lines, and its feeling for atmospheric effect, has done everything for
the place, and bad taste has not quite spoiled it. There is a sloping,
shallow beach, very broad, of fine, hard sand, excellent for driving or
for walking, extending unbroken three miles down to Cape May Point, which
has hotels and cottages of its own, and lifesaving and signal stations.
Off to the west from this point is the long sand line to Cape Henlopen,
fourteen miles away, and the Delaware shore. At Cape May Point there is
a little village of painted wood houses, mostly cottages to let, and a
permanent population of a few hundred inhabitants. From the pier one
sees a mile and a half of hotels and cottages, fronting south, all
flaming, tasteless, carpenter's architecture, gay with paint. The sea
expanse is magnificent, and the sweep of beach is fortunately
unencumbered, and vulgarized by no bath-houses or show-shanties. The
bath-houses are in front of the hotels and in their enclosures; then come
the broad drive, and the sand beach, and the sea. The line is broken
below by the lighthouse and a point of land, whereon stands the elephant.
This elephant is not indigenous, and he stands alone in the sand, a
wooden sham without an explanation. Why the hotel-keeper's mind along
the coast regards this grotesque structure as a summer attraction it is
difficult to see. But when one resort had him, he became a necessity
everywhere. The travelers walked down to this monster, climbed the
stairs in one of his legs, explored the rooms, looked out from the
saddle, and pondered on the problem. This beast was unfinished within
and unpainted without, and already falling into decay. An elephant on
the desert, fronting the Atlantic Ocean, had, after all, a picturesque
aspect, and all the more so because he was a deserted ruin.

The elephant was, however, no emptier than the cottages about which our
friends strolled. But the cottages were all ready, the rows of new
chairs stood on the fresh piazzas, the windows were invitingly open, the