He did not ask what it was for.  He knew.  It was to put Cape May Diamonds in!  He put the bag in his pocket and walked along the beach for three miles.  You can’t walk more than three miles here, and if you hire a carriage you will find that you can’t ride less than that distance.  Which makes it bad, sometimes.  However, when Mr. P. had finished his three miles, he didn’t want to go any further.  He stopped, and gazing carelessly around to see that no one noticed him, pulled out his canvas bag and did shuffle a little in the sand with his feet.  He might find some diamonds, you know, just as likely as any of the hundreds of other people, who, in other sequestered parts of the beach, were pulling out other canvas bags, and shuffling in the sand with other feet.  At length Mr. P. shuffled himself into a very sequestered nook indeed, and there he saw a man smoking.  His melancholy little boy was sitting by his side.  Perceiving that it was only General GRANT, Mr. P. advanced with his usual grace and suavity of manner.

“Why, Mr. President!” said he, “I thought you would be found at Long Branch this season.”

“Long—­thunder!” ejaculated the General, his face as black as the ace of spades, (which, by the way, is blue.) “I might go to Nova Zembla for a quiet smoke, and some sneaking politician would crawl out from the ice with a petition.  I went fishing in Pennsylvania, and I found twenty of those fellows to every trout.  However, I don’t mind you.  Take a seat and have a cigar.”

[Illustration.]

Mr. P. took the seat, (which was nothing to brag of,) and a cigar, (which would have been a great deal to brag of, if he had succeeded in smoking it,) and, after a whiff or two, asked his companion how it was that he came to send such a message to Congress about Cuba.

“What message?” said GRANT, absently.

Mr. P. explained.

“Oh,” said GRANT, “that one!  Didn’t you like it?  CALEB CUSHING wrote it and brought it to me, and I signed it.  If you had written one and brought it to me, I would have signed that.  ’Tisn’t my fault if the thing’s wrong.  What would you expect of a man?”

Mr. P. concluded that in this case it was ridiculous to expect anything else, and so he changed the subject.

That afternoon Mr. P. bathed.

He went to SLOAN’S and fitted himself out in a bathing suit, and very lovely he looked in it, when he emerged from the bathing house at high tide.  With a red tunic; green pants; and a very yellow hat, he resembled a frog-legged Garibaldian, ready for the harvest.

When he hurried to the water’s edge, he hesitated for a moment.  The roaring surf was so full of heads, legs, arms, back-hair, hats and feet, that he feared there was no room for him.  However, he espied a vacancy, and plunged into the briny deep.

How delicious!  How cool!  How fresh!  How salt!  How splendid!