[TO THE EDITOR OF THE ...srEcuaDs."] SIR,—If the municipal authorities
of our seaside resorts can be induced to construct bathing-places of the elaborate kind suggested in the Spectator of August 16th, bathers will be fortunate. In the meantime, I am sorry that the writer of the article should think fit to join in the attack upon that time-honoured institution, the bathing machine. However much it may now be decried as old-fashioned, the bathing machine has the great merit, if drawn or let down well into the sea, of enabling you to plunge into fairly deep wger the moment you have taken your clothes off, and so to enjoy a comfortable swim before becoming chilled. It would surely be a great pity that so convenient a vehicle should be abolished in favour of a shed or row of huts somewhere far back on the shore, from which you are obliged to make an odious promenade a pied, possibly in the teeth of a cold wind, dressed up in an absurd "costume," and under the eyes of the whole beach population, in order to reach a sea perhaps some hundred yards away. If the apparent popularity of this new-fangled system is due to the facilities it affords for what is called "mixed bathing," i.e. capering and splashing about at the edge of the sea in company with persons of the opposite sex, I can only say that the wish to indulge in such antics seems to me unworthy of a self-respecting adult bather, male
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