What is, however, peculiar to Scheveningen is its expanse of sand covered with sentry-box wicker chairs.

To stand on the pier on a fine day in the season and look down on these thousands of chairs and people is to receive an impression of insect-like activity that I think cannot be equalled.

Immovable as they are, the chairs seem to add to the restlessness of the seething mass.

What a visitor from Mars would make of it is a mystery; but he could hardly fail to connect chair and occupant.

Here, he would say, is surely the abode of giant snails! On a windy day the chairs must be of great use; but in heat they seem to me too vertical and too hard.