are doing at Old Orchard and Old Point. Here, with a maid, is a pair of
children who freely show one attribute of childhood not so pleasing as
others,--cruelty. They have a little monkey, fastened by collar and
chain, and it is pitiful and yet ludicrous to see the close watch the
animal keeps on his captors' movements. He has found a slack chain his
best policy, and adapts his every motion anxiously and solicitously to
the leaps of the boy. But the utmost vigilance avails him little. When
the child is weary with running and sudden turns, which have called for
marvelous dexterity of accommodation on the part of the monkey, the
chain is hauled up, with the animal clinging worriedly to it, and he is
flung far out into the fringe of waves, to pick his shivering way up
again and again from the water. These children have a white rat, also,
which they chase over the sand, and souse into puddles, and otherwise
maltreat. It is useless to interfere parentally, and we hardly see our
way to buying either rat or monkey, even to ensure them a peaceable old
age. One wonders why children have this queer taint of cruelty.
Unconscious cruelty it may be, but it seems none the less out of place
in their fresh, unused nature. We outgrow some rude vices as well as
rude virtues, in becoming older, and there is comfort in that.


III.

The bluff, coming out to the sea, cuts off, close at hand, the curve of
the shore toward the south, and we climb by a sloping path. From the
top, we look down upon, the beach we have left; back upon the downs
cluster the numberless private villas which form a feature of Biarritz;
to the left, over the near roofs and hotels of the town, we can see the
first far-off pickets of the Pyrenees; while immediately in front now
appear below us three or four rocky bays and coves, broken by the lines