to the success of their desire for fun, the eyes and ears of the entire smiling beach bear witness.  Watch them as they clasp hands and run down to the water’s edge; see them prancing playfully where the waves die on the sand, while devoted swains launch the floating mattress upon which it is their custom to bask so picturesquely; see them now as they rush into the green waves and mount the softly rocking thing; observe the gleam of their white arms as, idly, they splash and paddle; note the languid grace of their recumbence:  chins on hands, heels waving lazily in air; hear them squeal in inharmonious unison, as a young member of the “Browning Club,” makes as though to splatter them, or mischievously threatens to overturn their unwieldy couchlike craft.  Free from the restriction of ideas about “society,” about the “tradition” of Palm Beach, about “convention,” they seem to detect no difference between this resort and certain summer beaches, more familiar to them, and at the same time more used to boisterousness and cachinnation.  They go everywhere, these girls.  You will see them having big cocktails, in a little while, on the porch of the Breakers; you will see them having tea, and dancing under the dry rustling palm fronds of the cocoanut grove, when the colored electric lights begin to glow in the luminous semi-tropical twilight; and you will see them, resplendent, at the Beach Club, dining, or playing at the green-topped tables.

The Beach Club has been for some time, I suppose, the last redoubt held in this country by the forces of open, or semi-open gambling.  Every now and then one hears a rumor that it is to be stormed and taken by the hosts of legislative piety, yet on it goes, upon its gilded way—­a place, it should be said, of orderly, spectacular distinction.  The Beach Club occupies a plain white house, low-spreading and unpretentious, but fitted most agreeably within, and boasting a superb cuisine.  Not every one is admitted.  Members have cards, and must be vouched for, formally, by persons known to those who operate the place.  Many of the quiet pleasant people who, leading their own lives regardless of the splurging going on about them, form the background of Palm Beach life—­much as “walking ladies and gentlemen” form the crowd in a spectacular theatrical production—­have never seen the inside of the Beach Club; and I have little doubt that many visitors who drop in at Palm Beach for a few days never so much as hear of it.  It is not run for them, nor for the “piker,” nor for the needy clerk, but for the furious spenders.

Let us therefore view the Beach Club only as an interesting adjunct to Palm Beach life, and let us admit that, as such, it is altogether in the picture.  Let us, in short, seek, upon this brief excursion, not only to recover from our case of grippe, but to recover also that sense of the purely esthetic, without regard to moral issues, which we used to enjoy some years ago, before our legislatures legislated virtue into us.  Let us soar, upon the wings of our checkbook, in one final flight to the realms of unalloyed beauty.  Let us, in considering this most extravagantly passionate and passionately extravagant of American resorts, be great artists, who are above morals.  Let us refuse pointblank to consider morals at all.  For by so doing we may avoid giving ourselves away.