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ANNALS OF A WATERING-PLACE

THAT HAS "SEEN ITS DAY."

[Illustration]

The weather which, in Mr. DUNSTABLE's varied experience of
five-and-twenty years, he assures me, has never been so bad,
having at length afforded some indications of "breaking" I make
the acquaintance, through Mrs. COBBLER, of Mr. WISTERWHISTLE, the
Proprietor of the one Bath-chair available for the invalid of
Torsington-on-Sea, who, like myself, stands in need of the salubrious
air of that health-giving resort, but who is ordered by his medical
adviser to secure it with the least possible expenditure of physical
strength.

[Illustration: A Mess Dinner.]

Both Mr. WISTERWHISTLE and his chair are peculiar in their respective
ways, and each has a decided history. Mr. WISTERWHISTLE, growing
confidential over his antecedents, says, "You see, Sir, I wasn't
brought up to the Bath-chair business, so to speak, for I began in the
Royal Navy, under His Majesty King WILLIAM THE FOURTH. Then I took to
the Coast-Guard business, and having put by a matter of thirty pound
odd, and hearing 'she' was in the market,"--Mr. WISTERWHISTLE always
referred to his Bath-chair as "she," evidently regarding it from the
nautical stand-point as of the feminine gender,--"and knowing, saving
your presence, Sir, that old BLOXER, of whom I bought her, had such