cream and citronella, has vanished for another year.
But how pleasant it is to see the town (it is Fierceforest we have in mind) taking its own vacation, after laboring to amuse its visitors all summer long. Here and there in the surf you will see a familiar figure. That plump lady, lathered by sluicing combers as she welters and wambles upon Neptune's bosom, is good Frau Weintraub of the delicatessen, who has been frying fish and chowdering clams over a hot stove most of July and August, and now takes her earned repose. Yonder is the imposing bulge of the real estate agent, who has been too busy selling lots and dreaming hotel sites to visit the surf hitherto. Farther up the shore is the garage man, doing a little quiet fishing from the taffrail of a deserted pier. The engineer of the "roller coaster" smokes a cigar along the deserted boardwalk and discusses the league of nations with the gondolier-in-chief of the canals of Ye Olde Mill. The hot-dog expert, whose merry shout, "Here they are, all red hot and fried in butter!" was wont to echo along the crowded arcade, has boarded up his stand and departed none knows where.
There is a tincture of grief in the survey of all this liveliness coffined and nailed down. Even the gambols of Fierceforest's citizens, taking their ease at last in the warm September surf, cannot wholly dispel the mournfulness of the observer. There is something dreadfully glum in the merry-
