It was in search of something different from this that King and Forbes took the train and traveled six miles to Asbury Park and Ocean Grove. These great summer settlements are separated by a sheet of fresh water three-quarters of a mile long; its sloping banks are studded with pretty cottages, its surface is alive with boats gay with awnings of red and blue and green, and seats of motley color, and is altogether a fairy spectacle. Asbury Park is the worldly correlative of Ocean Grove, and esteems itself a notch above it in social tone. Each is a city of small houses, and each is teeming with life, but Ocean Grove, whose centre is the camp-meeting tabernacle, lodges its devotees in tents as well as cottages, and copies the architecture of Oak Bluffs. The inhabitants of the two cities meet on the two-mile-long plank promenade by the sea. Perhaps there is no place on the coast that would more astonish the foreigner than Ocean Grove, and if he should describe it faithfully he would be unpopular with its inhabitants. He would be astonished at the crowds at the station, the throngs in the streets, the shops and stores for supplying the wants of the religious pilgrims, and used as he might be to the promiscuous bathing along our coast, he would inevitably comment upon the freedom existing here. He would see women in their bathing dresses, wet and clinging, walking in the streets of the town, and he would read notices posted up by the camp-meeting authorities forbidding women so clad to come upon the tabernacle ground. He would also read placards along the beach explaining the reason why decency in bathing suits is desirable, and he would wonder why such notices should be necessary. If, however, he walked along the shore at bathing times he might be enlightened, and he would see besides a certain simplicity of social life which sophisticated Europe has no parallel for. A peculiar custom here is sand-burrowing. To lie in the warm sand, which accommodates itself to any position of the body, and listen to the dash of the waves, is a dreamy and delightful way of spending a summer day. The beach for miles is strewn with these sand-burrowers in groups of two or three or half a dozen, or single figures laid out like the effigies of Crusaders. One encounters these groups sprawling in all attitudes, and frequently asleep in their promiscuous beds. The foreigner is forced to see all this, because it is a public exhibition. A couple in bathing suits take a dip together in the sea, and then lie down in the sand. The artist proposed to make a sketch of one of these primitive couples, but it was impossible to do so, because they lay in a trench which they had scooped in the sand two feet deep, and had hoisted an umbrella over their heads. The position was novel and artistic, but beyond the reach of the artist. It was a great pity, because art is never more agreeable than when it concerns itself with domestic life.