The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866, page 79 by Various Authors
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e called by thy name," I think Nantucket will be the scene of the fulfilment, the women are so numerous and apparently so well off. I confess that I envy the good fortune of the young gentlemen who may be living there at that time. We saw a foreshadowing of this delightful future in the water. The bathing "facilities" consist of many miles of beach, and one bathing-house, in which ladies exchange their shore finery for their sea-weeds. Two brisk young fellows, Messrs. Whitey and Pypey, had come over in the same boat with us. We had fallen into a traveller's acquaintance with them, and listened to the story of the pleasant life they had led on the island during previous visits. We lost sight of them on the wharf. We found them again near the bath-house, in the hour of their glory. There they were, disporting themselves in the clear water, swimming, diving, floating, while around them laughed and splashed fourteen bright-eyed water-nymphs, half a dozen of them as bewitching as any Nixes that ever spread their nets for soft-hearted young Ritters in the old German romance waters. Neptune in a triumphal progress, with his Naiads tumbling about him, was no better off than Whitey and Pypey. They had, to be sure, no car, nor conch shells, nor dolphins; but, as Thompson remarked, these were unimportant accessories, that added but little to Neptune's comfort. The nymphs were the essential. The spectacle was a saddening one for us, I confess; the more so, because our forlorn condition evidently gave a new zest to the enjoyment of our friends, and stimulated them to increased vigor in their aquatic flirtations. Alone, unintroduced, melancholy, and a little sheepish, we hired towels at two cents each from the ladylike and obliging colored person who superintended the bath-house, and, withdrawing to the friendly shelter of distance, dropped our clothes upon the sand, and hid our envy and insignificance in the bosom of the deep.
And the town was brilliant from the absence of the unclean advertisements of quack-