These gentlemen seemed to have imagined that they were about visiting some backwoods wilderness, some savage tract of country, “remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,” for they brought almost everything with them that men of elegant leisure could require, as if the hotel were but four walls and a roof, which they must furnish with their own chattels.  I am sure it took Thomas, the man-servant, a whole day to unpack the awnings, the bootjacks, the game-bags, the cigar-boxes, the guns, the camp-stools, the liquor-cases, the bathing-suits, and other paraphernalia that these pleasure-seekers brought.  It must be owned, however, that their room, a large one in the Bachelors’ Quarter, facing the sea, wore a very comfortable, sportsmanlike look when all was arranged.

Thus surrounded, the young men betook themselves to the deliberate pursuit of idle pleasures.  They arose at nine and went down the shore, invariably returning at ten with one unfortunate snipe, which was preserved on ice, with much ceremony, till wanted.  At this rate it took them a week to shoot a breakfast; but to see them sally forth, splendid in velveteen and corduroy, with top-boots and a complete harness of green cord and patent-leather straps, you would have imagined that all game-birds were about to become extinct in that region.  Their dogs, even, recognized this great-cry-little-wool condition of things, and bounded off joyously at the start, but came home crestfallen, with an air of canine humiliation that would have aroused Mr. Mayhew’s tenderest sympathies.

After breakfasting, usually in their room, the friends enjoyed a long and contemplative smoke upon the wide piazza in front of their windows, listlessly regarding the ever-varied marine view that lay before them in flashing breadth and beauty.  Their next labor was to array themselves in wonderful morning-costumes of very shaggy English cloth, shiny flasks and field-glasses about their shoulders, and loiter down the beach, to the point and back, making much unnecessary effort over the walk—­a brief mile—­which they spoke of, with importance, as their “constitutional.”  This killed time till bathing-hour, and then another toilet for dinner.  After dinner a siesta:  in the room, when the weather was fresh; when otherwise, in hammocks hung from the rafters of the piazza.  When they had been domiciled a few days, they found it expedient to send home for what they were pleased to term their “crabs” and “traps,” and excited the envy of less fortunate guests by driving up and down the beach at a racing gait to dissipate the languor of the after-dinner sleep.

This was their regular routine for the day—­varied, occasionally, when the tide served, by a fishing trip down the narrow bay inside the point.  For such emergencies they provided themselves with a sail-boat and skipper, hired for the whole season, and arrayed themselves in a highly nautical rig.  The results were, large quantities of sardines and pale sherry consumed by the young men, and a reasonable number of sea-bass and blackfish caught by the skipper.