think that one can take a ticket to Eastbourne, or Bognor, or Ventnor, and come and stay at the seaside straight away, just as I have known new-hatched undergraduates tell people they were going to play billiards.  Thousands and thousands of people think they have stayed at the seaside, and have not, just as thousands of people erroneously imagine they have played whist.  For the latter have played not whist, but Bumble-puppy, and the former have only frequented a watering-place for a time.  Your true staying at the seaside is an art, demanding not only railway fares but special aptitude, and, moreover, needing culture, like all worthy arts.

The most insurmountable difficulty of the beginner is the classical simplicity of the whole thing.  To stay at the seaside properly you just spread yourself out on the extreme edge of the land and let the sunlight soak in.  Your eyes are fixed upon the horizon.  Some have it that your head should be towards the sea, but the best authorities think that this determines blood to that region, and so stimulates thought.  This is all the positive instruction; the rest is prohibition.  You must not think, and you must not move, neither may you go to sleep.  In a few minutes the adept becomes as a god, even as a god that sits upon the lotus leaf.  New light and colour come into the sky and sea, and the surges chant his praises.  But those who are not of the elect get pins and needles all over them.

It must be freely admitted that staying at the seaside such as this, staying at the seaside in its perfection, is a thing for a select few.  You want a broad stretch of beach and all the visible sea to yourself.  You cannot be disturbed by even the most idyllic children trying to bury you with sand and suchlike playfulness, nor by boatloads of the democracy rowing athwart your sea and sky.  And the absence of friend or wife goes without saying.  I notice down here a very considerable quantity of evidently married pairs, and the huge majority of the rest of the visitors run in couples, and are to all appearances engaged.  If they are not, I would submit that they ought to be.  Probably there is a certain satisfaction in sitting by the sea with the girl you are in love