624 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



boundaries ; but it is a question for them to consider, "whether the 

 cause of Christianity has been actually benefited by their policy. It 

 is a question whether the sample preaching of the present camp-meet- 

 ing style is as effectual as were the direct and incisive appeals of those 

 whose voices are now hushed in the grave. Is it not more after the 

 manner of " trial-efforts " '? Which can do the best ? Who can make 

 the best impression ? It may be ornate, picturesque, and beautiful. It 

 may captivate the senses and satisfy the taste of the hearers ; but does 

 it meet the needs of the multitudes who come to hear ? 



Again, are immense crowds of people wholesome ? Are there al- 

 ways vigor and force and efficiency in numbers, unless there is exact 

 unity ? 



In such promiscuous multitudes as crowd the cottages and the 

 strand, and as go in and out of tents and barracks, coming as they do 

 from all parts, and representing as they do various grades of social 

 life, there must be forces and influences that are constantly at work, 

 and whether their influence is toward the better or worse side of 

 human nature it is hard to say. They are not all Christian professors, 

 and they are all human. They are loosed from the restraints of home, 

 and are on a vacation for pleasure. They are crowded together, and, 

 in order to be physically healthy and morally pure, their environment 

 must do much to assist them. In this regard their relation to space 

 and surroundings should be, if possible, essentially promotive of such 

 conditions. How is it ? In the number of cottages and tents, espe- 

 cially those appropriated to cheap boarding, we venture to say that 

 there are more people lodged and fed than can be found in any equal 

 number of dwellings in any other city or community of an equal 

 population of well-to-do people. This is of itself demoralizing. It 

 is out of harmony with the spirit of the age, which demands freedom 

 and space, in proportion to population, in a ratio that is overlooked or 

 disregarded at such sea-side resorts. There is, however, one conserva- 

 tive and redeeming fact in connection with this practice of promiscu- 

 ous crowding, and that is, that the season is short and the people live 

 most of the time out-of-doors. The time is at hand, however, when 

 there will be a change. It will not be tolerated by a sanitary-wise 

 people that there shall continue an unwholesome contact of dwellings, 

 with cess-pools and water- wells within stepping-distance of each other 

 and from the kitchen-doors. Nor should buildings continue to be so 

 contiguous that one may walk from roof to roof, under which people 

 live in contracted apartments, separated by thin board partitions, 

 which, even for purposes of common privacy and projDriety, are 

 scarcely sufficient. It is true, and justice demands its utterance, that 

 later improvements have, to a good extent, avoided these evils, and 

 that the class of private homes and boarding-houses now being built 

 are more in accord with a civilization that, at a Christian resort espe- 

 cially, should be conspicuous. 



