The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-09-20

J the mixed bathing which forms so 1 striking and pleasing feature Of l American atering places as the sum | of all wickedness.
 l Upon this point. however, they are 1 undergoing gradual change Of heart ] Slowly but surely America Is making | conquest of this staid old country. We have already gotten the supremacy in l their markets and have begun the rev.
 olution of their drug stores with our
 soda fountains. In London, as every
 body knows, the railways have been Americanized, and now the very latest | American invasion is by water, in the 1 form of mixed bathing. But, oh, hoW very slowly this last innovation is con- ing into vogue. The watering places generally act toward it at present | about as unselfishly as the boy did in | reference to his medicine If 1t was ln-
 deed so good as everybody said it was, why didn't they all take it-he should
 not mind, so they excused him. There
 are, to be sure, few resorts where
 mixed bathing is allowed to the ex- ] tent of families and family parties go- 1 ing In together, but such scenes of pie | turesque livellness as are common at
 all seaside resorts in America men,
 women and children battling the wa 1 ters together, all daintily garbed and I all seeming to find in this free and in-
 nocent intercourse of the sexes the very
 ozone of exhilaration-such scenes you
 could not find at any watering place in
 all this sea girt island
 This English antipathy to mixed
 bathing can hardly at bottom be @ | question of morals. There is more
 public ndecency In England than in any country except France. The streets of London are haunted at all
 hours by the scarlet woman, and she
 is a feature more than tolerated at all <, resorts, Though leaving out this fact, | the English are by no means squeam- | ish people in their ordinary intercourse. | It has been aptly said that the English womans evening dress outstrips the whole of Europe, and of 'Arriet and Arry, representatives of the engaged couples of the working class, it is pro-
 verbal that they can do their courting and exchange the usual tokens of inti- lIIdlt I6SdIu Just toihpiuNClitiJ III Hyde Park with the crowds and the daylight as in the back kitchen with the candle out or at the garden gate with no witness save the man in the | moon. How people of characteristics | like these could ban on moral grounds the free intermingling of the sexes, properly and tastefully clothed, in sea bathing, is more than one can even guess. It is surely nothing but preju-
 dice and the Englishman's abhorrence of change that are involved in this question He would have men and wo-
 men bathe separately for the same reason that the sexes are still sparated in so many churches over here, viz, be- cause so 1t has been from time .'ame- morial.
 But whatever the reason for it, this custom of separate bathing still re-
 mains at almost every watering place,
 and the result Is that bathing Is not popular, and with those who undertake it Is so formal and so purely soap and studs matter that there Is no at- traction in it for either the victims or spectato ors. What in our country is
 scene of gaiety and frolic and laughter is here q spectacle that depresses The numbering bathing machines, drawn out into the water by horses, one might easily imagine to be impromptu fune- ral carts carrying their lonely occu- pants to watery graves. It has been said of the English that they take their pleasures sadly. Everything about it is sombre and dampenlng. True is it that if the law does not allow you to bathe in the company of the fair sex it does permit that you may walk along the shore and reverently gaze from dis- tance. But nobody does this-nobody cares to take any interestbecause there is almost uniformly on the bather's part total indifference to everything but just getting as wet and looking as be- draggled as possible. No care beyond this for appearances and no pretty no- tions. no bits of inviting color in the dress. This on the woman's side, while
 on the mems, the dress, consisting only
 of an Adams apron, is quite too small
 a mat ter to speak of.
 It may possibly be that the English
 mans attachment to his present meth
 ods of sea bathing is simply one of the
 
 clusiveness In that beautiful resort on the southern coast where this writer
 spent three happy weeks there was a floating population of twice that many The latter are mostly people of means, who can afford to keep up good houses, But in the smooth winding roads, back from the two miles of sea-front. one could hardly tell what the houses were
 like, so lofty and impenetrable were the enclosures in which they stood.
 This Is decidedly walled town. Eve
 rybody has fenced himself in against
 everybody else, and in this feature the
 place is only an exaggerated type of
 what one sees everywhere in this coun-
 try. Whether in city or village, the Englishman builds his house and lays
 out his beautiful garden, and then, by
 high brick or stone wall or by thick
 and towering wooded hedge, he pro-
 ceeds to wrap about his possessions the
 garment of exclusiveness. What the
 Englishman owns is his, mind you, and
 Nf f- nf