It must, however, be said that Weston is not select. It is popular, in the sense that Yarmouth, Blackpool, and Southport (to name none others) are popular. It caters of necessity for the crowd, for the crowd is at its very threshold. Half an hour’s railway journey from Bristol, and a mere ten miles’ steamer voyage from Cardiff and other populous Welsh ports, would render useless any attempts that might be made to keep Weston as a preserve for the comparatively few rich, leisured, and cultured persons who might give its Parade a better tone, but certainly would not do the shopkeeping class much good. And to do the people and the local authorities of Weston the merest justice, they make no such attempts, foredoomed to failure as they would be. I do not know what the motto of Weston-super-Mare may be, nor even indeed if it has one. If not already furnished in this respect, it might well be “Let ’em all come.” And they do already come in very considerable numbers. But this, it should be said, is not to pretend that Weston is either so large, or so besieged with immense crowds of visitors, as Blackpool and the other popular resorts already mentioned. Still the streets, the long curving Parade, and the sands are in July, August, and September as densely crowded as any lover of humanity in masses could reasonably desire, and the place is as fully furnished with strictly unintellectual amusements as the average lower middle-class holiday-maker could hope for, outside Blackpool and Yarmouth. Here is a pier, the “Grand Pier” it is called, thrusting forth a long arm from the centre of the Parade into the shallow waters of the bay, with a huge concert pavilion midway, and a further lengthy arm going on and on until it rivals Southend pier itself, with a total length of 6,600 feet, or something like a mile and a quarter; the intention being to enable the excursion steamers to touch at the pier-head. An electric railway runs the length of this prodigious affair, which entirely eclipses the old Birnbeck Pier under Anchor Head: really a pier-like bridge connecting the rocky isle of Birnbeck with the mainland. From the isle itself three pier-arms project in different directions, and to these the excursion steamers from Bristol, Cardiff and other ports have hitherto come. Such dreams of delight await the incoming visitors on this siren isle that many day-excursionists to Weston proceed no farther. The place abounds with every kind of amusement, except the intellectual variety: water-chutes, switchback railways, try-your-weight and try-your-strength machines, and battalions of other penny-in-the-slot mechanisms; and, above all, a damned something that may be espied from the shore, like a huge giant’s-stride pole with baskets whizzing in dizzy fashion around it; the said baskets being filled with people who have paid a penny each for the privilege of being given a sensation which must be a colourable imitation of sea-sickness.