dresses, wet and clinging, walking in the streets of the town, and he would read notices posted up by the camp-meeting authorities forbidding women so clad to come upon the tabernacle ground.  He would also read placards along the beach explaining the reason why decency in bathing suits is desirable, and he would wonder why such notices should be necessary.  If, however, he walked along the shore at bathing times he might be enlightened, and he would see besides a certain simplicity of social life which sophisticated Europe has no parallel for.  A peculiar custom here is sand-burrowing.  To lie in the warm sand, which accommodates itself to any position of the body, and listen to the dash of the waves, is a dreamy and delightful way of spending a summer day.  The beach for miles is strewn with these sand-burrowers in groups of two or three or half a dozen, or single figures laid out like the effigies of Crusaders.  One encounters these groups sprawling in all attitudes, and frequently asleep in their promiscuous beds.  The foreigner is forced to see all this, because it is a public exhibition.  A couple in bathing suits take a dip together in the sea, and then lie down in the sand.  The artist proposed to make a sketch of one of these primitive couples, but it was impossible to do so, because they lay in a trench which they had scooped in the sand two feet deep, and had hoisted an umbrella over their heads.  The position was novel and artistic, but beyond the reach of the artist.  It was a great pity, because art is never more agreeable than when it concerns itself with domestic life.

While this charming spectacle was exhibited at the beach, afternoon service was going on in the tabernacle, and King sought that in preference.  The vast audience under the canopy directed its eyes to a man on the platform, who was violently gesticulating and shouting at the top of his voice.  King, fresh from the scenes of the beach, listened a long time, expecting to hear some close counsel on the conduct of life, but he heard nothing except the vaguest emotional exhortation.  By this the audience were apparently unmoved, for it was only when the preacher paused to get his breath on some word on which he could dwell by reason of its vowels, like w-o-r-l-d or a-n-d, that he awoke any response from his hearers.  The spiritual exercise of prayer which followed was even more of a physical demonstration, and it aroused more response.  The officiating minister, kneeling at the desk, gesticulated furiously, doubled up his fists and shook them on high, stretched out both arms, and pounded the pulpit.  Among people of his own race King had never before seen anything like this, and he went away a sadder if not a wiser man, having at least learned one lesson of charity—­never again to speak lightly of a negro religious meeting.

This vast city of the sea has many charms, and is the resort of thousands of people, who find here health and repose.  But King, who was immensely interested in it all as one phase of American summer life, was glad that Irene was not at Ocean Grove.