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Show A Writer Discovers a Pew Sensational CostumesThe Eeal Picture. THE SEASIDERS WEAK CLOTHES. The Girls Generally Garb Themselves in Voluminous Eobes That Effectually Hide Their Charms. FOR many years it lias lien a custom to write about tho generous displays of female lorm nt the seaside resorts. Heing an embryo .writer I anneil myself with a smi camera, ii held glass ami a microscope, Imping to reap many dollars by visiting the bathing places and writing of the shock- InfT tl-tinrra I WHW youngest and prettiest, there were few short sleeves and no low necked bathing gowns, all being of the regulation style, with one or two exceptions in favor of striped sergo or white flannel instead of the blue, but the make was the same and tno shane of tho wearers the same, and tbe black sheep in the human flock were, if anything, moro modest iu dress and manner than their sisters at Ocean Grove. At Long flraiieu the bathers are usually of the "swell" variety except on Sundays, when they leave old oceau to the crowd which flock in from all available points. Here nearly ail the summer boarders have their own suits, and come from tho house to the beach arrayed in them, with a cloak thrown over all. Sometimes a curious crowd will watch with the greatest nnxlet; some mysterious figure covered iu a still more mysterious cloak and hood, which they imagine may contain a delicious sensation sen-sation for them, and after watching dowdy for along time see the cloak loft inthe hands of a ni'iid and a demure, if scrawny, young woman step forth and walk down to the edge of tho surf in a dress of llanne'. as modest as if made for tho street. And right hero let me say that a woman in the surf is no more attractive than a wet dog, if as much so, and there uru few of them that are not a nuisance to every one, what with their screams and tho idiotic way in which they ullow themselves to be knocked about. Tho life saver always looks resigned and miserable whim th"y come and keeps near to catch them as they go rolling over in the surf and stand them on their feet again like tenpins, only to do il over again in five minutes. THE RKAL I'ICTUIIE. ""Some' places open earlier than others, and tho first one 'to open is Coney Inland, old Coney, o deer to the rent unwashed of New York for so many .generations. There are many women who go down to the sea there, and on fiondny afternoons when there is a vigorous vig-orous surf rolling up ou the hard beach thousands of interested spectators lean ever tho railinRs on the pior and watch the bathers. But alas for the verity of the newspaper scribes, there is nothing to bring tho blush to the cheek of a reporter unless it is the thought of the awful lies he has to tell to make a. salable article. The men look horrible nnd tho women terrible, and the trouble with the bat hing auits is that instead of lifting scanty they re far too voluminous, and so supremely ugly in cnt and make that Venus herself would look a guy in them. Where are the alim waist, the rounded hips and the perfect per-fect outline of Mary Jane's bust when she doffs her own every day garments, In which he has looked so mitlningf Jjost, nlas, in the shapeless, limbless, everythiug-lcss creation is all thut bad made her charming. charm-ing. Nowshe looks like a scarecrow. And that handsome, portly, voluptuous woman whom 1 had noticed admiringly in all the glory of a lovely silken toilutP There she comes in a blue flannel suit, all lior lino proportions seeming to hove molted together; to-gether; her feet are flat and there arc seventeen seven-teen corns ou her toca. GREAT KJCPECTATTONS IISFITW'LLI.EO. At Newport there are more bathers who can swim, and to swim well one cannot b burdened with too much clothing; stii! modesty in bnt.liingcostumes prevails there also, the imaginary pictures of beautiful creatures in next to nothing rolling about on tho snnd being nine-truths bosh. The higher in the social scale tho bather the more latitude she considers it her right to tako iu tho matter of how little she wears. Yet even slio is much belied, because sin has discovered that sea air and sunlight ou her arras and neck and shoulders Injure In-jure the skin, and that she doesn't like, for tho Bociety bello of today understands herself thoroughly nnd does not want to destroy or injure one nfim of her beauty. It is, however, true that the high society soci-ety girl of Newport and Kurrngansett Pier will go farther than would be allowed M the poor girls who have a reputation to sustain without the help that monoy and position give. In somu places tho society girls are content with the bathing. In these two places they want admiration with it, nnd I noticed that many of them wore obvious corsets. Hut sad as tho fact is for those wlm would like to furnish several columns of anu..,ln tliu u,,l,ar,h .if ilraat nt. tha sensation ou the subject of dress at the seashore it is tho honest man's dut y to deny the prevnlency of sensational costumes. no: luAaisAur rirronn. , The pretty young faoes, thnt looked weet aud fi-esh under their dainty iumgs, grow haggard, pinched and blue under the combined effect of tho ugliness ugli-ness of tho bathing dress, tho cold water and the wet stringiness of the , hair, and when the arms nro left bare your ' heartfelt wish Is thnt they had been covered, cov-ered, so that imagination at least could have lent them a charm. Let no one think these aro exceptions, for they are not. in h bathing dress a woman is oither a skele- ton or a shapeless mass, us far as Conoy Island goes, and Hockaway is just the same. Cape Mny and Atlantic City bathers look like the others, only that here fewer girls wenr the tag around their neck which niR-iiities niR-iiities that tho garmeuts they wear are hired. But there can bo slight differences only, since flannel is the proper thi ug to -wear and no color but blue is lasting. The Capo May and Atlantic City (iris nro nora apt tc, wear stockings to hide their corns than bathers at the two resorts rst named, and apparently a little moro tasto is obsorvod in the making mak-ing of tbe dresses, which have some feeblo Attempts at trimming in the way of white braid, or bauds or collars of Boarlot or white, but tho wearers are as graceless in the water here as olsowhore aud as ugly as draggled hens. There is no going behind the truth, which is that to the sensation seeker there is little to attract, for fully half the dresses have long sleeves, as well as quite long Turkish trousers, and these re worn over black or dark hose that ANOTBKK FALLACY. covers the thinnest and scrawniest looking .underpinning that could support a human frame. And the blouses are made so as to Yionceal the outlines of the figures as well as to simulate them. I looked iu vain everywhere for the microscopical costumes. They were not visiblo, except on the bodies ui t-ome very lean younn men, who doubtJtjss would have been lost forever in one of t ho regulation regula-tion suits. , Coming back after my ineffectual search at Capo May and Atlantic City, I -topped at Ocean Grove, but there they hav a beard of inspectors who. it is said, regulate the style of bathing dress. And here there is tio lying around on the sand between the dips allowed, no running about the beach in bathing costumes. At Asbury Park there is a trifle less of that strict surveillance; yet 1 am sorry to say 1 did not Hud one single case of sensational costuming among the female bathers. Indeed, the shoe was on the other foot, for some men might have been far more delicate in their choice of euslui'Bfi. Aiupuii. iho wymeu, even. the |