and he stands alone in the sand, a wooden sham without an explanation.  Why the hotel-keeper’s mind along the coast regards this grotesque structure as a summer attraction it is difficult to see.  But when one resort had him, he became a necessity everywhere.  The travelers walked down to this monster, climbed the stairs in one of his legs, explored the rooms, looked out from the saddle, and pondered on the problem.  This beast was unfinished within and unpainted without, and already falling into decay.  An elephant on the desert, fronting the Atlantic Ocean, had, after all, a picturesque aspect, and all the more so because he was a deserted ruin.

The elephant was, however, no emptier than the cottages about which our friends strolled.  But the cottages were all ready, the rows of new chairs stood on the fresh piazzas, the windows were invitingly open, the pathetic little patches of flowers in front tried hard to look festive in the dry sands, and the stout landladies in their rocking-chairs calmly knitted and endeavored to appear as if they expected nobody, but had almost a houseful.

Yes, the place was undeniably attractive.  The sea had the blue of Nice; why must we always go to the Mediterranean for an aqua marina, for poetic lines, for delicate shades?  What charming gradations had this picture-gray sand, blue waves, a line of white sails against the pale blue sky!  By the pier railing is a bevy of little girls grouped about an ancient colored man, the very ideal old Uncle Ned, in ragged, baggy, and disreputable clothes, lazy good-nature oozing out of every pore of him, kneeling by a telescope pointed to a bunch of white sails on the horizon; a dainty little maiden, in a stiff white skirt and golden hair, leans against him and tiptoes up to the object-glass, shutting first one eye and then the other, and making nothing out of it all.  “Why, ov co’se you can’t see nuffln, honey,” said Uncle Ned, taking a peep, “wid the ’scope p’inted up in the sky.”

In order to pass from Cape May to Atlantic City one takes a long circuit by rail through the Jersey sands.  Jersey is a very prolific State, but the railway traveler by this route is excellently prepared for Atlantic City, for he sees little but sand, stunted pines, scrub oaks, small frame houses, sometimes trying to hide in the clumps of scrub oaks, and the villages are just collections of the same small frame houses hopelessly decorated with scroll-work and obtrusively painted, standing in lines on sandy streets, adorned with lean shade-trees.  The handsome Jersey people were not traveling that day—­the two friends had a theory about the relation of a sandy soil to female beauty—­and when the artist got out his pencil to catch the types of the country, he was well rewarded.  There were the fat old women in holiday market costumes, strong-featured, positive, who shook their heads at each other and nodded violently and incessantly, and all talked at once; the old men in