AN EXERCISE IN NOSTALGIA: MANTOLOKING 1880-1920.

By Frederic R.Colie '18. Privately printed by the authorat 51 Woodcrest Road, Short Hills, N.J.,1970, 118 pp. With maps, illustrations,and bibliography. $6.95.

When I was in college, deserted sand dunes extended for several miles south of Mantoloking, and on Sunday afternoons boys and girls in my home town of Freehold swam from the dunes and, when dusk came, buil6t fires of driftwood and enjoyed picnic suppers. Free from pollution were the ocean there and also Barnegat Bay.

Those were the days before the shore lines of ocean and bay were lined with houses and motor traffic became desperate. Nostalgia may be the best criterion in reviewing a book entitled An Exercise in Nostalgia. Probably the author, a retired judge of New Jersey Superior Court, had the same feeling when writing it because he makes much of the plentiful fish in ocean and bay and of the many birds, and even insects in the clumps of beach plums and salt meadows bordering the bay.

Anyone who likes, seashores anywhere would enjoy these recollections, particularly yachtsmen because of the many pictures and descriptions of different kinds of sailboats and also of wrecks whose crews had to be rescued by breeches buoys.

The ecology of then and now is compared, but there is no attempt to contrast the manners and morals of a small upper-class summer resort early in the century with those of the present; perhaps it is unnecessary. Life, conservative, revolved around bathing, fishing, tennis, and golf matches, sailing races, and Saturday night dances at the club. Photographs show that ladies wore hats and even in the heat of the summer strolled along the beach in black dresses reaching to wrists and ankles.

Amusing anecdotes, however, are related about the impacts of summer visitors on the few natives who resided there year 'round. As anyone acquainted with a summer resort knows, the wry and witty comments on both sides make amusing reading. It is a toss-up as to which group makes the saucier and spicier bon mots but probably the natives, closer to fundamental values of sea and earth, would win.

Mr. Moreau, President of Moreau PublicationsInc., publishes newspapers in GlenRidge, Orange, East Orange, West Orangeand Bloomfield, N.J.