The brown-eyed girl on sands watches me alight--on all fours, dripping. Sea-trip a mistake, I feel damped rather than fired. _On the Beach again._--Cheap photographers, galvanic machines, chiropodist, tea-stalls, grim old ladies eating shrimps, as if they were cherries, out of paper bags. Open-air music-hall, where comic songs are shouted from platform by dreary men in flaxen wigs to harmonium--this always crowded. Enjoyment at Starmouth hearty perhaps--but hardly refined. Constantly haunted by song from open-air platform about "The Gurls," with refrain describing how "they squeeze, And they tease. And they soy, 'Oh, what joy!'" (or perhaps it should be--"sigh, 'Oh, what jy!'") Either way, it has hit the popular taste here. I may be prudish--but, even if a couple _are_ engaged, it seems to me that a nicer sense of propriety would deter them from dozing in a sand-pit, _coram publico_, with their arms around one another's neck. Nobody thinks anything of this at Starmouth, however. [Illustration: Lamb-bath.] What a matter of circumstance are our prejudices! I should once have thought that nothing would induce me to drive about on a _char-à-banc_--like one of the band in a circus procession. Yet I have just returned from a drive in one--and enjoyed it! She--my brown-eyed divinity of the Phrenology lecture--was on one of the seats, which redeemed a drive otherwise prosaic. We went to ruined castle; scenery unpicturesque (she showed, I thought, delicate perception of this by reading _Family Herald_ all the way). Starmouth children ran by side of carriage, turning head-over-heels, and gasping comic songs for coppers. Had last glimpse of them standing gratefully in a row on their heads. We did not alight to see castle, as coachman said there was nothing to see. On way home, conductor made collection on his own account. (The hat is not much worn at Starmouth.) Yet I was happy--I have made _her_ acquaintance! Charming as she is beautiful--so simple and _naïve_ in the few remarks she made. She is called LOUISE, and the person I took to be her maid is, it appears, her aunt--a most shrewd and sensible old lady, full of quiet good sense. We became friendly at once.