These girls are all types of the skating-rink--an institution which is beginning to express itself in American manners.
The band was playing on the pier when the steamer landed at Cottage City (or Oak Bluff, as it was formerly called), and the pier and the gallery leading to it were crowded with spectators, mostly women a pleasing mingling of the skating-rink and sewing-circle varieties--and gayety was apparently about setting in with the dusk. The rink and the ground opposite the hotel were in full tilt. After supper King and Forbes took a cursory view of this strange encampment, walking through the streets of fantastic tiny cottages among the scrub oaks, and saw something of family life in the painted little boxes, whose wide-open front doors gave to view the whole domestic economy, including the bed, centre-table, and melodeon. They strolled also on the elevated plank promenade by the beach, encountering now and then a couple enjoying the lovely night. Music abounded. The circus-pumping strains burst out of the rink, calling to a gay and perhaps dissolute life. The band in the nearly empty hotel parlor, in a mournful mood, was wooing the guests who did not come to a soothing tune, something like China--“Why do we mourn departed friends?” A procession of lasses coming up the broad walk, advancing out of the shadows of night, was heard afar off as the stalwart singers strode on, chanting in high nasal voices that lovely hymn, which seems to suit the rink as well as the night promenade and the campmeeting:
“We shall me--um um--we shall me-eet, me-eet--um um --we shall meet, In the sweet by-am-by, by-am-by-um um-by-am-by. On the bu-u-u-u--on the bu-u-u-u--on the bu-te-ful shore.”
In the morning this fairy-like settlement, with its flimsy and eccentric architecture, took on more the appearance of reality. The season was late, as usual, and the hotels were still waiting for the crowds that seem to prefer to be late and make a rushing carnival of August, but the tiny cottages were nearly all occupied. At 10 A.M. the band was playing in the three-story pagoda sort of tower at the bathing-place, and the three stories were crowded with female spectators. Below, under the bank, is a long array of bath-houses, and the shallow water was alive with floundering and screaming bathers. Anchored a little out was a raft, from which men and boys and a few venturesome girls were diving, displaying the human form in graceful curves. The crowd was an immensely good-humored one, and enjoyed itself. The sexes mingled together in the water, and nothing thought of it, as old Pepys would have said, although many of the tightly-fitting costumes left less to the imagination than would have been desired by a poet describing the scene as a phase of the 'comedie humaine.' The band, having played out its hour, trudged back to the hotel pier to toot while the noon steamboat landed its passengers, in order to impress the new arrivals with the mad joyousness of the place. The crowd gathered on the high gallery at the end of the pier added to this effect of reckless holiday enjoyment. Miss Lamont was infected with this gayety, and took a great deal of interest in this peripatetic band, which was playing again on the hotel piazza before dinner, with a sort of mechanical hilariousness. The rink band opposite kept up a lively competition, grinding out go-round music, imparting, if one may say so, a glamour to existence. The band is on hand at the pier at four o'clock to toot again, and presently off, tramping to some other hotel to satisfy the serious pleasure of this people.