Life — July 22, 1897 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

LIFE’S PERSONALLY CONDUCTED TOURS. ASBURY PARK. SBURY PARK _ holds a unique place in the economy of watering places. Lenox is an aris- tocracy ; Coney Is- land isa famboyant democracy; but As- bury Park is. dis- tinctly a theocracy, ruled by a brevet bishop, a celestial being . called ‘*The Founder,” who makes its laws, ordi- nances and policemen, regulates its religions and palates, and person- y ally superintends the manufacture of robes used for moistening pur- poses by the ancient and honorable females who per- meate this salty, sandy elysium, Its atmosphere is religious, its tone theo- logical, its policy ecclesiastical; and this lies between those despite the fact that extremes of summer wickedness, Atlantic City and Long Branch. - 8 «@ SBURY PARK consists of cottages— modeled on camp-meeting tents— hotels, tabernacles, churches, and the prayer auditorium, which look out on and make the ocean shrink; and it is infested with drug stores for the sale of everything but drugs, whose proprietors excite the rage of the Founder and his cohorts of beach cops. The place revels in revivals and bathing togas. It is a recuperating station for par- sons who have shouted themselves into nerv- ous prostration during the winter, moral- reform campaigns, for the worn-out staff of Bok's moral monthly, and for the elect, who love to sandwich in sea-bathing between bouts of prayer and praise meeting. Upon its sacred plank walk, which is unsoiled by feet after 7 P. M., the sewing circles and Sunday school classes pass their days in a mad whirl of salt water and missionary mania. And the ungodly come hither to scoff, and the heathen of New York to rage against the inexorable decrees of the Founder, who moves supreme and superior. The principal occupation of saints and sinners within the Founder's realm is hunt- ing antidotes for thirst; for the climate, the sand, and excessive hymnology, induce an aridity of palate that is abnormal; and the experienced deacon, whose breath is changed with pious regularity, keenly enjoys the agonies of the uninitiated. Strong drink is forbidden in the Park. He who seeks the maddening cup must first look to his life insurance policy and interview the under- taker, for in Asbury Park it is risky to look upon the wine when it is red ink; it isa mocker, and kicks worse than a Manhattan reformer. ‘The hardy annuals of the Foundery are familiar with its customs, and carry their own delirium tremens to the coast ; the plain and tactless hunter after bottles, who is no strate- gist, grabs an electric car and rushes to Long Branch, leaving a trail of strong language behind him. * * * EA bathing is practiced in Asbury Park under rigid police surveillance. When the bathing hour arrives the bands play solemn dirges, and a sad but unquavering procession of matrons, maids, parsons and deacons, garbed in voluminous swaddling clothes, march piously to the ocean and