Thus, according to one of the innumerable guides to Ramsgate, published in 1864, the following concatenation of summer circumstances clearly pointed out to the Londoner the desirability of taking holiday on the Kentish coast in general, and at Ramsgate in particular; that is to say: “When the weather gets so hot that soda-water bottles are dangerous as powder-flasks, and go off like pistols; when flowers die as soon as they are plucked, and butchers’ shops smell unpleasantly; when the London restaurants ice their bitter ale, and pine-apple is at a halfpenny the slice; when your hair is always moist and your listless arms hang at your sides like bell-pulls; when old gentlemen leave off flannel and sit in draughts with their waistcoats open, whilst elderly ladies pearl-powder their faces ten times a day; when the warm fingers make marks on the new novel, and dogs have disagreeable expressions and long tongues; when the ‘catch-’em-alives’ at the grocers’ are dotted with dead flies thicker than the currants in a Christmas pudding, and when the trees in the squares seem powdered over with Scotch snuff. When all these things are seen and take place, then mamma thinks how delightful the sea-breeze must be, and suddenly discovers that the children look pale. Then she carefully points out to papa at breakfast that the baby is as white as melted butter, that little Selina has nasty black marks under her eyes; and at dinner she tenderly makes the stubborn father notice that Tom has scarcely eaten enough to fill an egg-cup, and that Johnny has emptied both water-bottles, as if sickening for a fever. If the stern husband should still resist, then one day, when he is at business, the doctor is sent for, and he, charming humbug, knows too well his duty not to prescribe ‘change of air.’ Then, as a further precaution, Selina is put to bed, Tom is forced to take bitter pills in orange marmalade, and Johnny made to drink wine-glasses of pink stuff, until at last papa gives way before the threatened doctor’s bill. Then carpets are taken up, chairs piled one on another into barricades of legs, the picture-frames are covered with gauze, the servants put upon board-wages, and at last the family, with twenty boxes, goes to the seaside.”