and that their gayeties are only different. I should really like to know
just what the entertainments are which are given in a building devoted to
them in a country neighborhood three or four miles from the village. It
was once a church, but is now used solely for social amusements.




IV

The amusements of the summer colony I have already hinted at. Besides
suppers, there are also teas, of larger scope, both afternoon and
evening. There are hops every week at the two largest hotels, which are
practically free to all; and the bathing-beach is, of course, a supreme
attraction. The bath-houses, which are very clean and well equipped,
are not very cheap, either for the season or for a single bath, and there
is a pretty pavilion at the edge of the sands. This is always full of
gossiping spectators of the hardy adventurers who brave tides too remote
from the Gulf Stream to be ever much warmer than sixty or sixty-five
degrees. The bathers are mostly young people, who have the courage of
their pretty bathing-costumes or the inextinguishable ardor of their
years. If it is not rather serious business with them all, still I
admire the fortitude with which some of them remain in fifteen minutes.
Beyond our colony, which calls itself the Port, there is a far more
populous watering-place, east of the Point, known as the Beach, which is
the resort of people several grades of gentility lower than ours: so
many, in fact, that we never can speak of the Beach without averting our
faces, or, at the best, with a tolerant smile. It is really a succession
of beaches, all much longer and, I am bound to say, more beautiful than
ours, lined with rows of the humbler sort of summer cottages known as