The esplanade consists of four rows of lodging-houses and two hotels, in front of which is a strip of grass, on which a band plays twice a week during the summer months, and the school-children twice a day all the year long. The invalids in the hotel object to the children and make unsuccessful attempts to banish them from their pitch, and the children in their turn regard the invalids with frank disdain, and make audible and uncomplimentary surmises as to the nature of their complaints as the procession of chairs trundles by. In front of the green, and separating it from the steep, pebbly shore, are a number of fishermen's shanties, bathing machines, and hulks of old vessels stretched in a long, straggling row, while one larger shed stands back from the rest, labelled "Lifeboat" in large white letters. Parallel with the esplanade runs the High Street, a narrow thoroughfare showing shops crowded with the useless little articles which are supposed to prove irresistibly attractive to visitors to the seaside. At the bazaar a big white label proclaims that everything in the window is to be sold at the astounding price of "eleven-three," and the purchaser is free to make his choice from such treasures as work-boxes lined in crimson plush, and covered with a massed pattern in shells; desks fitted with all the implements for writing, scent bottles tied with blue ribbons; packets of stationery with local views, photograph frames in plush and gelatine, or to select more perishable trophies in glass and china, all solemnly guaranteed to be worth double the price. At the photographer's, a few yards farther along, a visitor can have his portrait taken a yard square, the size of a postage stamp, or on a postcard to send to his friends. Ingenious backgrounds are on hand, representing appropriate seaside scenes in which the sitter has nothing to do but to press his face against a hole on the canvas, and these are extensively patronised, for what can be more convenient than to stand on solid earth, attired in sober, everyday clothing, yet be portrayed splashing in the waves in the spandiest of French bathing costumes, riding a donkey along the sands, or manfully hauling down the sails of a yacht! Mr Photographer Sykes is a man of resource, and deserves the prosperity which is the envy of his neighbours. Mrs Sykes wears silk linings to her skirts on Sundays, and rustles like the highest in the land. She had three new hats in one summer, and the fishmonger's wife knows for a fact that not one of the number costs less than "twenty-five-six."