boat with a bare-armed, resolute young woman in it,
sending her bark spinning over waves mountain-high.
"Yes," said the artist, "what cheerfulness those works of art will give
to the little parlors up in the country, when they are set up with other
shells on the what-not in the corner! These shells always used to remind
me of missionaries and the cause of the heathen; but when I see them now
I shall think of Atlantic City."
"But the representative things here," interrupted Irene, "are the
photographs, the tintypes. To see them is just as good as staying here
to see the people when they come."
"Yes," responded Mr. King, "I think art cannot go much further in this
direction."
If there were not miles of these show-cases of tintypes, there were at
least acres of them. Occasionally an instantaneous photograph gave a
lively picture of the beach, when the water was full of bathers-men,
women, children, in the most extraordinary costumes for revealing or
deforming the human figure--all tossing about in the surf. But most of
the pictures were taken on dry land, of single persons, couples, and
groups in their bathing suits. Perhaps such an extraordinary collection
of humanity cannot be seen elsewhere in the world, such a uniformity
of one depressing type reduced to its last analysis by the sea-toilet.
Sometimes it was a young man and a maiden, handed down to posterity in
dresses that would have caused their arrest in the street, sentimentally
reclining on a canvas rock. Again it was a maiden with flowing hair,
raised hands clasped, eyes upturned, on top of a crag, at the base
of which the waves were breaking in foam. Or it was the same stalwart
maiden, or another as good, in a boat which stood on end, pulling
through the surf with one oar, and dragging a drowning man (in a bathing
suit also) into the boat with her free hand. The legend was, "Saved."
There never was such heroism exhibited by young women before, with such
raiment, as was shown in these rare works of art.
As they walked back to the hotel through a sandy avenue lined with
jig-saw architecture, Miss Benson pointed out to them some things that
she said had touched her a good deal. In the patches of sand before each
house there was generally an oblong little mound set about with a rim of
stones, or, when something more artistic could be afforded, with shells.
On each of these little graves was a flower, a sickly geranium, or a
humble marigold, or some other fl
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