The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1886-09-11
THE SURF-BATH.
something About the "Ceaseless Ocean
Roar" and the Health Giving Ozone.

something About the "Ceaseless Ocean
Roar" and the Health Giving Ozone.
Surf bathing is a delusion and a
fraud. With the temperature of the
water at seventy degrees you gasp and
gargle and feel as if some one was
shooting icicles through you. You
finally dip under with a yell, and the
yell is changed to sort of |!
whooppee as pint of the
briny fluid sails down your throat and
proceeds to salt your pork for YOU.
There are shells to pare down your
heels, and there are heartless crabs
which make it a business to feel for
your toes and hang by you. Founder
ing men kick you in the stomach, and
excited females grab the calves of your
legs in their wild endeavors to with
stand the breakers. The idea is not to
swim, but to let the rollers tumble YOU
about until your ears fill with sand,
your stomach with water and your eyes
can no longer do duty. You come out
feeling clammy. You may use half
dozen towels. but the clammy feeling
rmains and abides by you for a good
hlf-day. 1t is as if some one had
tsken a pork rind out of an ice-chest
aid kindly CREASED you from head to
foot.
There are certain proprieties to be
Observed in promiscuous bathing. In
cise a fat woman steps into hole and
disappears from sight her relatives and
acquaintances are given the first chance
to save her. If none is present you
can 90 ahead and do your best A
roller may tumble two or three females
head over heels against you and each
one of them may give you a kick and a
claw and help herself up by means of
your legs, but any observations on your
part Will be out of order. If, in claw
ing around on the bottom in search of
recreation, you encounter foot and
hang on to it until you upset some
water nymph, no apology is necessary.
Any remarks about tide, state of water,
crabs, sharks, clam shells and life
saving boat are out of order unless you
have been formally introduced
Few of the females who come under
the head of ladies are seen in a bathing
suit; the great majority are young girls
and nurses, with now and then de-
signing old maid. The others are con-
tent to sit on the sand and criticise.
There are men who battle twice per
day, and there are men who wouldn't
go in to save human life.
A good deal has been written about
the "ceaseless roar of the surf" It's
big thing for couple of days and
nights, but after that you'll begin to
wonder why people who come here
expressly for that didn't stay home and
hire some one to turn a coffee mill. The
old thing keeps hammering away for
seven days and nights of the week,
with no other purpose in view than to
make noise, and by and by every
body votes it bore. An ocean with
the best interests of the public at heart
would keep still at least half the time.
The average person puts in about
ten minutes watching the white
named waves" roll in. After that he
wants some other performance. One
wave is very much like another, all
being cut from the same piece of cloth.
Each one has white name; each one
rolls in just so far, and breaks just as
the one before it did.
don't know about the ozone. l
have been looking for it for the last
three weeks, but whether l have found
it or not l can't be certain. One day
when fog, so thick that you could
chop it with an axe and so cold that no
ice was needed at the hotel, drove in
from the dark-green sea and lasted for
half day, fifty of us had toothache,
legache, backache, neuralgia and
chllls. guess that was coming pretty
close to it. | know the mosquitoes
don't eat up the ozone. They can't
be hungry after eating up the guests
N. quad, in Detroit Free Press.