with the sea at hand, to have thrown it away,
say in eighteen hundred and thirty, are standing
enigmas. Every year the bills come out,
every year the Master of the Rooms gets into
a little pulpit on a table and offers it for sale,
every year nobody buys it, every year it is
put away somewhere until next year when it
appears again as if the whole thing were a
new idea. We have a faint remembrance of
an unearthly collection of clocks, purporting
to be the work of Parisian and Genevese artists
—chiefly bilious-faced clocks, supported on
sickly white crutches, with their pendulums
dangling like lame legs—to which a similar
course of events occurred for several years, until
they seemed to lapse away, of mere imbecility.

Attached to our Assembly Rooms is a
Library. There is a Wheel of Fortune in it,
but it is rusty and dusty, and never turns.
A large doll with moveable eyes, was put up
to be raffled for, by five-and-twenty members
at two shillings, seven years ago this autumn,
and the list is not full yet. We are rather
sanguine, now, that the raffle will come off
next year. We think so, because we only
want nine members, and should only want
eight, but for number two having grown up
since her name was entered, and withdrawn
it when she was married. Down the street,
there is a toy-ship of considerable burden, in
the same condition. Two of the boys who
were entered for that raffle have gone to
India in real ships, since; and one was shot,
and died in the arms of his sister's lover, by
whom he sent his last words home.

This is the library for the Minerva Press. If
you want that kind of reading, come to our
Watering Place. The leaves of the romances,
reduced to a condition very like curl-paper,
are thickly studded with notes in pencil: some-times
complimentary, sometimes jocose. Some
of these commentators, like commentators in
a more extensive way, quarrel with one
another. One young gentleman who sarcastically
writes "O!!!" after every sentimental
passage, is pursued through his literary career
by another, who writes "Insulting Beast!"
Miss Julia Mills has read the whole collection
of these books. She has left marginal
notes on the pages, as "Is not this truly
touching? J. M." "How thrilling! J. M."
"Entranced here by the Magician's potent
spell. J. M." She has also italicised her
favorite traits in the description of the hero,
as "his hair, which was dark and wavy,
clustered in rich profusion around a marble
brow whose lofty paleness bespoke the intellect
within." It reminds her of another hero.
She adds, "How like B. L.! Can this be
mere coincidence? J. M."

You would hardly guess which is the main
street of our Watering Place, but you may
know it by its being always stopped up with
donkey-chaises. Whenever you come here,
and see harnessed donkies eating clover out
of barrows drawn completely across a narrow
thoroughfare, you may be quite sure you are
in our High Street. Our Police you may know
by his uniform, likewise by his never on any
account interfering with anybody—especially
the tramps and vagabonds. In our fancy
shops we have a capital collection of damaged
goods, among which the flies of countless
summers "have been roaming." We are
great in obsolete seals, and in faded pin-cushions,
and in rickety camp-stools, and in
exploded cutlery, and in miniature vessels, and
in stunted little telescopes, and in objects
made of shells that pretend not to be shells.
Diminutive spades, barrows, and baskets,
are our principal articles of commerce; but
even they don't look quite new somehow.
They always seem to have been offered and
refused somewhere else, before they came
down to our Watering Place.

Yet, it must not be supposed that our
Watering Place is an empty place, deserted by
all visitors except a few staunch persons of
approved fidelity. On the contrary, the
chances are that if you came down here
in August or Septemlxr, you wouldn't find a
house to lay your head in. As to finding
either house or lodging of which you could
reduce the terms, you could scarcely engage
in a more hopeless pursuit. For all this, you
are to observe that every season is the worst
season ever known, and that the householding
population of our Watering Place are ruined
regularly every autumn. They are like the
farmers, in regard that it is surprising how
much ruin they will bear. We have an excellent
Hotel—capital baths, warm, cold, and
shower—first-rate bathing-machines—and as
good butchers, bakers, and grocers, as heart
could desire. They all do business, it is to be
presumed, from motives of philanthropy but
it is quite certain that they are all being
ruined. Their interest in strangers, and
their politeness under ruin, bespeak their
amiable nature. You would say so, if you
only saw the baker helping a new-comer to
find suitable apartments.

So far from being at a discount as to
company, we are in fact what would be popularly
called rather a nobby place. Some tip-top
"Nobs" come down occasionally—even Dukes
and Duchesses. We have known such carriages
to blaze among the donkey chaises, as
made beholders wink. Attendant on these
equipages come resplendent creatures in plush
and powder, who are sure to be stricken disgusted
with the indifferent accommodation of
our Watering Place, and who, of an evening
(particularly when it rains), may be seen very
much out of drawing, in rooms far too small
for their fine figures, looking discontentedly
out of little back windows into bye-streets.
The lords and ladies get on well enough and
quite good-humoredly; but if you want to
see the gorgeous phenomena who wait upon
them, at a perfect non-plus, you should come
and look at the resplendent creatures with
little back parlors for Servants' Halls, and
turn-up bedsteads to sleep in, at our Watering