They do manage some things better in France: at
the seaside here the men dress in suits of flannel, and wear light
canvas shoes habitually; the women swim, and take their children with
them into the water,--floating them with gourds, which accustoms them to
the water, and to the use of their limbs. At the hotels and restaurants,
they provide cheap and appetizing little dinners; there is plenty of ice
in hot weather, and cooling drinks are to be had everywhere: in short,
in these matters the practical common sense of the French people strikes
us anew, every time we set foot on their shores. Why it should be so, we
cannot answer; but as long as it is so, our countrymen and countrywomen
may well crowd to French watering-places.
The situation of Trouville is thus described by Blanchard Jerrold, who
knows the district better than most Englishmen:--'Even the shore has
been subdued to comfortable human uses; rocks have been picked out of
the sand, until a carpet as smooth as Paris asphalte has been obtained
for the fastidious feet of noble dames, who are the finishing bits of
life and colour in the exquisite scene. Even the ribbed sand is not
smooth enough; a boarded way has been fixed from the casino to the
mussel banks, whither the dandy resorts to play at mussel gathering, in
a nautical dress that costs a sailor's income. The great and rich have
planted their Louis XIII.
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