Weston we have seen to be a children’s paradise; but there they are largely mingled with “grownups.” Here they predominate, and the vast sand-flats, that at low tide stretch out more or less oozily and muddily as you advance, some four miles, are converted for a goodly distance from the promenade wall into a manufactory of sand-castles and mud-pies. The Burnham donkeys must feel a blessed relief when the season is over, for they are in great request for rides, even so far as the straddle-legged lighthouse that stands on iron posts to the north of the town; yea, and even unto the sandhills—or “tots,” as the local tongue hath it—of Berrow. All the eastern ports of the Somerset coast are severely afflicted by “trippers,” who descend in their thousands upon Clevedon, Weston-super-Mare, and Burnham, not to mention the neighbouring villages. Truth to tell, they are effusively welcomed at these places, at any rate by the refreshment caterers and the proprietors of swing-boats, donkeys, sailing and rowing-boats, and by the “pierrots”; but the rest of the community resent the presence of these hordes of half-day holiday makers, and act the superior person towards them. Yet, when you hear, at any of these resorts, visitors, obviously present on sixteen days’ excursion-trip tickets, speaking disparagingly of “trippers,” you wonder really what constitutes such an one. What is that time-limit within which a holiday-maker becomes a mere “tripper,” and when does he become enlarged as one of the elect, who do not trip, but make holiday? The definition of a tripper, in these parts, is a person who comes across the Bristol Channel from Barry, Cardiff, Swansea, or any other of the South Wales ports, for half a day, and “brings his nosebag with him”; or, if it be a family party of trippers, a family handbag with provisions; including a bottle of beer for mother and father, and milk for the children. Thousands of these family parties came over by cheap steamboat excursions on most fine days in summer, and may be observed on the sea-front at Weston and other favoured resorts, where they are apt to leave an offensive residuum of their feasts behind them, in the shape of greasy paper and pieces of fat, as often as not upon the public seats. Those are the trippers.