Bennington semi-weekly banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 1894-1902, 1894-05-15
HASTINGS-BY- THE SEA. II.

The new town, or the part lying along
the sea front, is the most favorable por-
ton as far as warm sunshine and shelter
from the winds is concerned. Here the
| sun is the warmest and the interminable
row of stone houses, all with the same
sign-'Apartments to let'-hung in the
windows, is given up to the accommoda-
ton of the seeker after health or pleas
ure. The hotels are occupied chiefly by
transients, and boarding houses are con-
sidered vulgar, so the only proper way to
live at Hastings or St. Leonard's is to go
into lodgings.
1t is really most delightful substitute
for home, for the apartments to let are
mostly bright, cheerful rooms, and the
service very good. One usually engages
a drawing room Tor, if ones pocketbook
is light, parlor, i. e., dining rOom),
and the requisite number of bedrooms,
very little being added to the price when
a number of bedrooms are required. ALI
the meals are served privately in your
own parlor and you have the privilege
of doing your own ordering, and even
your own marketing, if you feel so dis
posed. 1t is like keeping house on a
miniature plan, and without the bother
of servants and houses and the thousand
and one worries incidental to real house
keeping.
The apartments along the sea front
vary in price from 2 to 6 guineas per
week $50 to 500, including the service,
gas, fires, the washing of table and bed
linens and the Goals for the kitchen fire,
are all extra. Lodgings further back in
the town or on the side streets are much
cheaper, but are not to be recommended
as it is colder and darker away from the
front and the sun does not seem to shine
with the same power as on the southern
exposure of the parade.
Early the day following our arrival we
started out in search of suitable accom-
modations for protracted stay. We
had no difficulty in finding rooms to let,
indeed it seemed as if all the rooms in
the place were to let, and our only trou-
bic was in making a selection of the nu-
merous attractions offered us by buxom
landladies and pretty maids. Should we
choose the sunny Marina and thus miss
the life and gaiety of the lower part of
the parade, where the band plays every
day, or should we go in for all the fash
ion and music and run the risk of colder
winds? Should we take room with
bay window, which offered wider views
but more draughts? or be satisfied with
French windows and less sea? 1t was
very hard to decide.
We finally settled upon locality not
too near the band to be troubled by it,
but near enough to hear it in the distance
when we opened our windows. Our
rooms, too, seemed to combine all that
was most desirable, for we had secured
a drawing room having both a bay and
French windows and thought we were
most fortunate. Alas! we lived to re-
greet the great windows when the storm
came up. The view, however, was all
that could be desired, and when we were
tired of watching the never ceasing
crowd of men passing and repassing
along the promenade, we would lie back
in our chairs and gaze at the wide ex-
panse of sea and sky, until we would al
most fancy we were at sea again and that
the familiar shores of America might
slowly form themselves OF the blue ho-
rizon before us.
Directly in front of the houses and a
few feet above the stony beach runs a
broad esplanade, extending for distance
of three or four miles along the shore.
At high tide the waves dash gleefully
against the stone wall, throwing their
spray high in the air and sending a salty
mist quite across the walk. At low tide
the sea recedes to great distance, bring
ing to view huge black rocks hung with
green moss and sea weeds and leaving a
wide shelving beach, where children and
dogs frolic and play and men stroll
about searching for money and valuables
washed up from the wrecks along the
coast They say that often much money
and many valuable things are found.
Between the hours of IL and the
promenade is thronged with pedestrians,
inValids in bath chairs and dogs, for
Hastings seems to be a resort for the
canine race as we'll as men and Master
Fido must take his daily airing as well as
his mistress. There are all kinds of peo-
pie to be seen and one often thinks of
Dickens and his so-called caricatures as
one watches the motley crowd passing
by. There is fat old dowager with
curls and cushions and the never absent
poodle, and there is the jaunty young
girl in beskirted jacket, carrying cane;
there is the typical old John Bull, with
his red face, and the pale invalid with
his mouth covered by respirator. There
is the butcher boy with his wooden tray
of neat, the milk man with his cans sus-
IL = Il l.. = II. n 4