y exquisite learning how to laugh
out loud, the splash of the brine, the cachinnation of a band of harmless
savages, the stun of the surge on your right ear, the hiss of the surf, the
saturnalia of the elements; while overpowering all other sounds are the
orchestral harmonics of the sea, which roll on through the ages, all
shells, all winds, all caverns, all billows heard in "the oratorio of the
creation."

But while bathing, the ludicrous will often break through the grand. Swept
hither and thither, you find, moving in reel and cotillon, saraband and
rigadoon and hornpipe, Quakers and Presbyterians who are down on the dance.
Your sparse clothing feels the stress of the waves, and you think what an
awful thing it would be if the girdle should burst or a button break, and
you should have, out of respect to the feelings of others, to go up the
beach sidewise or backward or on your hands and knees.

Close beside you, in the surf, is a judge of the Court of Appeals, with a
garment on that looks like his grandmother's night-gown just lifted from
the wash-tub and not yet wrung out. On the other side is a maiden with a
twenty-five-cent straw hat on a head that ordinarily sports a hundred
dollars' worth of millinery. Yonder is a doctor of divinity with his head
in the sand and his feet beating the air, traveling heavenward, while his
right hand clutches his wife's foot, as much as to say, "My feet are
useless in this emergency; give me the benefit of yours."

Now a stronger wave, for which none are ready, dashes in, and with it
tumble ashore, in one great wreck of humanity, small craft and large, stout
hulk and swift clipper, helm first, topsail down, forestay-sail in
tatters, keel up, everything gone to pieces in the swash of the surges.

Oh, the glee of sea-bathing! It rouses the apathetic. It upsets the
supercilious and pragmatical. It is balsamic for mental wounds. It is a
tonic for those who need strength, and an anodyne for those who require
soothing, and a febrifuge for those who want their blood cooled; a filling
up for minds pumped dry, a breviary for the superstitious with endless
matins and vespers, and to the Christian an apocalyptic vision where the
morning sun gilds the waters, and there is spread before him "a sea of
glass mingled with fire." "Thy way, O God, is in the sea, and thy path in
the great waters!"

CHAPTER LIII.

HARD SHELL CONSIDERATIONS.

The plumage of the robin red-breast, the mottle