CHARACTERS ON THE BEACH AND STEYNE, BRIGHTON.

_On Bathing and Bathers--Advantages of Shampooing--French
Decency--Brighton Politeness--Sketches of Character--The
Banker's Widow--Miss Jefferies--Mrs. F----l--Peter
Paragraph, the London Correspondent--Jack Smith--The
French Consul--Paphian Divinities--C---- L----, Esq.--
Squeeze into the Libraries--The new Plunging Bath--Chain
Pier--Cockney Comicalities--Royal Gardens--The Club House._

~305~~The next morning early I proceeded to the beach to enjoy the
delightful and invigorating pleasure of sea-bathing. The clean pebble
shore extending, as it does here, for a long distance beneath the east
cliff, is a great advantage to those who, from indisposition or luxury,
seek a dip in the ocean. One practice struck me as being a little
objectionable, namely, the machines of the males and females being
placed not only within sight of each other, but actually close
alongside; by which circumstance, the sportive nymphs sometimes display
more of nature's charms to the eager gaze of her wanton sons than befits
me to tell, or decency to dwell on. I could not, however, with all the
purity of my ethics, help envying a robust fellow who was assisting in
clucking the dear unencumbered creatures under the rising wave.{1}

1 Some of the female bathers are very adventurous, and from
the great drawback of water many accidents have occurred.
I was much amused one morning with three sisters, in the
machine adjoining mine, continually crying out to a male
attendant "to push on, and not be afraid of the
consequences; we can all swim well," said one of the Miss
B----'s (well known as the _marine graces_). "But my machine
a'n't water-tight," replied the bathing-man, "and if I
trust it any farther in, I shall never be able to get it out
again." A Frenchman who came down to bathe with his wife and
sister insisted upon using the same machine with the ladies;
the bathing-women remonstrated, but _monsieur_ retorted very
fairly thus--"_Mon dieu I vat is dat vat you tell me about
decence. Tromperie_--shall I no dip _mon femme a sour_
myself vith quite as much _bienseance_ as dat vulgar brute
vat I see ducking de ladies yondere?"

~306~~The naiads of the deep are a strange race of mortals, half fish
and half human, with a masculine coarseness of manner that, I am
told, has been faithfully