Chapter 54

A DIP IN THE SEA.

Shakespeare has been fiercely mauled by the critics for confusion of metaphor in speaking of taking up "arms against a sea of troubles." The smart fellows say, How could a man take "arms against a sea?" In other words, it is not possible to shoot the Pacific Ocean. But what Shakespeare suggests is, this jocund morning, being done all around the coast from Florida to Newfoundland, especial regiments going out from Cape May, Long Branch, East Hampton, Newport and Nahant; ten thousand bathers, with hands thrown into the air, "taking up arms against the sea." But the old giant has only to roll over once on his bed of seaweed, and all this attacking host are flung prostrate upon the beach.

The sensation of sea-bathing is about the same everywhere. First you have the work of putting on the appropriate dress, sometimes wet and chill from the previous bathing. You get into the garments cautiously, touching them at as few points as possible, your face askew, and with a swift draft of breath through your front teeth, punctuating the final lodgment of each sleeve and fold with a spasmodic "Oh!" Then, having placed your watch where no villainous straggler may be induced to examine it to see whether he can get to the depot in time for the next train, you issue forth ingloriously, your head down in consciousness that you are cutting a sorry figure before the world. Barefoot as a mendicant, your hair disheveled in the wind, the stripes of your clothes strongly suggestive of Sing Sing, your appearance a caricature of humankind, you wander up and down the beach a creature that the land is evidently trying to shake off and the sea is unwilling to take. But you are consoled by the fact that all the rest are as mean and forlorn-looking as yourself; and so you wade in, over foot-top, unto the knee, and waist deep. The water is icy-cold, so that your teeth chatter and your frame quakes, until you make a bold dive; and in a moment you and the sea are good friends, and you are not certain whether you have surrendered to the ocean or the ocean has surrendered to you.

At this point begin the raptures of bathing. You have left the world on the beach, and are caught up in the arms of experiences that you never feel on land. If you are far enough out, the breaking wave curves over you like a roof inlaid and prismatic, bending down on the other side of you in layers of chalk and drifts of snow, and the lightning flash of the foam ends in the thunder of the falling wave. You fling aside from your arms, as worthless, amethyst and emerald and chrysoprase. Your ears are filled with the halo of sporting elements, and your eyes with all tints and tinges and double-dyes and liquid emblazonment. You leap and shout and clap your hands, and tell the billows to come on, and in excess of glee greet persons that you never saw before and never will again, and never want to, and act so wildly that others would think you demented but that they also are as fully let loose; so that if there be one imbecile there is a whole asylum of lunatics.

It is astonishing how many sounds mingle in the water: the faint squall of the affrighted child, the shrill shriek of the lady just introduced to the uproarious hilarities, the souse of the diver, the snort of the half-strangled, the clear giggle of maidens, the hoarse bellow of swamped obesity, the whine of the convalescent invalid, the yell of unmixed delight, the te-hee and squeak of the city exquisite learning how to laugh out loud, the splash of the brine, the cachinnation of a band of harmless savages, the stun of the surge on your right ear, the hiss of the surf, the saturnalia of the elements; while overpowering all other sounds are the orchestral harmonics of the sea, which roll on through the ages, all shells, all winds, all caverns, all billows heard in "the oratorio of the creation."

But while bathing, the ludicrous will often break through the grand. Swept hither and thither, you find, moving in reel and cotillon, saraband and rigadoon and hornpipe, Quakers and Presbyterians who are down on the dance. Your sparse clothing feels the stress of the waves, and you think what an awful thing it would be if the girdle should burst or a button break, and you should have, out of respect to the feelings of others, to go up the beach sidewise or backward or on your hands and knees.

Close beside you, in the surf, is a judge of the Court of Appeals, with a garment on that looks like his grandmother's night-gown just lifted from the wash-tub and not yet wrung out. On the other side is a maiden with a twenty-five-cent straw hat on a head that ordinarily sports a hundred dollars' worth of millinery. Yonder is a doctor of divinity with his head in the sand and his feet beating the air, traveling heavenward, while his right hand clutches his wife's foot, as much as to say, "My feet are useless in this emergency; give me the benefit of yours."

Now a stronger wave, for which none are ready, dashes in, and with it tumble ashore, in one great wreck of humanity, small craft and large, stout hulk and swift clipper, helm first, topsail down, forestay-sail in tatters, keel up, everything gone to pieces in the swash of the surges.

Oh, the glee of sea-bathing! It rouses the apathetic. It upsets the supercilious and pragmatical. It is balsamic for mental wounds. It is a tonic for those who need strength, and an anodyne for those who require soothing, and a febrifuge for those who want their blood cooled; a filling up for minds pumped dry, a breviary for the superstitious with endless matins and vespers, and to the Christian an apocalyptic vision where the morning sun gilds the waters, and there is spread before him "a sea of glass mingled with fire." "Thy way, O God, is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters!"