DEAR SISTERS:—Do you know where Long Branch is? I reckon not, owing to its being a sandy slip, cut off from the edge of New Jersey, and not much of a place over two months in the year; it hasn't got into the geography books as a school item of importance, though, if a President or two more should settle in there, it might lift it a notch higher.
But in duty bound, I am here in pursuit of my great social mission, and can tell you, confidently, that Long Branch is a great watering-place, brim full, and running over with fashion once a year, when the hot sun drives all the upper-crust people out of New York, and everybody that is anybody feels the want of extra washing.
When I speak of watering-places, do not understand that I mean a tavern corner with some brook emptying itself into a huge wooden trough for horses to drink out of. Of course, that is our Vermont idea; with a willow-tree shading the trough. That, no doubt, gave the name here. But the two things are no more alike than trout streams are like the broad ocean.
I ask no questions, always finding it best to wait and watch, and learn for myself; but when Dempster asked me if I would like to go down to a watering-place in New Jersey, I asked him if there wasn't Croton Water enough in the pipes for all the horses they kept.
Dempster laughed, and said it was salt water he was thinking of, and asked, right on that, if I had got a bathing-dress?
"A bathing-dress," says I. "Goodness, gracious, no. When I bathe, as a general thing, I—that is—I take off—"
Here I broke off, and felt myself turning red. I declare, Cousin Dempster has a way of putting things upon you for explanation, which I, as a single lady, with expectations, of course, find embarrassing.
Just then, E. E. came in, all of a flurry about her trunks; she wanted more and must have 'em, she said. Seventeen Saratoga trunks, and a basket or two, were just nothing to what she needed. Dempster must go out and get half a dozen more. Why, her fluted skirts alone filled three trunks.
Dempster went. To own the truth, he is an obedient creature as ever wore coat and—well pocket-handkerchiefs. It wasn't long before a lot of trunks—big enough for country school-houses—were piled into the hall, and then Cousin E. E. began to revel. Her bed was crowded and loaded down with skirts, dresses, shawls, bonnets, round hats, broad flats, peaked caps. You never saw such heaps and mountains of clothes; such a litter of small things; such stacks of boots and shoes.