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Near the verge of a bold promontory stands the hotel, and looks southeastwardover a sweep of sea unbroken to the horizon. Behind it stretches the vastforest, which after two hundred years has resumed the sterile coast wrestedfrom it by the first Pilgrims, and has begun to efface the evidences of theinroad made in recent years by the bold speculator for whom Jocelyn’s isnamed. The young birches and spruces are breast high in the drives and avenuesat Jocelyn’s; the low blackberry vines and the sweet fern cover thecarefully-graded sidewalks, and obscure the divisions of the lots; the childrenof the boarders have found squawberries in the public square on the spot wherethe band-stand was to have been. The notion of a sea-side resort at this pointwas courageously conceived, and to a certain extent it was generously realized.Except for its remoteness from the railroad, a drawback which future enterprisemight be expected to remedy in some way, the place has many natural advantages.The broad plateau is cooled by a breeze from the vast forests behind it, whichcomes laden with health and freshness from the young pines; the sea at its feetis warmed by the Gulf Stream to a temperature delicious for bathing. There arecertainly mosquitoes from the woods; but there are mosquitoes everywhere, andthe report that people have been driven away by them is manifestly untrue, forwhoever comes to Jocelyn’s remains. The beach at the foot of the bluff isalmost a mile at its curve, and it is so smooth and hard that it glistens likepolished marble when newly washed by the tide. It is true that you reach itfrom the top by a flight of eighty steps, but it was intended to have anelevator, like those near the Whirlpool at Niagara. In the mean time it is easyenough to go down, and the ladies go down every day, taking their novels ortheir needle-work with them. They have various notions of a bath: some conceivethat it is bathing to sit in the edge of the water, and emit shrieks as thesurge sweeps against them; others run boldly in, and after a moment of poignanthesitation jump up and down half-a-dozen times, and run out; yet others imagineit better to remain immersed to the chin for a given space, looking toward theshore with lips tightly shut and the breath held. But after the bath they areall of one mind; they lay their shawls on the warm sand, and, spreading outtheir hair to dry, they doze in the sun, in such coils and masses as theunconscious figure lends itself to. When they rise from their beds, they sit inthe shelter of the cliff and knit or sew, while one of them reads aloud, andanother stands watch to announce the coming of the seals, which frequent a reefnear the shore in great numbers. It has been said at rival points on the coastthat the ladies linger there in despair of eve