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Their Pilgrimage

by Charles Dudley Warner · English · Gutenberg #3102 · 490,745 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Their Pilgrimage

Author: Charles Dudley Warner


        
Release date: October 10, 2004 [eBook #3102]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3102

Credits: Produced by David Widger


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Produced by David Widger





THEIR PILGRIMAGE

By Charles Dudley Warner




I. FORTRESS MONROE

When Irene looked out of her stateroom window early in the morning of
the twentieth of March, there was a softness and luminous quality in
the horizon clouds that prophesied spring. The steamboat, which had left
Baltimore and an arctic temperature the night before, was drawing near
the wharf at Fortress Monroe, and the passengers, most of whom were
seeking a mild climate, were crowding the guards, eagerly scanning the
long facade of the Hygeia Hotel.

“It looks more like a conservatory than a hotel,” said Irene to her
father, as she joined him.

“I expect that's about what it is. All those long corridors above and
below enclosed in glass are to protect the hothouse plants of New
York and Boston, who call it a Winter Resort, and I guess there's
considerable winter in it.”

“But how charming it is--the soft sea air, the low capes yonder, the
sails in the opening shining in the haze, and the peaceful old fort! I
think it's just enchanting.”

“I suppose it is. Get a thousand people crowded into one hotel under
glass, and let 'em buzz around--that seems to be the present notion of
enjoyment. I guess your mother'll like it.”

And she did. Mrs. Benson, who appeared at the moment, a little flurried
with her hasty toilet, a stout, matronly person, rather overdressed
for traveling, exclaimed: “What a homelike looking place! I do hope the
Stimpsons are here!”

“No doubt the Stimpsons are on hand,” said Mr. Benson. “Catch them not
knowing what's the right thing to do in March! They know just as well as
you do that the Reynoldses and the Van Peagrims are here.”

The crowd of passengers, alert to register and secure rooms, hurried
up the windy wharf. The interior of the hotel kept the promise of the
outside for comfort. Behind the glass-defended verandas, in the spacious
office and general lounging-room, sea-coal fires glowed in the wide
grates, tables were heaped with newspapers and the illustrated pamphlets
in which railways and hotels set forth the advantages of leaving home;
luxurious chairs invited the lazy and the tired, and the hotel-bureau,
telegraph-office, railway-office, and post-office showed the new-comer
that even in this resort he was still in the centre of activity and
uneasiness. The Bensons, who had fortunately secured rooms a month in
advance, sat quietly waiting while the crowd filed before the register,
and took its fate from the courteous autocrat behind the counter.
“No room,” was the nearly uniform answer, and the travelers had the
satisfaction of writing their names and going their way in search of
entertainment. “We've eight hundred people stowed away,” said the clerk,
“and not a spot left for a hen to roost.”

At the end of the file Irene noticed a gentleman, clad in a
perfectly-fitting rough traveling suit, with the inevitable crocodile
hand-bag and tightly-rolled umbrella, who made no effort to enroll ahead
of any one else, but having procured some letters from the post-office
clerk, patiently waited till the rest were turned away, and then
put down his name. He might as well have written it in his hat. The
deliberation of the man, who appeared to be an old traveler, though
probably not more than thirty years of age, attracted Irene's attention,
and she could not help hearing the dialogue that followed.

“What can you do for me?”

“Nothing,” said the clerk.

“Can't you stow me away anywhere? It is Saturday, and very inconvenient
for me to go any farther.”

“Cannot help that. We haven't an inch of room.”

“Well, where can I go?”

“You can go to Baltimore. You can go to Washington; or you can go to
Richmond this afternoon. You can go anywhere.”

“Couldn't I,” said the stranger, with the same deliberation--“wouldn't
you let me go to Charleston?”

“Why,” said the clerk, a little surprised, but disposed to
accommodate--“why, yes, you can go to Charleston. If you take at
once the boat you have just left, I guess you can catch the train at
Norfolk.”

As the traveler turned and called a porter to reship his baggage, he
was met by a lady, who greeted him with the cordiality of an old
acquaintance and a volley of questions.

“Why, Mr. King, this is good luck. When did you come? have you a good
room? What, no, not going?”

Mr. King explained that he had been a resident of Hampton Roads just
fifteen minutes, and that, having had a pretty good view of the place,
he was then making his way out of the door to Charleston, without any
breakfast, because there was no room in the inn.

“Oh, that never'll do. That cannot be permitted,” said his engaging
friend, with an air of determination. “Besides, I want you to go with us
on an excursion today up the James and help me chaperon a lot of young
ladies. No, you cannot go away.”

And before Mr. Stanhope King--for that was the name the traveler had
inscribed on the register--knew exactly what had happened, by some
mysterious power which women can exercise even in a hotel, when
they choose, he found himself in possession of a room, and was
gayly breakfasting with a merry party at a little round table in the
dining-room.

“He appears to know everybody,” was Mrs. Benson's comment to Irene, as
she observed his greeting of one and another as the guests tardily came
down to breakfast. “Anyway, he's a genteel-looking party. I wonder if he
belongs to Sotor, King and Co., of New York?”

“Oh, mother,” began Irene, with a quick glance at the people at the next
table; and then, “if he is a genteel party, very likely he's a drummer.
The drummers know everybody.”

And Irene confined her attention strictly to her breakfast, and never
looked up, although Mrs. Benson kept prattling away about the young
man's appearance, wondering if his eyes were dark blue or only dark
gray, and why he didn't part his hair exactly in the middle and done
with it, and a full, close beard was becoming, and he had a good, frank
face anyway, and why didn't the Stimpsons come down; and, “Oh, there's
the Van Peagrims,” and Mrs. Benson bowed sweetly and repeatedly to
somebody across the room.

To an angel, or even to that approach to an angel in this world, a
person who has satisfied his appetite, the spectacle of a crowd of
people feeding together in a large room must be a little humiliating.
The fact is that no animal appears at its best in this necessary
occupation. But a hotel breakfast-room is not without interest. The very
way in which people enter the room is a revelation of character. Mr.
King, who was put in good humor by falling on his feet, as it were, in
such agreeable company, amused himself by studying the guests as they
entered. There was the portly, florid man, who “swelled” in, patronizing
the entire room, followed by a meek little wife and three timid
children. There was the broad, dowager woman, preceded by a meek,
shrinking little man, whose whole appearance was an apology. There was a
modest young couple who looked exceedingly self-conscious and happy, and
another couple, not quite so young, who were not conscious of anybody,
the gentleman giving a curt order to the waiter, and falling at once
to reading a newspaper, while his wife took a listless attitude, which
seemed to have become second nature. There were two very tall, very
graceful, very high-bred girls in semi-mourning, accompanied by a
nice lad in tight clothes, a model of propriety and slender physical
resources, who perfectly reflected the gracious elevation of his
sisters. There was a preponderance of women, as is apt to be the case
in such resorts. A fact explicable not on the theory that women are more
delicate than men, but that American men are too busy to take this sort
of relaxation, and that the care of an establishment, with the demands
of society and the worry of servants, so draw upon the nervous energy of
women that they are glad to escape occasionally to the irresponsibility
of hotel life. Mr. King noticed that many of the women had the
unmistakable air of familiarity with this sort of life, both in the
dining-room and at the office, and were not nearly so timid as some of
the men. And this was very observable in the case of the girls, who were
chaperoning their mothers--shrinking women who seemed a little
confused by the bustle, and a little awed by the machinery of the great
caravansary.

At length Mr. King's eye fell upon the Benson group. Usually it is
unfortunate that a young lady should be observed for the first time
at table. The act of eating is apt to be disenchanting. It needs
considerable infatuation and perhaps true love on the part of a young
man to make him see anything agreeable in this performance. However
attractive a girl may be, the man may be sure that he is not in love
if his admiration cannot stand this test. It is saying a great deal
for Irene that she did stand this test even under the observation of
a stranger, and that she handled her fork, not to put too fine a point
upon it, in a manner to make the fastidious Mr. King desirous to see
more of her. I am aware that this is a very unromantic view to take of
one of the sweetest subjects in life, and I am free to confess that I
should prefer that Mr. King should first have seen Irene leaning on the
balustrade of the gallery, with a rose in her hand, gazing out over the
sea with “that far-away look in her eyes.” It would have made it much
easier for all of us. But it is better to tell the truth, and let
the girl appear in the heroic attitude of being superior to her
circumstances.

Presently Mr. King said to his friend, Mrs. Cortlandt, “Who is that
clever-looking, graceful girl over there?”

“That,” said Mrs. Cortlandt, looking intently in the direction
indicated--“why, so it is; that's just the thing,” and without another
word she darted across the room, and Mr. King saw her in animated
conversation with the young lady. Returning with satisfaction expressed
in her face, she continued, “Yes, she'll join our party--without her
mother. How lucky you saw her!”

“Well! Is it the Princess of Paphlagonia?”

“Oh, I forgot you were not in Washington last winter. That's Miss
Benson; just charming; you'll see. Family came from Ohio somewhere.
You'll see what they are--but Irene! Yes, you needn't ask; they've
got money, made it honestly. Began at the bottom--as if they were in
training for the presidency, you know--the mother hasn't got used to
it as much as the father. You know how it is. But Irene has had every
advantage--the best schools, masters, foreign travel, everything. Poor
girl! I'm sorry for her. Sometimes I wish there wasn't any such thing as
education in this country, except for the educated. She never shows it;
but of course she must see what her relatives are.”

The Hotel Hygeia has this advantage, which is appreciated, at least
by the young ladies. The United States fort is close at hand, with
its quota of young officers, who have the leisure in times of peace
to prepare for war, domestic or foreign; and there is a naval station
across the bay, with vessels that need fashionable inspection.
Considering the acknowledged scarcity of young men at watering-places,
it is the duty of a paternal government to place its military and naval
stations close to the fashionable resorts, so that the young women who
are studying the german [(dance) D.W.] and other branches of the life
of the period can have agreeable assistants. It is the charm of Fortress
Monroe that its heroes are kept from ennui by the company assembled
there, and that they can be of service to society.

When Mrs. Cortlandt assembled her party on the steam-tug chartered by
her for the excursion, the army was very well represented. With the
exception of the chaperons and a bronzed veteran, who was inclined to
direct the conversation to his Indian campaigns in the Black Hills, the
company was young, and of the age and temper in which everything seems
fair in love and war, and one that gave Mr. King, if he desired it, an
opportunity of studying the girl of the period--the girl who impresses
the foreigner with her extensive knowledge of life, her fearless freedom
of manner, and about whom he is apt to make the mistake of supposing
that this freedom has not perfectly well-defined limits. It was a
delightful day, such as often comes, even in winter, within the Capes
of Virginia; the sun was genial, the bay was smooth, with only a light
breeze that kept the water sparkling brilliantly, and just enough tonic
in the air to excite the spirits. The little tug, which was pretty
well packed with the merry company, was swift, and danced along in an
exhilarating manner. The bay, as everybody knows, is one of the most
commodious in the world, and would be one of the most beautiful if it
had hills to overlook it. There is, to be sure, a tranquil beauty in
its wooded headlands and long capes, and it is no wonder that the early
explorers were charmed with it, or that they lost their way in its
inlets, rivers, and bays. The company at first made a pretense of trying
to understand its geography, and asked a hundred questions about the
batteries, and whence the Merrimac appeared, and where the Congress
was sunk, and from what place the Monitor darted out upon its big
antagonist. But everything was on a scale so vast that it was difficult
to localize these petty incidents (big as they were in consequences),
and the party soon abandoned history and geography for the enjoyment of
the moment. Song began to take the place of conversation. A couple of
banjos were produced, and both the facility and the repertoire of the
young ladies who handled them astonished Irene. The songs were of love
and summer seas, chansons in French, minor melodies in Spanish, plain
declarations of affection in distinct English, flung abroad with classic
abandon, and caught up by the chorus in lilting strains that partook of
the bounding, exhilarating motion of the little steamer. Why, here is
material, thought King, for a troupe of bacchantes, lighthearted leaders
of a summer festival. What charming girls, quick of wit, dashing in
repartee, who can pick the strings, troll a song, and dance a brando!

“It's like sailing over the Bay of Naples,” Irene was saying to
Mr. King, who had found a seat beside her in the little cabin; “the
guitar-strumming and the impassioned songs, only that always seems to me
a manufactured gayety, an attempt to cheat the traveler into the belief
that all life is a holiday. This is spontaneous.”

“Yes, and I suppose the ancient Roman gayety, of which the Neapolitan
is an echo, was spontaneous once. I wonder if our society is getting to
dance and frolic along like that of old at Baiae!”

“Oh, Mr. King, this is an excursion. I assure you the American girl is a
serious and practical person most of the time. You've been away so long
that your standards are wrong. She's not nearly so knowing as she seems
to be.”

The boat was preparing to land at Newport News--a sand bank, with a
railway terminus, a big elevator, and a hotel. The party streamed along
in laughing and chatting groups, through the warehouse and over the
tracks and the sandy hillocks to the hotel. On the way they captured
a novel conveyance, a cart with an ox harnessed in the shafts, the
property of an aged negro, whose white hair and variegated raiment
proclaimed him an ancient Virginian, a survival of the war. The company
chartered this establishment, and swarmed upon it till it looked like a
Neapolitan 'calesso', and the procession might have been mistaken for a
harvest-home--the harvest of beauty and fashion. The hotel was captured
without a struggle on the part of the regular occupants, a dance
extemporized in the dining-room, and before the magnitude of the
invasion was realized by the garrison, the dancing feet and the laughing
girls were away again, and the little boat was leaping along in the
Elizabeth River towards the Portsmouth Navy-yard.

It isn't a model war establishment this Portsmouth yard, but it is
a pleasant resort, with its stately barracks and open square and
occasional trees. In nothing does the American woman better show her
patriotism than in her desire to inspect naval vessels and understand
dry-docks under the guidance of naval officers. Besides some old war
hulks at the station, there were a couple of training-ships getting
ready for a cruise, and it made one proud of his country to see the
interest shown by our party in everything on board of them, patiently
listening to the explanation of the breech-loading guns, diving down
into the between-decks, crowded with the schoolboys, where it is
impossible for a man to stand upright and difficult to avoid the stain
of paint and tar, or swarming in the cabin, eager to know the mode of
the officers' life at sea. So these are the little places where they
sleep? and here is where they dine, and here is a library--a haphazard
case of books in the saloon.

It was in running her eyes over these that a young lady discovered
that the novels of Zola were among the nautical works needed in the
navigation of a ship of war.

On the return--and the twenty miles seemed short enough--lunch was
served, and was the occasion of a good deal of hilarity and innocent
badinage. There were those who still sang, and insisted on sipping the
heel-taps of the morning gayety; but was King mistaken in supposing that
a little seriousness had stolen upon the party--a serious intention,
namely, between one and another couple? The wind had risen, for one
thing, and the little boat was so tossed about by the vigorous waves
that the skipper declared it would be imprudent to attempt to land
on the Rip-Raps. Was it the thought that the day was over, and that
underneath all chaff and hilarity there was the question of settling in
life to be met some time, which subdued a little the high spirits, and
gave an air of protection and of tenderness to a couple here and there?
Consciously, perhaps, this entered into the thought of nobody; but still
the old story will go on, and perhaps all the more rapidly under a mask
of raillery and merriment.

There was great bustling about, hunting up wraps and lost parasols and
mislaid gloves, and a chorus of agreement on the delight of the day,
upon going ashore, and Mrs. Cortlandt, who looked the youngest and
most animated of the flock, was quite overwhelmed with thanks and
congratulations upon the success of her excursion.

“Yes, it was perfect; you've given us all a great deal of pleasure, Mrs.
Cortlandt,” Mr. King was saying, as he stood beside her, watching the
exodus.

Perhaps Mrs. Cortlandt fancied his eyes were following a particular
figure, for she responded, “And how did you like her?”

“Like her--Miss Benson? Why, I didn't see much of her. I thought she was
very intelligent--seemed very much interested when Lieutenant Green was
explaining to her what made the drydock dry--but they were all that. Did
you say her eyes were gray? I couldn't make out if they were not rather
blue after all--large, changeable sort of eyes, long lashes; eyes that
look at you seriously and steadily, without the least bit of coquetry
or worldliness; eyes expressing simplicity and interest in what you are
saying--not in you, but in what you are saying. So few women know how
to listen; most women appear to be thinking of themselves and the effect
they are producing.”

Mrs. Cortlandt laughed. “Ah; I see. And a little 'sadness' in them,
wasn't there? Those are the most dangerous eyes. The sort that follow
you, that you see in the dark at night after the gas is turned off.”

“I haven't the faculty of seeing things in the dark, Mrs. Cortlandt. Oh,
there's the mother!” And the shrill voice of Mrs. Benson was heard, “We
was getting uneasy about you. Pa says a storm's coming, and that you'd
be as sick as sick.”

The weather was changing. But that evening the spacious hotel,
luxurious, perfectly warmed, and well lighted, crowded with an agreeable
if not a brilliant company--for Mr. King noted the fact that none of
the gentlemen dressed for dinner--seemed all the more pleasant for the
contrast with the weather outside. Thus housed, it was pleasant to
hear the waves dashing against the breakwater. Just by chance, in the
ballroom, Mr. King found himself seated by Mrs. Benson and a group of
elderly ladies, who had the perfunctory air of liking the mild gayety of
the place. To one of them Mr. King was presented, Mrs. Stimpson--a
stout woman with a broad red face and fishy eyes, wearing an elaborate
head-dress with purple flowers, and attired as if she were expecting
to take a prize. Mrs. Stimpson was loftily condescending, and asked
Mr. King if this was his first visit. She'd been coming here years and
years; never could get through the spring without a few weeks at the
Hygeia. Mr. King saw a good many people at this hotel who seemed to
regard it as a home.

“I hope your daughter, Mrs. Benson, was not tired out with the rather
long voyage today.”

“Not a mite. I guess she enjoyed it. She don't seem to enjoy most
things. She's got everything heart can wish at home. I don't know how it
is. I was tellin' pa, Mr. Benson, today that girls ain't what they used
to be in my time. Takes more to satisfy 'em. Now my daughter, if I say
it as shouldn't, Mr. King, there ain't a better appearin,' nor smarter,
nor more dutiful girl anywhere--well, I just couldn't live without her;
and she's had the best schools in the East and Europe; done all Europe
and Rome and Italy; and after all, somehow, she don't seem contented in
Cyrusville--that's where we live in Ohio--one of the smartest places in
the state; grown right up to be a city since we was married. She never
says anything, but I can see. And we haven't spared anything on our
house. And society--there's a great deal more society than I ever had.”

Mr. King might have been astonished at this outpouring if he had not
observed that it is precisely in hotels and to entire strangers that
some people are apt to talk with less reserve than to intimate friends.

“I've no doubt,” he said, “you have a lovely home in Cyrusville.”

“Well, I guess it's got all the improvements. Pa, Mr. Benson, said that
he didn't know of anything that had been left out, and we had a man up
from Cincinnati, who did all the furnishing before Irene came home.”

“Perhaps your daughter would have preferred to furnish it herself?”

“Mebbe so. She said it was splendid, but it looked like somebody else's
house. She says the queerest things sometimes. I told Mr. Benson that I
thought it would be a good thing to go away from home a little while and
travel round. I've never been away much except in New York, where Mr.
Benson has business a good deal. We've been in Washington this winter.”

“Are you going farther south?”

“Yes; we calculate to go down to the New Orleans Centennial. Pa wants
to see the Exposition, and Irene wants to see what the South looks like,
and so do I. I suppose it's perfectly safe now, so long after the war?”

“Oh, I should say so.”

“That's what Mr. Benson says. He says it's all nonsense the talk about
what the South 'll do now the Democrats are in. He says the South wants
to make money, and wants the country prosperous as much as anybody. Yes,
we are going to take a regular tour all summer round to the different
places where people go. Irene calls it a pilgrimage to the holy places
of America. Pa thinks we'll get enough of it, and he's determined we
shall have enough of it for once. I suppose we shall. I like to travel,
but I haven't seen any place better than Cyrusville yet.”

As Irene did not make her appearance, Mr. King tore himself away from
this interesting conversation and strolled about the parlors, made
engagements to take early coffee at the fort, to go to church with Mrs.
Cortlandt and her friends, and afterwards to drive over to Hampton and
see the copper and other colored schools, talked a little politics over
a late cigar, and then went to bed, rather curious to see if the eyes
that Mrs. Cortlandt regarded as so dangerous would appear to him in the
darkness.

When he awoke, his first faint impressions were that the Hygeia had
drifted out to sea, and then that a dense fog had drifted in and
enveloped it. But this illusion was speedily dispelled. The window-ledge
was piled high with snow. Snow filled the air, whirled about by a gale
that was banging the window-shutters and raging exactly like a Northern
tempest.

It swirled the snow about in waves and dark masses interspersed with
rifts of light, dark here and luminous there. The Rip-Raps were lost to
view. Out at sea black clouds hung in the horizon, heavy reinforcements
for the attacking storm. The ground was heaped with the still
fast-falling snow--ten inches deep he heard it said when he descended.
The Baltimore boat had not arrived, and could not get in. The waves at
the wharf rolled in, black and heavy, with a sullen beat, and the sky
shut down close to the water, except when a sudden stronger gust of wind
cleared a luminous space for an instant. Stormbound: that is what the
Hygeia was--a winter resort without any doubt.

The hotel was put to a test of its qualities. There was no getting
abroad in such a storm. But the Hygeia appeared at its best in this
emergency. The long glass corridors, where no one could venture in
the arctic temperature, gave, nevertheless, an air of brightness and
cheerfulness to the interior, where big fires blazed, and the company
were exalted into good-fellowship and gayety--a decorous Sunday
gayety--by the elemental war from which they were securely housed.

If the defenders of their country in the fortress mounted guard that
morning, the guests at the Hygeia did not see them, but a good many of
them mounted guard later at the hotel, and offered to the young
ladies there that protection which the brave like to give the fair.
Notwithstanding this, Mr. Stanhope King could not say the day was dull.
After a morning presumably spent over works of a religious character,
some of the young ladies, who had been the life of the excursion the
day before, showed their versatility by devising serious amusements
befitting the day, such as twenty questions on Scriptural subjects,
palmistry, which on another day is an aid to mild flirtation, and an
exhibition of mind-reading, not public--oh, dear, no--but with a favored
group in a private parlor. In none of these groups, however, did Mr.
King find Miss Benson, and when he encountered her after dinner in
the reading-room, she confessed that she had declined an invitation to
assist at the mind-reading, partly from a lack of interest, and partly
from a reluctance to dabble in such things.

“Surely you are not uninterested in what is now called psychical
research?” he asked.

“That depends,” said Irene. “If I were a physician, I should like to
watch the operation of the minds of 'sensitives' as a pathological
study. But the experiments I have seen are merely exciting and
unsettling, without the least good result, with a haunting notion that
you are being tricked or deluded. It is as much as I can do to try and
know my own mind, without reading the minds of others.”

“But you cannot help the endeavor to read the mind of a person with whom
you are talking.”

“Oh, that is different. That is really an encounter of wits, for you
know that the best part of a conversation is the things not said. What
they call mindreading is a vulgar business compared to this. Don't you
think so, Mr. King?”

What Mr. King was actually thinking was that Irene's eyes were the most
unfathomable blue he ever looked into, as they met his with perfect
frankness, and he was wondering if she were reading his present state of
mind; but what he said was, “I think your sort of mind-reading is a
good deal more interesting than the other,” and he might have added,
dangerous. For a man cannot attempt to find out what is in a woman's
heart without a certain disturbance of his own. He added, “So you think
our society is getting too sensitive and nervous, and inclined to make
dangerous mental excursions?”

“I'm afraid I do not think much about such things,” Irene replied,
looking out of the window into the storm. “I'm content with a very
simple faith, even if it is called ignorance.”

Mr. King was thinking, as he watched the clear, spirited profile of the
girl shown against the white tumult in the air, that he should like to
belong to the party of ignorance himself, and he thought so long about
it that the subject dropped, and the conversation fell into ordinary
channels, and Mrs. Benson appeared. She thought they would move on as
soon as the storm was over. Mr. King himself was going south in the
morning, if travel were possible. When he said good-by, Mrs. Benson
expressed the pleasure his acquaintance had given them, and hoped they
should see him in Cyrusville. Mr. King looked to see if this invitation
was seconded in Irene's eyes; but they made no sign, although she gave
him her hand frankly, and wished him a good journey.

The next morning he crossed to Norfolk, was transported through the
snow-covered streets on a sledge, and took his seat in the cars for the
most monotonous ride in the country, that down the coast-line.

When next Stanhope King saw Fortress Monroe it was in the first days of
June. The summer which he had left in the interior of the Hygeia was now
out-of-doors. The winter birds had gone north; the summer birds had not
yet come. It was the interregnum, for the Hygeia, like Venice, has two
seasons, one for the inhabitants of colder climes, and the other for
natives of the country. No spot, thought our traveler, could be more
lovely. Perhaps certain memories gave it a charm, not well defined,
but still gracious. If the house had been empty, which it was far from
being, it would still have been peopled for him. Were they all such
agreeable people whom he had seen there in March, or has one girl the
power to throw a charm over a whole watering-place? At any rate, the
place was full of delightful repose. There was movement enough upon
the water to satisfy one's lazy longing for life, the waves lapped
soothingly along the shore, and the broad bay, sparkling in the sun, was
animated with boats, which all had a holiday air. Was it not enough to
come down to breakfast and sit at the low, broad windows and watch the
shifting panorama? All about the harbor slanted the white sails; at
intervals a steamer was landing at the wharf or backing away from it;
on the wharf itself there was always a little bustle, but no noise, some
pretense of business, and much actual transaction in the way of idle
attitudinizing, the colored man in castoff clothes, and the colored
sister in sun-bonnet or turban, lending themselves readily to the
picturesque; the scene changed every minute, the sail of a tiny boat was
hoisted or lowered under the window, a dashing cutter with its uniformed
crew was pulling off to the German man-of-war, a puffing little tug
dragged along a line of barges in the distance, and on the horizon a
fleet of coasters was working out between the capes to sea. In the open
window came the fresh morning breeze, and only the softened sounds of
the life outside. The ladies came down in cool muslin dresses, and added
the needed grace to the picture as they sat breakfasting by the windows,
their figures in silhouette against the blue water.

No wonder our traveler lingered there a little! Humanity called him, for
one thing, to drive often with humanely disposed young ladies round
the beautiful shore curve to visit the schools for various colors at
Hampton. Then there was the evening promenading on the broad verandas
and out upon the miniature pier, or at sunset by the water-batteries
of the old fort--such a peaceful old fortress as it is. All the morning
there were “inspections” to be attended, and nowhere could there be
seen a more agreeable mingling of war and love than the spacious,
tree-planted interior of the fort presented on such occasions. The
shifting figures of the troops on parade; the martial and daring
manoeuvres of the regimental band; the groups of ladies seated on
benches under the trees, attended by gallants in uniform, momentarily
off duty and full of information, and by gallants not in uniform and
never off duty and desirous to learn; the ancient guns with French arms
and English arms, reminiscences of Yorktown, on one of which a pretty
girl was apt to be perched in the act of being photographed--all this
was enough to inspire any man to be a countryman and a lover. It is
beautiful to see how fearless the gentle sex is in the presence of
actual war; the prettiest girls occupied the front and most exposed
seats; and never flinched when the determined columns marched down on
them with drums beating and colors flying, nor showed much relief when
they suddenly wheeled and marched to another part of the parade in
search of glory. And the officers' quarters in the casemates--what will
not women endure to serve their country! These quarters are mere tunnels
under a dozen feet of earth, with a door on the parade side and a
casement window on the outside--a damp cellar, said to be cool in the
height of summer. The only excuse for such quarters is that the
women and children will be comparatively safe in case the fortress is
bombarded.

The hotel and the fortress at this enchanting season, to say nothing of
other attractions, with laughing eyes and slender figures, might well
have detained Mr. Stanhope King, but he had determined upon a sort of
roving summer among the resorts of fashion and pleasure. After a long
sojourn abroad, it seemed becoming that he should know something of
the floating life of his own country. His determination may have been
strengthened by the confession of Mrs. Benson that her family were
intending an extensive summer tour. It gives a zest to pleasure to have
even an indefinite object, and though the prospect of meeting Irene
again was not definite, it was nevertheless alluring. There was
something about her, he could not tell what, different from the women he
had met in France. Indeed, he went so far as to make a general formula
as to the impression the American women made on him at Fortress
Monroe--they all appeared to be innocent.





II. CAPE MAY, ATLANTIC CITY

“Of course you will not go to Cape May till the season opens. You
might as well go to a race-track the day there is no race.” It was Mrs.
Cortlandt who was speaking, and the remonstrance was addressed to Mr.
Stanhope King, and a young gentleman, Mr. Graham Forbes, who had
just been presented to her as an artist, in the railway station
at Philadelphia, that comfortable home of the tired and bewildered
traveler. Mr. Forbes, with his fresh complexion, closely cropped hair,
and London clothes, did not look at all like the traditional artist,
although the sharp eyes of Mrs. Cortlandt detected a small sketch-book
peeping out of his side pocket.

“On the contrary, that is why we go,” said Mr. King. “I've a fancy that
I should like to open a season once myself.”

“Besides,” added Mr. Forbes, “we want to see nature unadorned. You know,
Mrs. Cortlandt, how people sometimes spoil a place.”

“I'm not sure,” answered the lady, laughing, “that people have not
spoiled you two and you need a rest. Where else do you go?”

“Well, I thought,” replied Mr. King, “from what I heard, that Atlantic
City might appear best with nobody there.”

“Oh, there's always some one there. You know, it is a winter resort
now. And, by the way--But there's my train, and the young ladies are
beckoning to me.” (Mrs. Cortlandt was never seen anywhere without a
party of young ladies.) “Yes, the Bensons passed through Washington the
other day from the South, and spoke of going to Atlantic City to tone up
a little before the season, and perhaps you know that Mrs. Benson took a
great fancy to you, Mr. King. Good-by, au revoir,” and the lady was gone
with her bevy of girls, struggling in the stream that poured towards one
of the wicket-gates.

“Atlantic City? Why, Stanhope, you don't think of going there also?”

“I didn't think of it, but, hang it all, my dear fellow, duty is
duty. There are some places you must see in order to be well informed.
Atlantic City is an important place; a great many of its inhabitants
spend their winters in Philadelphia.”

“And this Mrs. Benson?”

“No, I'm not going down there to see Mrs. Benson.”

Expectancy was the word when our travelers stepped out of the car at
Cape May station. Except for some people who seemed to have business
there, they were the only passengers. It was the ninth of June.
Everything was ready--the sea, the sky, the delicious air, the long line
of gray-colored coast, the omnibuses, the array of hotel tooters. As
they stood waiting in irresolution a grave man of middle age and a
disinterested manner sauntered up to the travelers, and slipped into
friendly relations with them. It was impossible not to incline to a
person so obliging and well stocked with local information. Yes, there
were several good hotels open. It didn't make much difference; there was
one near at hand, not pretentious, but probably as comfortable as any.
People liked the table; last summer used to come there from other hotels
to get a meal. He was going that way, and would walk along with them.
He did, and conversed most interestingly on the way. Our travelers
felicitated themselves upon falling into such good hands, but when
they reached the hotel designated it had such a gloomy and in fact
boardinghouse air that they hesitated, and thought they would like to
walk on a little farther and see the town before settling. And their
friend appeared to feel rather grieved about it, not for himself, but
for them. He had moreover, the expression of a fisherman who has lost a
fish after he supposed it was securely hooked. But our young friends had
been angled for in a good many waters, and they told the landlord, for
it was the landlord, that while they had no doubt his was the best hotel
in the place, they would like to look at some not so good. The one that
attracted them, though they could not see in what the attraction lay,
was a tall building gay with fresh paint in many colors, some pretty
window balconies, and a portico supported by high striped columns that
rose to the fourth story. They were fond of color, and were taken by
six little geraniums planted in a circle amid the sand in front of the
house, which were waiting for the season to open before they began to
grow. With hesitation they stepped upon the newly varnished piazza and
the newly varnished office floor, for every step left a footprint. The
chairs, disposed in a long line on the piazza, waiting for guests, were
also varnished, as the artist discovered when he sat in one of them and
was held fast. It was all fresh and delightful. The landlord and the
clerks had smiles as wide as the open doors; the waiters exhibited in
their eagerness a good imitation of unselfish service.

It was very pleasant to be alone in the house, and to be the
first-fruits of such great expectations. The first man of the season
is in such a different position from the last. He is like the King of
Bavaria alone in his royal theatre. The ushers give him the best seat in
the house, he hears the tuning of the instruments, the curtain is about
to rise, and all for him. It is a very cheerful desolation, for it has a
future, and everything quivers with the expectation of life and gayety.
Whereas the last man is like one who stumbles out among the empty
benches when the curtain has fallen and the play is done. Nothing is
so melancholy as the shabbiness of a watering-place at the end of the
season, where is left only the echo of past gayety, the last guests are
scurrying away like leaves before the cold, rising wind, the varnish
has worn off, shutters are put up, booths are dismantled, the shows are
packing up their tawdry ornaments, and the autumn leaves collect in the
corners of the gaunt buildings.

Could this be the Cape May about which hung so many traditions of
summer romance? Where were those crowds of Southerners, with slaves and
chariots, and the haughtiness of a caste civilization, and the belles
from Baltimore and Philadelphia and Charleston and Richmond, whose
smiles turned the heads of the last generation? Had that gay society
danced itself off into the sea, and left not even a phantom of itself
behind? As he sat upon the veranda, King could not rid himself of
the impression that this must be a mocking dream, this appearance of
emptiness and solitude. Why, yes, he was certainly in a delusion, at
least in a reverie. The place was alive. An omnibus drove to the door
(though no sound of wheels was heard); the waiters rushed out, a fat man
descended, a little girl was lifted down, a pretty woman jumped from
the steps with that little extra bound on the ground which all women
confessedly under forty always give when they alight from a vehicle, a
large woman lowered herself cautiously out, with an anxious look, and
a file of men stooped and emerged, poking their umbrellas and canes in
each other's backs. Mr. King plainly saw the whole party hurry into the
office and register their names, and saw the clerk repeatedly touch a
bell and throw back his head and extend his hand to a servant. Curious
to see who the arrivals were, he went to the register. No names were
written there. But there were other carriages at the door, there was a
pile of trunks on the veranda, which he nearly stumbled over, although
his foot struck nothing, and the chairs were full, and people were
strolling up and down the piazza. He noticed particularly one couple
promenading--a slender brunette, with a brilliant complexion; large dark
eyes that made constant play--could it be the belle of Macon?--and
a gentleman of thirty-five, in black frock-coat, unbuttoned, with a
wide-brimmed soft hat-clothes not quite the latest style--who had a good
deal of manner, and walked apart from the young lady, bending towards
her with an air of devotion. Mr. King stood one side and watched the
endless procession up and down, up and down, the strollers, the mincers,
the languid, the nervous steppers; noted the eye-shots, the flashing or
the languishing look that kills, and never can be called to account for
the mischief it does; but not a sound did he hear of the repartee and
the laughter. The place certainly was thronged. The avenue in front was
crowded with vehicles of all sorts; there were groups strolling on the
broad beach-children with their tiny pails and shovels digging pits
close to the advancing tide, nursery-maids in fast colors, boys in
knickerbockers racing on the beach, people lying on the sand, resolute
walkers, whose figures loomed tall in the evening light, doing their
constitutional. People were passing to and fro on the long iron pier
that spider-legged itself out into the sea; the two rooms midway were
filled with sitters taking the evening breeze; and the large ball and
music room at the end, with its spacious outside promenade-yes, there
were dancers there, and the band was playing. Mr. King could see the
fiddlers draw their bows, and the corneters lift up their horns and get
red in the face, and the lean man slide his trombone, and the drummer
flourish his sticks, but not a note of music reached him. It might have
been a performance of ghosts for all the effect at this distance. Mr.
King remarked upon this dumb-show to a gentleman in a blue coat
and white vest and gray hat, leaning against a column near him. The
gentleman made no response. It was most singular. Mr. King stepped back
to be out of the way of some children racing down the piazza, and, half
stumbling, sat down in the lap of a dowager--no, not quite; the chair
was empty, and he sat down in the fresh varnish, to which his clothes
stuck fast. Was this a delusion? No. The tables were filled in the
dining-room, the waiters were scurrying about, there were ladies on the
balconies looking dreamily down upon the animated scene below; all the
movements of gayety and hilarity in the height of a season. Mr. King
approached a group who were standing waiting for a carriage, but they
did not see him, and did not respond to his trumped-up question about
the next train. Were these, then, shadows, or was he a spirit himself?
Were these empty omnibuses and carriages that discharged ghostly
passengers? And all this promenading and flirting and languishing and
love-making, would it come to nothing-nothing more than usual? There was
a charm about it all--the movement, the color, the gray sand, and the
rosy blush on the sea--a lovely place, an enchanted place. Were these
throngs the guests that were to come, or those that had been herein
other seasons? Why could not the former “materialize” as well as the
latter? Is it not as easy to make nothing out of what never yet existed
as out of what has ceased to exist? The landlord, by faith, sees all
this array which is prefigured so strangely to Mr. King; and his comely
young wife sees it and is ready for it; and the fat son at the supper
table--a living example of the good eating to be had here--is serene,
and has the air of being polite and knowing to a houseful. This scrap
of a child, with the aplomb of a man of fifty, wise beyond his fatness,
imparts information to the travelers about the wine, speaks to the
waiter with quiet authority, and makes these mature men feel like boys
before the gravity of our perfect flower of American youth who has known
no childhood. This boy at least is no phantom; the landlord is real, and
the waiters, and the food they bring.

“I suppose,” said Mr. King to his friend, “that we are opening the
season. Did you see anything outdoors?”

“Yes; a horseshoe-crab about a mile below here on the smooth sand, with
a long dotted trail behind him, a couple of girls in a pony-cart
who nearly drove over me, and a tall young lady with a red parasol,
accompanied by a big black-and-white dog, walking rapidly, close to the
edge of the sea, towards the sunset. It's just lovely, the silvery sweep
of coast in this light.”

“It seems a refined sort of place in its outlines, and quietly
respectable. They tell me here that they don't want the excursion crowds
that overrun Atlantic City, but an Atlantic City man, whom I met at the
pier, said that Cape May used to be the boss, but that Atlantic City had
got the bulge on it now--had thousands to the hundreds here. To get the
bulge seems a desirable thing in America, and I think we'd better see
what a place is like that is popular, whether fashion recognizes it or
not.”

The place lost nothing in the morning light, and it was a sparkling
morning with a fresh breeze. Nature, with its love of simple, sweeping
lines, and its feeling for atmospheric effect, has done everything for
the place, and bad taste has not quite spoiled it. There is a sloping,
shallow beach, very broad, of fine, hard sand, excellent for driving
or for walking, extending unbroken three miles down to Cape May Point,
which has hotels and cottages of its own, and lifesaving and signal
stations. Off to the west from this point is the long sand line to Cape
Henlopen, fourteen miles away, and the Delaware shore. At Cape May Point
there is a little village of painted wood houses, mostly cottages to
let, and a permanent population of a few hundred inhabitants. From the
pier one sees a mile and a half of hotels and cottages, fronting south,
all flaming, tasteless, carpenter's architecture, gay with paint.
The sea expanse is magnificent, and the sweep of beach is fortunately
unencumbered, and vulgarized by no bath-houses or show-shanties. The
bath-houses are in front of the hotels and in their enclosures; then
come the broad drive, and the sand beach, and the sea. The line is
broken below by the lighthouse and a point of land, whereon stands the
elephant. This elephant is not indigenous, and he stands alone in the
sand, a wooden sham without an explanation. Why the hotel-keeper's mind
along the coast regards this grotesque structure as a summer attraction
it is difficult to see. But when one resort had him, he became a
necessity everywhere. The travelers walked down to this monster, climbed
the stairs in one of his legs, explored the rooms, looked out from the
saddle, and pondered on the problem. This beast was unfinished within
and unpainted without, and already falling into decay. An elephant on
the desert, fronting the Atlantic Ocean, had, after all, a picturesque
aspect, and all the more so because he was a deserted ruin.

The elephant was, however, no emptier than the cottages about which
our friends strolled. But the cottages were all ready, the rows of new
chairs stood on the fresh piazzas, the windows were invitingly open, the
pathetic little patches of flowers in front tried hard to look festive
in the dry sands, and the stout landladies in their rocking-chairs
calmly knitted and endeavored to appear as if they expected nobody, but
had almost a houseful.

Yes, the place was undeniably attractive. The sea had the blue of Nice;
why must we always go to the Mediterranean for an aqua marina, for
poetic lines, for delicate shades? What charming gradations had this
picture-gray sand, blue waves, a line of white sails against the pale
blue sky! By the pier railing is a bevy of little girls grouped about an
ancient colored man, the very ideal old Uncle Ned, in ragged, baggy, and
disreputable clothes, lazy good-nature oozing out of every pore of
him, kneeling by a telescope pointed to a bunch of white sails on the
horizon; a dainty little maiden, in a stiff white skirt and golden hair,
leans against him and tiptoes up to the object-glass, shutting first one
eye and then the other, and making nothing out of it all. “Why, ov co'se
you can't see nuffln, honey,” said Uncle Ned, taking a peep, “wid the
'scope p'inted up in the sky.”

In order to pass from Cape May to Atlantic City one takes a long circuit
by rail through the Jersey sands. Jersey is a very prolific State, but
the railway traveler by this route is excellently prepared for Atlantic
City, for he sees little but sand, stunted pines, scrub oaks, small
frame houses, sometimes trying to hide in the clumps of scrub oaks,
and the villages are just collections of the same small frame houses
hopelessly decorated with scroll-work and obtrusively painted, standing
in lines on sandy streets, adorned with lean shade-trees. The handsome
Jersey people were not traveling that day--the two friends had a theory
about the relation of a sandy soil to female beauty--and when the
artist got out his pencil to catch the types of the country, he was
well rewarded. There were the fat old women in holiday market costumes,
strong-featured, positive, who shook their heads at each other and
nodded violently and incessantly, and all talked at once; the old men in
rusty suits, thin, with a deprecatory manner, as if they had heard that
clatter for fifty years, and perky, sharp-faced girls in vegetable hats,
all long-nosed and thin-lipped. And though the day was cool, mosquitoes
had the bad taste to invade the train. At the junction, a small
collection of wooden shanties, where the travelers waited an hour, they
heard much of the glories of Atlantic City from the postmistress, who
was waiting for an excursion some time to go there (the passion for
excursions seems to be a growing one), and they made the acquaintance of
a cow tied in the room next the ticket-office, probably also waiting for
a passage to the city by the sea.

And a city it is. If many houses, endless avenues, sand, paint, make a
city, the artist confessed that this was one. Everything is on a large
scale. It covers a large territory, the streets run at right angles, the
avenues to the ocean take the names of the states. If the town had been
made to order and sawed out by one man, it could not be more beautifully
regular and more satisfactorily monotonous. There is nothing about it to
give the most commonplace mind in the world a throb of disturbance. The
hotels, the cheap shops, the cottages, are all of wood, and, with three
or four exceptions in the thousands, they are all practically alike, all
ornamented with scroll-work, as if cut out by the jig-saw, all vividly
painted, all appealing to a primitive taste just awakening to the
appreciation of the gaudy chromo and the illuminated and consoling
household motto. Most of the hotels are in the town, at considerable
distance from the ocean, and the majestic old sea, which can be
monotonous but never vulgar, is barricaded from the town by five or six
miles of stark-naked plank walk, rows on rows of bath closets, leagues
of flimsy carpentry-work, in the way of cheap-John shops, tin-type
booths, peep-shows, go-rounds, shooting-galleries, pop-beer and cigar
shops, restaurants, barber shops, photograph galleries, summer theatres.
Sometimes the plank walk runs for a mile or two, on its piles, between
rows of these shops and booths, and again it drops off down by the
waves. Here and there is a gayly-painted wooden canopy by the shore,
with chairs where idlers can sit and watch the frolicking in the water,
or a space railed off, where the select of the hotels lie or lounge
in the sand under red umbrellas. The calculating mind wonders how many
million feet of lumber there are in this unpicturesque barricade, and
what gigantic forests have fallen to make this timber front to the sea.
But there is one thing man cannot do. He has made this show to suit
himself, he has pushed out several iron piers into the sea, and erected,
of course, a skating rink on the end of one of them. But the sea
itself, untamed, restless, shining, dancing, raging, rolls in from the
southward, tossing the white sails on its vast expanse, green, blue,
leaden, white-capped, many-colored, never two minutes the same, sounding
with its eternal voice I knew not what rebuke to man.

When Mr. King wrote his and his friend's name in the book at the Mansion
House, he had the curiosity to turn over the leaves, and it was not with
much surprise that he read there the names of A. J. Benson, wife, and
daughter, Cyrusville, Ohio.

“Oh, I see!” said the artist; “you came down here to see Mr. Benson!”

That gentleman was presently discovered tilted back in a chair on
the piazza, gazing vacantly into the vacant street with that air of
endurance that fathers of families put on at such resorts. But he
brightened up when Mr. King made himself known.

“I'm right glad to see you, sir. And my wife and daughter will be. I
was saying to my wife yesterday that I couldn't stand this sort of thing
much longer.”

“You don't find it lively?”

“Well, the livelier it is the less I shall like it, I reckon. The town
is well enough. It's one of the smartest places on the coast. I should
like to have owned the ground and sold out and retired. This sand is all
gold. They say they sell the lots by the bushel and count every sand.
You can see what it is, boards and paint and sand. Fine houses, too;
miles of them.”

“And what do you do?”

“Oh, they say there's plenty to do. You can ride around in the sand; you
can wade in it if you want to, and go down to the beach and walk up and
down the plank walk--walk up and down--walk up and down. They like it.
You can't bathe yet without getting pneumonia. They have gone there now.
Irene goes because she says she can't stand the gayety of the parlor.”

From the parlor came the sound of music. A young girl who had the air
of not being afraid of a public parlor was drumming out waltzes on the
piano, more for the entertainment of herself than of the half-dozen
ladies who yawned over their worsted-work. As she brought her piece to
an end with a bang, a pretty, sentimental miss with a novel in her hand,
who may not have seen Mr. King looking in at the door, ran over to the
player and gave her a hug. “That's beautiful! that's perfectly lovely,
Mamie!”--“This,” said the player, taking up another sheet, “has not been
played much in New York.” Probably not, in that style, thought Mr. King,
as the girl clattered through it.

There was no lack of people on the promenade, tramping the boards, or
hanging about the booths where the carpenters and painters were at work,
and the shop men and women were unpacking the corals and the sea-shells,
and the cheap jewelry, and the Swiss wood-carving, the toys, the tinsel
brooches, and agate ornaments, and arranging the soda fountains, and
putting up the shelves for the permanent pie. The sort of preparation
going on indicated the kind of crowd expected. If everything had a cheap
and vulgar look, our wandering critics remembered that it is never fair
to look behind the scenes of a show, and that things would wear a braver
appearance by and by. And if the women on the promenade were homely and
ill-dressed, even the bonnes in unpicturesque costumes, and all the men
were slouchy and stolid, how could any one tell what an effect of gayety
and enjoyment there might be when there were thousands of such people,
and the sea was full of bathers, and the flags were flying, and the
bands were tooting, and all the theatres were opened, and acrobats and
spangled women and painted red-men offered those attractions which, like
government, are for the good of the greatest number? What will you
have? Shall vulgarity be left just vulgar, and have no apotheosis and
glorification? This is very fine of its kind, and a resort for the
million. The million come here to enjoy themselves. Would you have an
art-gallery here, and high-priced New York and Paris shops lining the
way?

“Look at the town,” exclaimed the artist, “and see what money can do,
and satisfy the average taste without the least aid from art. It's just
wonderful. I've tramped round the place, and, taking out a cottage or
two, there isn't a picturesque or pleasing view anywhere. I tell you
people know what they want, and enjoy it when they get it.”

“You needn't get excited about it,” said Mr. King. “Nobody said it
wasn't commonplace, and glaringly vulgar if you like, and if you like
to consider it representative of a certain stage in national culture, I
hope it is not necessary to remind you that the United States can beat
any other people in any direction they choose to expand themselves.
You'll own it when you've seen watering-places enough.”

After this defense of the place, Mr. King owned it might be difficult
for Mr. Forbes to find anything picturesque to sketch. What figures, to
be sure! As if people were obliged to be shapely or picturesque for the
sake of a wandering artist! “I could do a tree,” growled Mr. Forbes, “or
a pile of boards; but these shanties!”

When they were well away from the booths and bath-houses, Mr. King saw
in the distance two ladies. There was no mistaking one of them--the easy
carriage, the grace of movement. No such figure had been afield all day.
The artist was quick to see that. Presently they came up with them, and
found them seated on a bench, looking off upon Brigantine Island, a low
sand dune with some houses and a few trees against the sky, the most
pleasing object in view.

Mrs. Benson did not conceal the pleasure she felt in seeing Mr. King
again, and was delighted to know his friend; and, to say the truth, Miss
Irene gave him a very cordial greeting.

“I'm 'most tired to death,” said Mrs. Benson, when they were all seated.
“But this air does me good. Don't you like Atlantic City?”

“I like it better than I did at first.” If the remark was intended for
Irene, she paid no attention to it, being absorbed in explaining to Mr.
Forbes why she preferred the deserted end of the promenade.

“It's a place that grows on you. I guess it's grown the wrong way on
Irene and father; but I like the air--after the South. They say we ought
to see it in August, when all Philadelphia is here.”

“I should think it might be very lively.”

“Yes; but the promiscuous bathing. I don't think I should like that. We
are not brought up to that sort of thing in Ohio.”

“No? Ohio is more like France, I suppose?”

“Like France!” exclaimed the old lady, looking at him in
amazement--“like France! Why, France is the wickedest place in the
world.”

“No doubt it is, Mrs. Benson. But at the sea resorts the sexes bathe
separately.”

“Well, now! I suppose they have to there.”

“Yes; the older nations grow, the more self-conscious they become.”

“I don't believe, for all you say, Mr. King, the French have any more
conscience than we have.”

“Nor do I, Mrs. Benson. I was only trying to say that they pay more
attention to appearances.”

“Well, I was brought up to think it's one thing to appear, and another
thing to be,” said Mrs. Benson, as dismissing the subject. “So your
friend's an artist? Does he paint? Does he take portraits? There was
an artist at Cyrusville last winter who painted portraits, but Irene
wouldn't let him do hers. I'm glad we've met Mr. Forbes. I've always
wanted to have--”

“Oh, mother,” exclaimed Irene, who always appeared to keep one ear for
her mother's conversation, “I was just saying to Mr. Forbes that he
ought to see the art exhibitions down at the other end of the promenade,
and the pictures of the people who come here in August. Are you rested?”

The party moved along, and Mr. King, by a movement that seemed to him
more natural than it did to Mr. Forbes, walked with Irene, and the two
fell to talking about the last spring's trip in the South.

“Yes, we enjoyed the exhibition, but I am not sure but I should have
enjoyed New Orleans more without the exhibition. That took so much time.
There is nothing so wearisome as an exhibition. But New Orleans was
charming. I don't know why, for it's the flattest, dirtiest, dampest
city in the world; but it is charming. Perhaps it's the people, or the
Frenchiness of it, or the tumble-down, picturesque old creole quarter,
or the roses; I didn't suppose there were in the world so many roses;
the town was just wreathed and smothered with them. And you did not see
it?”

“No; I have been to exhibitions, and I thought I should prefer to take
New Orleans by itself some other time. You found the people hospitable?”

“Well, they were not simply hospitable; they were that, to be sure, for
father had letters to some of the leading men; but it was the general
air of friendliness and good-nature everywhere, of agreeableness--it
went along with the roses and the easy-going life. You didn't feel
all the time on a strain. I don't suppose they are any better than
our people, and I've no doubt I should miss a good deal there after
a while--a certain tonic and purpose in life. But, do you know, it is
pleasant sometimes to be with people who haven't so many corners as our
people have. But you went south from Fortress Monroe?”

“Yes; I went to Florida.”

“Oh, that must be a delightful country!”

“Yes, it's a very delightful land, or will be when it is finished. It
needs advertising now. It needs somebody to call attention to it. The
modest Northerners who have got hold of it, and staked it all out into
city lots, seem to want to keep it all to themselves.”

“How do you mean 'finished'?”

“Why, the State is big enough, and a considerable portion of it has a
good foundation. What it wants is building up. There's plenty of water
and sand, and palmetto roots and palmetto trees, and swamps, and a
perfectly wonderful vegetation of vines and plants and flowers. What it
needs is land--at least what the Yankees call land. But it is coming on.
A good deal of the State below Jacksonville is already ten to fifteen
feet above the ocean.”

“But it's such a place for invalids!”

“Yes, it is a place for invalids. There are two kinds of people
there--invalids and speculators. Thousands of people in the bleak North,
and especially in the Northwest, cannot live in the winter anywhere else
than in Florida. It's a great blessing to this country to have such a
sanitarium. As I said, all it needs is building up, and then it wouldn't
be so monotonous and malarious.”

“But I had such a different idea of it!”

“Well, your idea is probably right. You cannot do justice to a place by
describing it literally. Most people are fascinated by Florida: the fact
is that anything is preferable to our Northern climate from February to
May.”

“And you didn't buy an orange plantation, or a town?”

“No; I was discouraged. Almost any one can have a town who will take a
boat and go off somewhere with a surveyor, and make a map.”

The truth is--the present writer had it from Major Blifill, who runs a
little steamboat upon one of the inland creeks where the alligator is
still numerous enough to be an entertainment--that Mr. King was no doubt
malarious himself when he sailed over Florida. Blifill says he offended
a whole boatfull one day when they were sailing up the St. John's.
Probably he was tired of water, and swamp and water, and scraggy
trees and water. The captain was on the bow, expatiating to a crowd of
listeners on the fertility of the soil and the salubrity of the climate.
He had himself bought a piece of ground away up there somewhere for two
hundred dollars, cleared it up, and put in orange-trees, and thousands
wouldn't buy it now. And Mr. King, who listened attentively, finally
joined in with the questioners, and said, “Captain, what is the average
price of land down in this part of Florida by the--gallon?”

They had come down to the booths, and Mrs. Benson was showing the artist
the shells, piles of conchs, and other outlandish sea-fabrications
in which it is said the roar of the ocean can be heard when they are
hundreds of miles away from the sea. It was a pretty thought, Mr.
Forbes said, and he admired the open shells that were painted on the
inside--painted in bright blues and greens, with dabs of white sails and
a lighthouse, or a boat with a bare-armed, resolute young woman in it,
sending her bark spinning over waves mountain-high.

“Yes,” said the artist, “what cheerfulness those works of art will give
to the little parlors up in the country, when they are set up with other
shells on the what-not in the corner! These shells always used to remind
me of missionaries and the cause of the heathen; but when I see them now
I shall think of Atlantic City.”

“But the representative things here,” interrupted Irene, “are the
photographs, the tintypes. To see them is just as good as staying here
to see the people when they come.”

“Yes,” responded Mr. King, “I think art cannot go much further in this
direction.”

If there were not miles of these show-cases of tintypes, there were at
least acres of them. Occasionally an instantaneous photograph gave a
lively picture of the beach, when the water was full of bathers-men,
women, children, in the most extraordinary costumes for revealing or
deforming the human figure--all tossing about in the surf. But most of
the pictures were taken on dry land, of single persons, couples, and
groups in their bathing suits. Perhaps such an extraordinary collection
of humanity cannot be seen elsewhere in the world, such a uniformity
of one depressing type reduced to its last analysis by the sea-toilet.
Sometimes it was a young man and a maiden, handed down to posterity in
dresses that would have caused their arrest in the street, sentimentally
reclining on a canvas rock. Again it was a maiden with flowing hair,
raised hands clasped, eyes upturned, on top of a crag, at the base
of which the waves were breaking in foam. Or it was the same stalwart
maiden, or another as good, in a boat which stood on end, pulling
through the surf with one oar, and dragging a drowning man (in a bathing
suit also) into the boat with her free hand. The legend was, “Saved.”
 There never was such heroism exhibited by young women before, with such
raiment, as was shown in these rare works of art.

As they walked back to the hotel through a sandy avenue lined with
jig-saw architecture, Miss Benson pointed out to them some things that
she said had touched her a good deal. In the patches of sand before each
house there was generally an oblong little mound set about with a rim of
stones, or, when something more artistic could be afforded, with shells.
On each of these little graves was a flower, a sickly geranium, or a
humble marigold, or some other floral token of affection.

Mr. Forbes said he never was at a watering-place before where they
buried the summer boarders in the front yard. Mrs. Benson didn't like
joking on such subjects, and Mr. King turned the direction of the
conversation by remarking that these seeming trifles were really of much
account in these days, and he took from his pocket a copy of the city
newspaper, 'The Summer Sea-Song,' and read some of the leading items:
“S., our eye is on you.” “The Slopers have come to their cottage on
Q Street, and come to stay.” “Mr. E. P. Borum has painted his front
steps.” “Mr. Diffendorfer's marigold is on the blow.” And so on, and so
on. This was probably the marigold mentioned that they were looking at.

The most vivid impression, however, made upon the visitor in this walk
was that of paint. It seemed unreal that there could be so much paint in
the world and so many swearing colors. But it ceased to be a dream,
and they were taken back into the hard, practical world, when, as they
turned the corner, Irene pointed out her favorite sign:

          Silas Lapham, mineral paint.
             Branch Office.

The artist said, a couple of days after this morning, that he had enough
of it. “Of course,” he added, “it is a great pleasure to me to sit and
talk with Mrs. Benson, while you and that pretty girl walk up and down
the piazza all the evening; but I'm easily satisfied, and two evenings
did for me.”

So that, much as Mr. King was charmed with Atlantic City, and much as he
regretted not awaiting the arrival of the originals of the tintypes,
he gave in to the restlessness of the artist for other scenes; but not
before he had impressed Mrs. Benson with a notion of the delights of
Newport in July.




III. THE CATSKILLS

The view of the Catskills from a certain hospitable mansion on the east
side of the Hudson is better than any mew from those delectable hills.
The artist said so one morning late in June, and Mr. King agreed with
him, as a matter of fact, but would have no philosophizing about it, as
that anticipation is always better than realization; and when Mr.
Forbes went on to say that climbing a mountain was a good deal like
marriage--the world was likely to look a little flat once that cerulean
height was attained--Mr. King only remarked that that was a low view to
take of the subject, but he would confess that it was unreasonable to
expect that any rational object could fulfill, or even approach, the
promise held out by such an exquisite prospect as that before them.

The friends were standing where the Catskill hills lay before them
in echelon towards the river, the ridges lapping over each other and
receding in the distance, a gradation of lines most artistically drawn,
still further refined by shades of violet, which always have the effect
upon the contemplative mind of either religious exaltation or the
kindling of a sentiment which is in the young akin to the emotion of
love. While the artist was making some memoranda of these outlines, and
Mr. King was drawing I know not what auguries of hope from these purple
heights, a young lady seated upon a rock near by--a young lady just
stepping over the border-line of womanhood--had her eyes also fixed upon
those dreamy distances, with that look we all know so well, betraying
that shy expectancy of life which is unconfessed, that tendency to
maidenly reverie which it were cruel to interpret literally. At the
moment she is more interesting than the Catskills--the brown hair, the
large eyes unconscious of anything but the most natural emotion, the
shapely waist just beginning to respond to the call of the future--it
is a pity that we shall never see her again, and that she has nothing
whatever to do with our journey. She also will have her romance;
fate will meet her in the way some day, and set her pure heart wildly
beating, and she will know what those purple distances mean. Happiness,
tragedy, anguish--who can tell what is in store for her? I cannot but
feel profound sadness at meeting her in this casual way and never seeing
her again. Who says that the world is not full of romance and pathos and
regret as we go our daily way in it? You meet her at a railway station;
there is the flutter of a veil, the gleam of a scarlet bird, the lifting
of a pair of eyes--she is gone; she is entering a drawing-room, and
stops a moment and turns away; she is looking from a window as you
pass--it is only a glance out of eternity; she stands for a second upon
a rock looking seaward; she passes you at the church door--is that all?
It is discovered that instantaneous photographs can be taken. They are
taken all the time; some of them are never developed, but I suppose
these impressions are all there on the sensitive plate, and that the
plate is permanently affected by the impressions. The pity of it is that
the world is so full of these undeveloped knowledges of people worth
knowing and friendships worth making.

The comfort of leaving same things to the imagination was impressed upon
our travelers when they left the narrow-gauge railway at the mountain
station, and identified themselves with other tourists by entering a
two-horse wagon to be dragged wearily up the hill through the woods. The
ascent would be more tolerable if any vistas were cut in the forest to
give views by the way; as it was, the monotony of the pull upward was
only relieved by the society of the passengers. There were two bright
little girls off for a holiday with their Western uncle, a big,
good-natured man with a diamond breast-pin, and his voluble son, a lad
about the age of his little cousins, whom he constantly pestered by
his rude and dominating behavior. The boy was a product which it is the
despair of all Europe to produce, and our travelers had great delight in
him as an epitome of American “smartness.” He led all the conversation,
had confident opinions about everything, easily put down his deferential
papa, and pleased the other passengers by his self-sufficient,
know-it-all air. To a boy who had traveled in California and seen the
Alps it was not to be expected that this humble mountain could afford
much entertainment, and he did not attempt to conceal his contempt for
it. When the stage reached the Rip Van Winkle House, half-way, the shy
schoolgirls were for indulging a little sentiment over the old legend,
but the boy, who concealed his ignorance of the Irving romance until his
cousins had prattled the outlines of it, was not to be taken in by any
such chaff, and though he was a little staggered by Rip's own cottage,
and by the sight of the cave above it which is labeled as the very
spot where the vagabond took his long nap, he attempted to bully
the attendant and drink-mixer in the hut, and openly flaunted his
incredulity until the bar-tender showed him a long bunch of Rip's hair,
which hung like a scalp on a nail, and the rusty barrel and stock of the
musket. The cabin is, indeed, full of old guns, pistols, locks of hair,
buttons, cartridge-boxes, bullets, knives, and other undoubted relics
of Rip and the Revolution. This cabin, with its facilities for slaking
thirst on a hot day, which Rip would have appreciated, over a hundred
years old according to information to be obtained on the spot, is
really of unknown antiquity, the old boards and timber of which it is
constructed having been brought down from the Mountain House some forty
years ago.

The old Mountain House, standing upon its ledge of rock, from which
one looks down upon a map of a considerable portion of New York and New
England, with the lake in the rear, and heights on each side that offer
charming walks to those who have in contemplation views of nature or
of matrimony, has somewhat lost its importance since the vast Catskill
region has come to the knowledge of the world. A generation ago it
was the centre of attraction, and it was understood that going to the
Catskills was going there. Generations of searchers after immortality
have chiseled their names in the rock platform, and one who sits there
now falls to musing on the vanity of human nature and the transitoriness
of fashion. Now New York has found that it has very convenient to it
a great mountain pleasure-ground; railways and excellent roads have
pierced it, the varied beauties of rocks, ravines, and charming retreats
are revealed, excellent hotels capable of entertaining a thousand guests
are planted on heights and slopes commanding mountain as well as lowland
prospects, great and small boarding-houses cluster in the high valleys
and on the hillsides, and cottages more thickly every year dot the
wild region. Year by year these accommodations will increase, new
roads around the gorges will open more enchanting views, and it is not
improbable that the species of American known as the “summer boarder”
 will have his highest development and apotheosis in these mountains.

Nevertheless Mr. King was not uninterested in renewing his memories
of the old house. He could recall without difficulty, and also without
emotion now, a scene on this upper veranda and a moonlight night long
ago, and he had no doubt he could find her name carved on a beech-tree
in the wood near by; but it was useless to look for it, for her name had
been changed. The place was, indeed, full of memories, but all chastened
and subdued by the indoor atmosphere, which impressed him as that of
a faded Sunday. He was very careful not to disturb the decorum by any
frivolity of demeanor, and he cautioned the artist on this point; but
Mr. Forbes declared that the dining-room fare kept his spirits at a
proper level. There was an old-time satisfaction in wandering into the
parlor, and resting on the haircloth sofa, and looking at the hair-cloth
chairs, and pensively imagining a meeting there, with songs out of
the Moody and Sankey book; and he did not tire of dropping into the
reposeful reception-room, where he never by any chance met anybody,
and sitting with the melodeon and big Bible Society edition of the
Scriptures, and a chance copy of the Christian at Play. These amusements
were varied by sympathetic listening to the complaints of the proprietor
about the vandalism of visitors who wrote with diamonds on the
window-panes, so that the glass had to be renewed, or scratched their
names on the pillars of the piazza, so that the whole front had to be
repainted, or broke off the azalea blossoms, or in other ways desecrated
the premises. In order to fit himself for a sojourn here, Mr. King tried
to commit to memory a placard that was neatly framed and hung on the
veranda, wherein it was stated that the owner cheerfully submits to all
necessary use of the premises, “but will not permit any unnecessary use,
or the exercise of a depraved taste or vandalism.” There were not as yet
many guests, and those who were there seemed to have conned this placard
to their improvement, for there was not much exercise of any sort of
taste. Of course there were two or three brides, and there was the
inevitable English nice middle-class tourist with his wife, the latter
ram-roddy and uncompromising, in big boots and botanical, who, in
response to a gentleman who was giving her information about travel,
constantly ejaculated, in broad English, “Yas, yas; ow, ow, ow, really!”

And there was the young bride from Kankazoo, who frightened Mr. King
back into his chamber one morning when he opened his door and beheld the
vision of a woman going towards the breakfast-room in what he took to be
a robe de nuit, but which turned out to be one of the “Mother-Hubbards”
 which have had a certain celebrity as street dresses in some parts of
the West. But these gayeties palled after a time, and one afternoon
our travelers, with their vandalism all subdued, walked a mile over the
rocks to the Kaaterskill House, and took up their abode there to watch
the opening of the season. Naturally they expected some difficulty in
transferring their two trunks round by the road, where there had been
nothing but a wilderness forty years ago; but their change of base was
facilitated by the obliging hotelkeeper in the most friendly manner, and
when he insisted on charging only four dollars for moving the trunks,
the two friends said that, considering the wear and tear of the mountain
involved, they did not see how he could afford to do it for such a sum,
and they went away, as they said, well pleased.

It happened to be at the Kaaterskill House--it might have been at
the Grand, or the Overlook--that the young gentlemen in search of
information saw the Catskill season get under way. The phase of American
life is much the same at all these great caravansaries. It seems to the
writer, who has the greatest admiration for the military genius that can
feed and fight an army in the field, that not enough account is made
of the greater genius that can organize and carry on a great American
hotel, with a thousand or fifteen hundred guests, in a short, sharp,
and decisive campaign of two months, at the end of which the substantial
fruits of victory are in the hands of the landlord, and the guests are
allowed to depart with only their personal baggage and side-arms, but so
well pleased that they are inclined to renew the contest next year. This
is a triumph of mind over mind. It is not merely the organization and
the management of the army under the immediate command of the landlord,
the accumulation and distribution of supplies upon this mountain-top, in
the uncertainty whether the garrison on a given day will be one hundred
or one thousand, not merely the lodging, rationing and amusing of this
shifting host, but the satisfying of as many whims and prejudices
as there are people who leave home on purpose to grumble and enjoy
themselves in the exercise of a criticism they dare not indulge in their
own houses. Our friends had an opportunity of seeing the machinery set
in motion in one of these great establishments. Here was a vast balloon
structure, founded on a rock, but built in the air, and anchored with
cables, with towers and a high pillared veranda, capable, with its
annex, of lodging fifteen hundred people. The army of waiters and
chamber-maids, of bellboys, and scullions and porters and laundry-folk,
was arriving; the stalwart scrubbers were at work, the store-rooms were
filled, the big kitchen shone with its burnished coppers, and an array
of white-capped and aproned cooks stood in line under their chef; the
telegraph operator was waiting at her desk, the drug clerk was arranging
his bottles, the newspaper stand was furnished, the post-office was open
for letters. It needed but the arrival of a guest to set the machinery
in motion. And as soon as the guest came the band would be there to
launch him into the maddening gayety of the season. It would welcome his
arrival in triumphant strains; it would pursue him at dinner, and drown
his conversation; it will fill his siesta with martial dreams, and it
would seize his legs in the evening, and entreat him to caper in the
parlor. Everything was ready. And this was what happened. It was the
evening of the opening day. The train wagons might be expected
any moment. The electric lights were blazing. All the clerks stood
expectant, the porters were by the door, the trim, uniformed bell-boys
were all in waiting line, the register clerk stood fingering the leaves
of the register with a gracious air. A noise is heard outside, the big
door opens, there is a rush forward, and four people flock in a man in a
linen duster, a stout woman, a lad of ten, a smartly dressed young lady,
and a dog. Movement, welcome, ringing of bells, tramping of feet--the
whole machinery has started. It was adjusted to crack an egg-shell or
smash an iron-bound trunk. The few drops presaged a shower. The next day
there were a hundred on the register; the day after, two hundred; and
the day following, an excursion.

With increasing arrivals opportunity was offered for the study of
character. Away from his occupation, away from the cares of the
household and the demands of society, what is the self-sustaining
capacity of the ordinary American man or woman? It was interesting to
note the enthusiasm of the first arrival, the delight in the view--Round
Top, the deep gorges, the charming vista of the lowlands, a world and
wilderness of beauty; the inspiration of the air, the alertness to
explore in all directions, to see the lake, the falls, the mountain
paths. But is a mountain sooner found out than a valley, or is there a
want of internal resources, away from business, that the men presently
become rather listless, take perfunctory walks for exercise, and are so
eager for meal-time and mail-time? Why do they depend so much upon
the newspapers, when they all despise the newspapers? Mr. King used
to listen of an evening to the commonplace talk about the fire, all of
which was a dilution of what they had just got out of the newspapers,
but what a lively assent there was to a glib talker who wound up his
remarks with a denunciation of the newspapers! The man was no doubt
quite right, but did he reflect on the public loss of his valuable
conversation the next night if his newspaper should chance to fail? And
the women, after their first feeling of relief, did they fall presently
into petty gossip, complaints about the table, criticisms of each
other's dress, small discontents with nearly everything? Not all of
them.

An excursion is always resented by the regular occupants of a summer
resort, who look down upon the excursionists, while they condescend
to be amused by them. It is perhaps only the common attitude of the
wholesale to the retail dealer, although it is undeniable that a person
seems temporarily to change his nature when he becomes part of an
excursion; whether it is from the elation at the purchase of a day
of gayety below the market price, or the escape from personal
responsibility under a conductor, or the love of being conspicuous as a
part of a sort of organization, the excursionist is not on his ordinary
behavior.

An excursion numbering several hundreds, gathered along the river
towns by the benevolent enterprise of railway officials, came up to the
mountain one day. The officials seemed to have run a drag-net through
factories, workshops, Sunday-schools, and churches, and scooped in
the weary workers at homes and in shops unaccustomed to a holiday. Our
friends formed a part of a group on the hotel piazza who watched the
straggling arrival of this band of pleasure. For by this time our
two friends had found a circle of acquaintances, with the facility of
watering-place life, which in its way represented certain phases of
American life as well as the excursion. A great many writers have sought
to classify and label and put into a paragraph a description of the
American girl. She is not to be disposed of by any such easy process.
Undoubtedly she has some common marks of nationality that distinguish
her from the English girl, but in variety she is practically infinite,
and likely to assume almost any form, and the characteristics of a dozen
nationalities. No one type represents her. What, indeed, would one say
of this little group on the hotel piazza, making its comments upon
the excursionists? Here is a young lady of, say, twenty-three years,
inclining already to stoutness, domestic, placid, with matron written on
every line of her unselfish face, capable of being, if necessity were, a
notable housekeeper, learned in preserves and jellies and cordials, sure
to have her closets in order, and a place for every remnant, piece of
twine, and all odds and ends. Not a person to read Browning with, but to
call on if one needed a nurse, or a good dinner, or a charitable deed.
Beside her, in an invalid's chair, a young girl, scarcely eighteen, of
quite another sort, pale, slight, delicate, with a lovely face and large
sentimental eyes, all nerves, the product, perhaps, of a fashionable
school, who in one season in New York, her first, had utterly broken
down into what is called nervous prostration. In striking contrast was
Miss Nettie Sumner, perhaps twenty-one, who corresponded more nearly to
what the internationalists call the American type; had evidently taken
school education as a duck takes water, and danced along in society into
apparent robustness of person and knowledge of the world. A handsome
girl, she would be a comely woman, good-natured, quick at repartee,
confining her knowledge of books to popular novels, too natural
and frank to be a flirt, an adept in all the nice slang current in
fashionable life, caught up from collegians and brokers, accustomed to
meet men in public life, in hotels, a very “jolly” companion, with a
fund of good sense that made her entirely capable of managing her own
affairs. Mr. King was at the moment conversing with still another young
lady, who had more years than the last-named-short, compact figure,
round girlish face, good, strong, dark eyes, modest in bearing,
self-possessed in manner, sensible-who made ready and incisive comments,
and seemed to have thought deeply on a large range of topics, but had
a sort of downright practicality and cool independence, with all
her femininity of bearing, that rather, puzzled her interlocutor. It
occurred to Mr. King to guess that Miss Selina Morton might be from
Boston, which she was not, but it was with a sort of shock of surprise
that he learned later that this young girl, moving about in society in
the innocent panoply of girlhood, was a young doctor, who had no doubt
looked through and through him with her keen eyes, studied him in the
light of heredity, constitutional tendencies, habits, and environment,
as a possible patient. It almost made him ill to think of it. Here were
types enough for one morning; but there was still another.

The artist had seated himself on a rock a little distance from the
house, and was trying to catch some of the figures as they appeared up
the path, and a young girl was looking over his shoulder with an amused
face, just as he was getting an elderly man in a long flowing duster,
straggling gray hair, hat on the back of his head, large iron-rimmed
spectacles, with a baggy umbrella, who stopped breathless at the summit,
with a wild glare of astonishment at the view. This young girl, whom the
careless observer might pass without a second glance, was discovered on
better acquaintance to express in her face and the lines of her figure
some subtle intellectual quality not easily interpreted. Marion Lamont,
let us say at once, was of Southern origin, born in London during the
temporary residence of her parents there, and while very young deprived
by death of her natural protectors. She had a small, low voice, fine
hair of a light color, which contrasted with dark eyes, waved back from
her forehead, delicate, sensitive features--indeed, her face, especially
in conversation with any one, almost always had a wistful, appealing
look; in figure short and very slight, lithe and graceful, full of
unconscious artistic poses, fearless and sure-footed as a gazelle in
climbing about the rocks, leaping from stone to stone, and even making
her way up a tree that had convenient branches, if the whim took her,
using her hands and arms like a gymnast, and performing whatever feat
of. daring or dexterity as if the exquisitely molded form was all
instinct with her indomitable will, and obeyed it, and always with an
air of refinement and spirited breeding. A child of nature in seeming,
but yet a woman who was not to be fathomed by a chance acquaintance.

The old man with the spectacles was presently overtaken by a stout,
elderly woman, who landed in the exhausted condition of a porpoise that
has come ashore, and stood regardless of everything but her own weight,
while member after member of the party straggled up. No sooner did
this group espy the artist than they moved in his direction. “There's a
painter.” “I wonder what he's painting.” “Maybe he'll paint us.” “Let's
see what he's doing.” “I should like to see a man paint.” And the crowd
flowed on, getting in front of the sketcher, and creeping round behind
him for a peep over his shoulder. The artist closed his sketch-book
and retreated, and the stout woman, balked of that prey, turned round
a moment to the view, exclaimed, “Ain't that elegant!” and then waddled
off to the hotel.

“I wonder,” Mr. King was saying, “if these excursionists are
representative of general American life?”

“If they are,” said the artist, “there's little here for my purpose. A
good many of them seem to be foreigners, or of foreign origin. Just as
soon as these people get naturalized, they lose the picturesqueness they
had abroad.”

“Did it never occur to your highness that they may prefer to be
comfortable rather than picturesque, and that they may be ignorant that
they were born for artistic purposes?” It was the low voice of Miss
Lamont, and that demure person looked up as if she really wanted
information.

“I doubt about the comfort,” the artist began to reply.

“And so do I,” said Miss Sumner. “What on earth do you suppose made
those girls come up here in white dresses, blowing about in the wind,
and already drabbled? Did you ever see such a lot of cheap millinery? I
haven't seen a woman yet with the least bit of style.”

“Poor things, they look as if they'd never had a holiday before in their
lives, and didn't exactly know what to do with it,” apologized Miss
Lamont.

“Don't you believe it. They've been to more church and Sunday-school
picnics than you ever attended. Look over there!”

It was a group seated about their lunch-baskets. A young gentleman, the
comedian of the patty, the life of the church sociable, had put on the
hat of one of the girls, and was making himself so irresistibly funny
in it that all the girls tittered, and their mothers looked a little
shamefaced and pleased.

“Well,” said Mr. King, “that's the only festive sign I've seen. It's
more like a funeral procession than a pleasure excursion. What impresses
me is the extreme gravity of these people--no fun, no hilarity, no
letting themselves loose for a good time, as they say. Probably they
like it, but they seem to have no capacity for enjoying themselves; they
have no vivacity, no gayety--what a contrast to a party in France or
Germany off for a day's pleasure--no devices, no resources.”

“Yes, it's all sad, respectable, confoundedly uninteresting. What does
the doctor say?” asked the artist.

“I know what the doctor will say,” put in Miss Summer, “but I tell you
that what this crowd needs is missionary dressmakers and tailors. If
I were dressed that way I should feel and act just as they do. Well,
Selina?”

“It's pretty melancholy. The trouble is constant grinding work and bad
food. I've been studying these people. The women are all--”

“Ugly,” suggested the artist.

“Well, ill-favored, scrimped; that means ill-nurtured simply. Out of the
three hundred there are not half a dozen well-conditioned, filled out
physically in comfortable proportions. Most of the women look as if they
had been dragged out with indoor work and little intellectual life, but
the real cause of physical degeneration is bad cooking. If they lived
more out-of-doors, as women do in Italy, the food might not make so much
difference, but in our climate it is the prime thing. This poor physical
state accounts for the want of gayety and the lack of beauty. The men,
on the whole, are better than the women, that is, the young men. I don't
know as these people are overworked, as the world goes. I dare say,
Nettie, there's not a girl in this crowd who could dance with you
through a season. They need to be better fed, and to have more elevating
recreations-something to educate their taste.”

“I've been educating the taste of one excursionist this morning, a
good-faced workman, who was prying about everywhere with a curious air,
and said he never'd been on an excursion before. He came up to me in the
office, deferentially asked me if I would go into the parlor with him,
and, pointing to something hanging on the wall, asked, 'What is that?'
'That,' I said, 'is a view from Sunset Rock, and a very good one.'
'Yes,' he continued, walking close up to it, 'but what is it?' 'Why,
it's a painting.' 'Oh, it isn't the place?' 'No, no; it's a painting in
oil, done with a brush on a piece of canvas--don't you see--, made to
look like the view over there from the rock, colors and all.' 'Yes, I
thought, perhaps--you can see a good ways in it. It's pooty.' 'There's
another one,' I said--'falls, water coming down, and trees.' 'Well, I
declare, so it is! And that's jest a make-believe? I s'pose I can go
round and look?' 'Certainly.' And the old fellow tiptoed round the
parlor, peering at all the pictures in a confused state of mind, and
with a guilty look of enjoyment. It seems incredible that a person
should attain his age with such freshness of mind. But I think he is the
only one of the party who even looked at the paintings.”

“I think it's just pathetic,” said Miss Lamont. “Don't you, Mr. Forbes?”

“No; I think it's encouraging. It's a sign of an art appreciation in
this country. That man will know a painting next time he sees one, and
then he won't rest till he has bought a chromo, and so he will go on.”

“And if he lives long enough, he will buy one of Mr. Forbes's
paintings.”

“But not the one that Miss Lamont is going to sit for.”

When Mr. King met the party at the dinner-table, the places of Miss
Lamont and Mr. Forbes were still vacant. The other ladies looked
significantly at them, and one of them said, “Don't you think there's
something in it? don't you think they are interested in each other?” Mr.
King put down his soup-spoon, too much amazed to reply. Do women never
think of anything but mating people who happen to be thrown together?
Here were this young lady and his friend, who had known each other for
three days, perhaps, in the most casual way, and her friends had her
already as good as married to him and off on a wedding journey. All that
Mr. King said, after apparent deep cogitation, was, “I suppose if it
were here it would have to be in a traveling-dress,” which the women
thought frivolous.

Yet it was undeniable that the artist and Marion had a common taste for
hunting out picturesque places in the wood-paths, among the rocks, and
on the edges of precipices, and they dragged the rest of the party many
a mile through wildernesses of beauty. Sketching was the object of all
these expeditions, but it always happened--there seemed a fatality in it
that whenever they halted anywhere for a rest or a view, the Lamont girl
was sure to take an artistic pose, which the artist couldn't resist, and
his whole occupation seemed to be drawing her, with the Catskills for a
background. “There,” he would say, “stay just as you are; yes, leaning a
little so”--it was wonderful how the lithe figure adapted itself to any
background--“and turn your head this way, looking at me.” The artist
began to draw, and every time he gave a quick glance upwards from his
book, there were the wistful face and those eyes. “Confound it! I beg
your pardon-the light. Will you please turn your eyes a little off, that
way-so.” There was no reason why the artist should be nervous, the
face was perfectly demure; but the fact is that art will have only one
mistress. So the drawing limped on from day to day, and the excursions
became a matter of course. Sometimes the party drove, extending their
explorations miles among the hills, exhilarated by the sparkling air,
excited by the succession of lovely changing prospects, bestowing
their compassion upon the summer boarders in the smartly painted
boarding-houses, and comparing the other big hotels with their own.
They couldn't help looking down on the summer boarders, any more than
cottagers at other places can help a feeling of superiority to people in
hotels. It is a natural desire to make an aristocratic line somewhere.
Of course they saw the Kaaterskill Falls, and bought twenty-five cents'
worth of water to pour over them, and they came very near seeing the
Haines Falls, but were a little too late.

“Have the falls been taken in today?” asked Marion, seriously.

“I'm real sorry, miss,” said the proprietor, “but there's just been a
party here and taken the water. But you can go down and look if you want
to, and it won't cost you a cent.”

They went down, and saw where the falls ought to be. The artist said it
was a sort of dry-plate process, to be developed in the mind afterwards;
Mr. King likened it to a dry smoke without lighting the cigar; and the
doctor said it certainly had the sanitary advantage of not being damp.
The party even penetrated the Platerskill Cove, and were well rewarded
by its exceeding beauty, as is every one who goes there. There are
sketches of all these lovely places in a certain artist's book, all
looking, however, very much alike, and consisting principally of a
graceful figure in a great variety of unstudied attitudes.

“Isn't this a nervous sort of a place?” the artist asked his friend, as
they sat in his chamber overlooking the world.

“Perhaps it is. I have a fancy that some people are born to enjoy the
valley, and some the mountains.”

“I think it makes a person nervous to live on a high place. This feeling
of constant elevation tires one; it gives a fellow no such sense of
bodily repose as he has in a valley. And the wind, it's constantly
nagging, rattling the windows and banging the doors. I can't escape the
unrest of it.” The artist was turning the leaves and contemplating the
poverty of his sketch-book. “The fact is, I get better subjects on the
seashore.”

“Probably the sea would suit us better. By the way, did I tell you that
Miss Lamont's uncle came last night from Richmond? Mr. De Long, uncle on
the mother's side. I thought there was French blood in her.”

“What is he like?”

“Oh, a comfortable bachelor, past middle age; business man; Southern;
just a little touch of the 'cyar' for 'car.' Said he was going to take
his niece to Newport next week. Has Miss Lamont said anything about
going there?”

“Well, she did mention it the other day.”

The house was filling up, and, King thought, losing its family aspect.
He had taken quite a liking for the society of the pretty invalid girl,
and was fond of sitting by her, seeing the delicate color come back
to her cheeks, and listening to her shrewd little society comments. He
thought she took pleasure in having him push her wheel-chair up and down
the piazza at least she rewarded him by grateful looks, and complimented
him by asking his advice about reading and about being useful to others.
Like most young girls whose career of gayety is arrested as hers was,
she felt an inclination to coquet a little with the serious side of
life. All this had been pleasant to Mr. King, but now that so many more
guests had come, he found himself most of the time out of business. The
girl's chariot was always surrounded by admirers and sympathizers. All
the young men were anxious to wheel her up and down by the hour; there
was always a strife for this sweet office; and at night, when the
vehicle had been lifted up the first flight, it was beautiful to see
the eagerness of sacrifice exhibited by these young fellows to wheel
her down the long corridor to her chamber. After all, it is a kindly,
unselfish world, full of tenderness for women, and especially for
invalid women who are pretty. There was all day long a competition of
dudes and elderly widowers and bachelors to wait on her. One thought she
needed a little more wheeling; another volunteered to bring her a glass
of water; there was always some one to pick up her fan, to recover her
handkerchief (why is it that the fans and handkerchiefs of ugly women
seldom go astray?), to fetch her shawl--was there anything they could
do? The charming little heiress accepted all the attentions with most
engaging sweetness. Say what you will, men have good hearts.

Yes, they were going to Newport. King and Forbes, who had not had a
Fourth of July for some time, wanted to see what it was like at Newport.
Mr. De Long would like their company. But before they went the artist
must make one more trial at a sketch-must get the local color. It was a
large party that went one morning to see it done under the famous ledge
of rocks on the Red Path. It is a fascinating spot, with its coolness,
sense of seclusion, mosses, wild flowers, and ferns. In a small grotto
under the frowning wall of the precipice is said to be a spring, but it
is difficult to find, and lovers need to go a great many times in search
of it. People not in love can sometimes find a damp place in the sand.
The question was where Miss Lamont should pose. Should she nestle under
the great ledge, or sit on a projecting rock with her figure against
the sky? The artist could not satisfy himself, and the girl, always
adventurous, kept shifting her position, climbing about on the jutting
ledge, until she stood at last on the top of the precipice, which was
some thirty or forty feet high. Against the top leaned a dead balsam,
just as some tempest had cast it, its dead branches bleached and
scraggy. Down this impossible ladder the girl announced her intention
of coming. “No, no,” shouted a chorus of voices; “go round; it's unsafe;
the limbs will break; you can't get through them; you'll break your
neck.” The girl stood calculating the possibility. The more difficult
the feat seemed, the more she longed to try it.

“For Heaven's sake don't try it, Miss Lamont,” cried the artist.

“But I want to. I think I must. You can sketch me in the act. It will be
something new.”

And before any one could interpose, the resolute girl caught hold of the
balsam and swung off. A boy or a squirrel would have made nothing of
the feat. But for a young lady in long skirts to make her way down that
balsam, squirming about and through the stubs and dead limbs, testing
each one before she trusted her weight to it, was another affair. It
needed a very cool head and the skill of a gymnast. To transfer her hold
from one limb to another, and work downward, keeping her skirts neatly
gathered about her feet, was an achievement that the spectators could
appreciate; the presence of spectators made it much more difficult. And
the lookers-on were a good deal more excited than the girl. The artist
had his book ready, and when the little figure was half-way down,
clinging in a position at once artistic and painful, he began. “Work
fast,” said the girl. “It's hard hanging on.” But the pencil wouldn't
work. The artist made a lot of wild marks. He would have given the
world to sketch in that exquisite figure, but every time he cast his eye
upward the peril was so evident that his hand shook. It was no use. The
danger increased as she descended, and with it the excitement of the
spectators. All the young gentlemen declared they would catch her if she
fell, and some of them seemed to hope she might drop into their arms.
Swing off she certainly must when the lowest limb was reached. But that
was ten feet above the ground and the alighting-place was sharp rock and
broken bowlders. The artist kept up a pretense of drawing. He felt every
movement of her supple figure and the strain upon the slender arms, but
this could not be transferred to the book. It was nervous work. The girl
was evidently getting weary, but not losing her pluck. The young fellows
were very anxious that the artist should keep at his work; they would
catch her. There was a pause; the girl had come to the last limb; she
was warily meditating a slide or a leap; the young men were quite ready
to sacrifice themselves; but somehow, no one could tell exactly how, the
girl swung low, held herself suspended by her hands for an instant,
and then dropped into the right place--trust a woman for that; and
the artist, his face flushed, set her down upon the nearest flat rock.
Chorus from the party, “She is saved!”

“And my sketch is gone up again.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Forbes.” The girl looked full of innocent regret. “But
when I was up there I had to come down that tree. I couldn't help it,
really.”




IV. NEWPORT

On the Fourth of July, at five o'clock in the morning, the porters
called the sleepers out of their berths at Wickford Junction. Modern
civilization offers no such test to the temper and to personal
appearance as this early preparation to meet the inspection of society
after a night in the stuffy and luxuriously upholstered tombs of a
sleeping-car. To get into them at night one must sacrifice dignity; to
get out of them in the morning, clad for the day, gives the proprietors
a hard rub. It is wonderful, however, considering the twisting and
scrambling in the berth and the miscellaneous and ludicrous presentation
of humanity in the washroom at the end of the car, how presentable
people make themselves in a short space of time. One realizes the debt
of the ordinary man to clothes, and how fortunate it is for society that
commonly people do not see each other in the morning until art has
done its best for them. To meet the public eye, cross and tousled
and disarranged, requires either indifference or courage. It is
disenchanting to some of our cherished ideals. Even the trig,
irreproachable commercial drummer actually looks banged-up, and nothing
of a man; but after a few moments, boot-blacked and paper-collared, he
comes out as fresh as a daisy, and all ready to drum.

Our travelers came out quite as well as could be expected, the artist
sleepy and a trifle disorganized, Mr. King in a sort of facetious
humor that is more dangerous than grumbling, Mr. De Long yawning and
stretching and declaring that he had not slept a wink, while Marion
alighted upon the platform unruffled in plumage, greeting the morning
like a bird. There were the usual early loafers at the station, hands
deep in pockets, ruminant, listlessly observant. No matter at what hour
of day or night a train may arrive or depart at a country station in
America, the loafers are so invariably there in waiting that they seem
to be a part of our railway system. There is something in the life and
movement that seems to satisfy all the desire for activity they have.

Even the most sleepy tourist could not fail to be impressed with the
exquisite beauty of the scene at Wickford Harbor, where the boat was
taken for Newport. The slow awaking of morning life scarcely disturbed
its tranquillity. Sky and sea and land blended in a tone of refined
gray. The shores were silvery, a silvery light came out of the east,
streamed through the entrance of the harbor, and lay molten and glowing
on the water. The steamer's deck and chairs and benches were wet with
dew, the noises in transferring the baggage and getting the boat
under way were all muffled and echoed in the surrounding silence. The
sail-boats that lay at anchor on the still silver surface sent down long
shadows, and the slim masts seemed driven down into the water to hold
the boats in place. The little village was still asleep. It was such
a contrast; the artist was saying to Marion, as they leaned over the
taffrail, to the new raw villages in the Catskills. The houses were
large, and looked solid and respectable, many of them were shingled on
the sides, a spire peeped out over the green trees, and the hamlet
was at once homelike and picturesque. Refinement is the note of the
landscape. Even the old warehouses dropping into the water, and the
decaying piles of the wharves, have a certain grace. How graciously the
water makes into the land, following the indentations, and flowing in
little streams, going in and withdrawing gently and regretfully, and
how the shore puts itself out in low points, wooing the embrace of the
sea--a lovely union. There is no haze, but all outlines are softened in
the silver light. It is like a dream, and there is no disturbance of the
repose when a family party, a woman, a child, and a man come down to the
shore, slip into a boat, and scull away out by the lighthouse and the
rocky entrance of the harbor, off, perhaps, for a day's pleasure. The
artist has whipped out his sketch-book to take some outlines of the
view, and his comrade, looking that way, thinks this group a pleasing
part of the scene, and notes how the salt, dewy morning air has brought
the color into the sensitive face of the girl. There are not many such
hours in a lifetime, he is also thinking, when nature can be seen in
such a charming mood, and for the moment it compensates for the night
ride.

The party indulged this feeling when they landed, still early, at the
Newport wharf, and decided to walk through the old town up to the hotel,
perfectly well aware that after this no money would hire them to leave
their beds and enjoy this novel sensation at such an hour. They had the
street to themselves, and the promenade was one of discovery, and had
much the interest of a landing in a foreign city.

“It is so English,” said the artist.

“It is so colonial,” said Mr. King, “though I've no doubt that any one
of the sleeping occupants of these houses would be wide-awake instantly,
and come out and ask you to breakfast, if they heard you say it is so
English.”

“If they were not restrained,” Marion suggested, “by the feeling that
that would not be English. How fine the shade trees, and what brilliant
banks of flowers!”

“And such lawns! We cannot make this turf in Virginia,” was the
reflection of Mr. De Long.

“Well, colonial if you like,” the artist replied to Mr. King. “What is
best is in the colonial style; but you notice that all the new houses
are built to look old, and that they have had Queen Anne pretty bad,
though the colors are good.”

“That's the way with some towns. Queen Anne seems to strike them all
of a sudden, and become epidemic. The only way to prevent it is to
vaccinate, so to speak, with two or three houses, and wait; then it is
not so likely to spread.”

Laughing and criticising and admiring, the party strolled along the
shaded avenue to the Ocean House. There were as yet no signs of life
at the Club, or the Library, or the Casino; but the shops were getting
open, and the richness and elegance of the goods displayed in the
windows were the best evidence of the wealth and refinement of the
expected customers--culture and taste always show themselves in the
shops of a town. The long gray-brown front of the Casino, with its
shingled sides and hooded balconies and galleries, added to the already
strong foreign impression of the place. But the artist was dissatisfied.
It was not at all his idea of Independence Day; it was like Sunday, and
Sunday without any foreign gayety. He had expected firing of cannon
and ringing of bells--there was not even a flag out anywhere; the
celebration of the Fourth seemed to have shrunk into a dull and decorous
avoidance of all excitement. “Perhaps,” suggested Miss Lamont, “if the
New-Englanders keep the Fourth of July like Sunday, they will by and by
keep Sunday like the Fourth of July. I hear it is the day for excursions
on this coast.”

Mr. King was perfectly well aware that in going to a hotel in Newport
he was putting himself out of the pale of the best society; but he had
a fancy for viewing this society from the outside, having often enough
seen it from the inside. And perhaps he had other reasons for this
eccentric conduct. He had, at any rate, declined the invitation of his
cousin, Mrs. Bartlett Glow, to her cottage on the Point of Rocks. It was
not without regret that he did this, for his cousin was a very charming
woman, and devoted exclusively to the most exclusive social life. Her
husband had been something in the oil line in New York, and King had
watched with interest his evolution from the business man into the
full-blown existence of a man of fashion. The process is perfectly
charted. Success in business, membership in a good club, tandem in the
Park, introduction to a good house, marriage to a pretty girl of family
and not much money, a yacht, a four-in-hand, a Newport villa. His name
had undergone a like evolution. It used to be written on his business
card, Jacob B. Glow. It was entered at the club as J. Bartlett Glow. On
the wedding invitations it was Mr. Bartlett Glow, and the dashing pair
were always spoken of at Newport as the Bartlett-Glows.

When Mr. King descended from his room at the Ocean House, although it
was not yet eight o'clock, he was not surprised to see Mr. Benson tilted
back in one of the chairs on the long piazza, out of the way of the
scrubbers, with his air of patient waiting and observation. Irene used
to say that her father ought to write a book--“Life as Seen from Hotel
Piazzas.” His only idea of recreation when away from business seemed to
be sitting about on them.

“The women-folks,” he explained to Mr. King, who took a chair beside
him, “won't be down for an hour yet. I like, myself, to see the show
open.”

“Are there many people here?”

“I guess the house is full enough. But I can't find out that anybody is
actually stopping here, except ourselves and a lot of schoolmarms come
to attend a convention. They seem to enjoy it. The rest, those I've
talked with, just happen to be here for a day or so, never have been
to a hotel in Newport before, always stayed in a cottage, merely put up
here now to visit friends in cottages. You'll see that none of them act
like they belonged to the hotel. Folks are queer.”

At a place we were last summer all the summer boarders, in
boarding-houses round, tried to act like they were staying at the big
hotel, and the hotel people swelled about on the fact of being at a
hotel. Here you're nobody. I hired a carriage by the week, driver in
buttons, and all that. It don't make any difference. I'll bet a gold
dollar every cottager knows it's hired, and probably they think by the
drive.”

“It's rather stupid, then, for you and the ladies.”

“Not a bit of it. It's the nicest place in America: such grass, such
horses, such women, and the drive round the island--there's nothing
like it in the country. We take it every day. Yes, it would be a little
lonesome but for the ocean. It's a good deal like a funeral procession,
nobody ever recognizes you, not even the hotel people who are in hired
hacks. If I were to come again, Mr. King, I'd come in a yacht, drive up
from it in a box on two wheels, with a man clinging on behind with his
back to me, and have a cottage with an English gardener. That would
fetch 'em. Money won't do it, not at a hotel. But I'm not sure but I
like this way best. It's an occupation for a man to keep up a cottage.”

“And so you do not find it dull?”

“No. When we aren't out riding, she and Irene go on to the cliffs, and I
sit here and talk real estate. It's about all there is to talk of.”

There was an awkward moment or two when the two parties met in the lobby
and were introduced before going in to breakfast. There was a little
putting up of guards on the part of the ladies. Between Irene and Marion
passed that rapid glance of inspection, that one glance which includes a
study and the passing of judgment upon family, manners, and dress, down
to the least detail. It seemed to be satisfactory, for after a few words
of civility the two girls walked in together, Irene a little dignified,
to be sure, and Marion with her wistful, half-inquisitive expression.
Mr. King could not be mistaken in thinking Irene's manner a little
constrained and distant to him, and less cordial than it was to Mr.
Forbes, but the mother righted the family balance.

“I'm right glad you've come, Mr. King. It's like seeing somebody from
home. I told Irene that when you came I guess we should know somebody.
It's an awful fashionable place.”

“And you have no acquaintances here?”

“No, not really. There's Mrs. Peabody has a cottage here, what they call
a cottage, but there no such house in Cyrusville. We drove past it.
Her daughter was to school with Irene. We've met 'em out riding several
times, and Sally (Miss Peabody) bowed to Irene, and pa and I bowed to
everybody, but they haven't called. Pa says it's because we are at a
hotel, but I guess it's been company or something. They were real good
friends at school.”

Mr. King laughed. “Oh, Mrs. Benson, the Peabodys were nobodys only a
few years ago. I remember when they used to stay at one of the smaller
hotels.”

“Well, they seem nice, stylish people, and I'm sorry on Irene's
account.”

At breakfast the party had topics enough in common to make conversation
lively. The artist was sure he should be delighted with the beauty and
finish of Newport. Miss Lamont doubted if she should enjoy it as much as
the freedom and freshness of the Catskills. Mr. King amused himself
with drawing out Miss Benson on the contrast with Atlantic City. The
dining-room was full of members of the Institute, in attendance upon the
annual meeting, graybearded, long-faced educators, devotees of theories
and systems, known at a glance by a certain earnestness of manner and
intensity of expression, middle-aged women of a resolute, intellectual
countenance, and a great crowd of youthful schoolmistresses, just on the
dividing line between domestic life and self-sacrifice, still full of
sentiment, and still leaning perhaps more to Tennyson and Lowell than to
mathematics and Old English.

“They have a curious, mingled air of primness and gayety, as if gayety
were not quite proper,” the artist began. “Some of them look downright
interesting, and I've no doubt they are all excellent women.”

“I've no doubt they are all good as gold,” put in Mr. King. “These
women are the salt of New England.” (Irene looked up quickly and
appreciatively at the speaker.) “No fashionable nonsense about them.
What's in you, Forbes, to shy so at a good woman?”

“I don't shy at a good woman--but three hundred of them! I don't
want all my salt in one place. And see here--I appeal to you, Miss
Lamont--why didn't these girls dress simply, as they do at home, and
not attempt a sort of ill-fitting finery that is in greater contrast to
Newport than simplicity would be?”

“If you were a woman,” said Marion, looking demurely, not at Mr. Forbes,
but at Irene, “I could explain it to you. You don't allow anything for
sentiment and the natural desire to please, and it ought to be just
pathetic to you that these girls, obeying a natural instinct, missed the
expression of it a little.”

“Men are such critics,” and Irene addressed the remark to Marion, “they
pretend to like intellectual women, but they can pardon anything better
than an ill-fitting gown. Better be frivolous than badly dressed.”

“Well,” stoutly insisted Forbes, “I'll take my chance with the
well-dressed ones always; I don't believe the frumpy are the most
sensible.”

“No; but you make out a prima facie case against a woman for want of
taste in dress, just as you jump at the conclusion that because a woman
dresses in such a way as to show she gives her mind to it she is of the
right sort. I think it's a relief to see a convention of women devoted
to other things who are not thinking of their clothes.”

“Pardon me; the point I made was that they are thinking of their
clothes, and thinking erroneously.”

“Why don't you ask leave to read a paper, Forbes, on the relation of
dress to education?” asked Mr. King.

They rose from the table just as Mrs. Benson was saying that for her
part she liked these girls, they were so homelike; she loved to hear
them sing college songs and hymns in the parlor. To sing the songs of
the students is a wild, reckless dissipation for girls in the country.

When Mr. King and Irene walked up and down the corridor after breakfast
the girl's constraint seemed to have vanished, and she let it be seen
that she had sincere pleasure in renewing the acquaintance. King himself
began to realize how large a place the girl's image had occupied in
his mind. He was not in love--that would be absurd on such short
acquaintance--but a thought dropped into the mind ripens without
consciousness, and he found that he had anticipated seeing Irene again
with decided interest. He remembered exactly how she looked at Fortress
Monroe, especially one day when she entered the parlor, bowing right and
left to persons she knew, stopping to chat with one and another,
tall, slender waist swelling upwards in symmetrical lines, brown hair,
dark-gray eyes--he recalled every detail, the high-bred air (which was
certainly not inherited), the unconscious perfect carriage, and his
thinking in a vague way that such ease and grace meant good living
and leisure and a sound body. This, at any rate, was the image in his
mind--a sufficiently distracting thing for a young man to carry about
with him; and now as he walked beside her he was conscious that there
was something much finer in her than the image he had carried with him,
that there was a charm of speech and voice and expression that made her
different from any other woman he had ever seen. Who can define this
charm, this difference? Some women have it for the universal man--they
are desired of every man who sees them; their way to marriage (which is
commonly unfortunate) is over a causeway of prostrate forms, if not
of cracked hearts; a few such women light up and make the romance of
history. The majority of women fortunately have it for one man only, and
sometimes he never appears on the scene at all! Yet every man thinks his
choice belongs to the first class; even King began to wonder that all
Newport was not raving over Irene's beauty. The present writer saw her
one day as she alighted from a carriage at the Ocean House, her face
flushed with the sea air, and he remembers that he thought her a fine
girl. “By George, that's a fine woman!” exclaimed a New York bachelor,
who prided himself on knowing horses and women and all that; but the
country is full of fine women--this to him was only one of a thousand.

What were this couple talking about as they promenaded, basking in each
other's presence? It does not matter. They were getting to know each
other, quite as much by what they did not say as by what they did say,
by the thousand little exchanges of feeling and sentiment which are
all-important, and never appear even in a stenographer's report of a
conversation. Only one thing is certain about it, that the girl could
recall every word that Mr. King said, even his accent and look, long
after he had forgotten even the theme of the talk. One thing, however,
he did carry away with him, which set him thinking. The girl had been
reading the “Life of Carlyle,” and she took up the cudgels for the old
curmudgeon, as King called him, and declared that, when all was said,
Mrs. Carlyle was happier with him than she would have been with any
other man in England. “What woman of spirit wouldn't rather mate with an
eagle, and quarrel half the time, than with a humdrum barn-yard fowl?”
 And Mr. Stanhope King, when he went away, reflected that he who had
fitted himself for the bar, and traveled extensively, and had a moderate
competence, hadn't settled down to any sort of career. He had always an
intention of doing something in a vague way; but now the thought that
he was idle made him for the first time decidedly uneasy, for he had an
indistinct notion that Irene couldn't approve of such a life.

This feeling haunted him as he was making a round of calls that day. He
did not return to lunch or dinner--if he had done so he would have
found that lunch was dinner and that dinner was supper--another vital
distinction between the hotel and the cottage. The rest of the party had
gone to the cliffs with the artist, the girls on a pretense of learning
to sketch from nature. Mr. King dined with his cousin.

“You are a bad boy, Stanhope,” was the greeting of Mrs. Bartlett Glow,
“not to come to me. Why did you go to the hotel?”

“Oh, I thought I'd see life; I had an unaccountable feeling of
independence. Besides, I've a friend with me, a very clever artist, who
is re-seeing his country after an absence of some years. And there are
some other people.”

“Oh, yes. What is her name?”

“Why, there is quite a party. We met them at different places. There's
a very bright New York girl, Miss Lamont, and her uncle from Richmond.”
 (“Never heard of her,” interpolated Mrs. Glow.) “And a Mr. and Mrs.
Benson and their daughter, from Ohio. Mr. Benson has made money; Mrs.
Benson, good-hearted old lady, rather plain and--”

“Yes, I know the sort; had a falling-out with Lindley Murray in her
youth and never made it up. But what I want to know is about the girl.
What makes you beat about the bush so? What's her name?”

“Irene. She is an uncommonly clever girl; educated; been abroad a good
deal, studying in Germany; had all advantages; and she has cultivated
tastes; and the fact is that out in Cyrusville--that is where they
live--You know how it is here in America when the girl is educated and
the old people are not--”

“The long and short of it is, you want me to invite them here. I suppose
the girl is plain, too--takes after her mother?”

“Not exactly. Mr. Forbes--that's my friend--says she's a beauty. But if
you don't mind, Penelope, I was going to ask you to be a little civil to
them.”

“Well, I'll admit she is handsome--a very striking-looking girl. I've
seen them driving on the Avenue day after day. Now, Stanhope, I don't
mind asking them here to a five o'clock; I suppose the mother will have
to come. If she was staying with somebody here it would be easier. Yes,
I'll do it to oblige you, if you will make yourself useful while you
are here. There are some girls I want you to know, and mind, my young
friend, that you don't go and fall in love with a country girl whom
nobody knows, out of the set. It won't be comfortable.”

“You are always giving me good advice, Penelope, and I should be a
different man if I had profited by it.”

“Don't be satirical, because you've coaxed me to do you a favor.”

Late in the evening the gentlemen of the hotel party looked in at the
skating-rink, a great American institution that has for a large class
taken the place of the ball, the social circle, the evening meeting.
It seemed a little incongruous to find a great rink at Newport, but an
epidemic is stronger than fashion, and even the most exclusive summer
resort must have its rink. Roller-skating is said to be fine exercise,
but the benefit of it as exercise would cease to be apparent if there
were a separate rink for each sex. There is a certain exhilaration in
the lights and music and the lively crowd, and always an attraction in
the freedom of intercourse offered. The rink has its world as the opera
has, its romances and its heroes. The frequenters of the rink know the
young women and the young men who have a national reputation as adepts,
and their exhibitions are advertised and talked about as are the
appearances of celebrated 'prime donne' and 'tenori' at the opera. The
visitors had an opportunity to see one of these exhibitions. After a
weary watching of the monotonous and clattering round and round of the
swinging couples or the stumbling single skaters, the floor was cleared,
and the darling of the rink glided upon the scene. He was a slender,
handsome fellow, graceful and expert to the nicest perfection in his
profession. He seemed not so much to skate as to float about the floor,
with no effort except volition. His rhythmic movements were followed
with pleasure, but it was his feats of dexterity, which were more
wonderful than graceful, that brought down the house. It was evident
that he was a hero to the female part of the spectators, and no doubt
his charming image continued to float round and round in the brain of
many a girl when she put her, head on the pillow that night. It is said
that a good many matches which are not projected or registered in heaven
are made at the rink.

At the breakfast-table it appeared that the sketching-party had been a
great success--for everybody except the artist, who had only some rough
memoranda, like notes for a speech, to show. The amateurs had made
finished pictures.

Miss Benson had done some rocks, and had got their hardness very well.
Miss Lamont's effort was more ambitious; her picture took in no less
than miles of coast, as much sea as there was room for on the paper,
a navy of sail-boats, and all the rocks and figures that were in
the foreground, and it was done with a great deal of naivete and
conscientiousness. When it was passed round the table, the comments were
very flattering.

“It looks just like it,” said Mr. Benson.

“It's very comprehensive,” remarked Mr. Forbes.

“What I like, Marion,” said Mr. De Long, holding it out at arm's-length,
“is the perspective; it isn't an easy thing to put ships up in the sky.”

“Of course,” explained Irene, “it was a kind of hazy day.”

“But I think Miss Lamont deserves credit for keeping the haze out of
it.” King was critically examining it, turning his head from side
to side. “I like it; but I tell you what I think it lacks: it lacks
atmosphere. Why don't you cut a hole in it, Miss Lamont, and let the air
in?”

“Mr. King,” replied Miss Lamont, quite seriously, “you are a real
friend, I can only repay you by taking you to church this morning.”

“You didn't make much that time, King,” said Forbes, as he lounged out
of the room.

After church King accepted a seat in the Benson carriage for a drive on
the Ocean Road. He who takes this drive for the first time is enchanted
with the scene, and it has so much variety, deliciousness in curve and
winding, such graciousness in the union of sea and shore, such charm of
color, that increased acquaintance only makes one more in love with it.
A good part of its attraction lies in the fickleness of its aspect. Its
serene and soft appearance might pall if it were not now and then, and
often suddenly, and with little warning, transformed into a wild coast,
swept by a tearing wind, enveloped in a thick fog, roaring with the
noise of the angry sea slapping the rocks and breaking in foam on the
fragments its rage has cast down. This elementary mystery and terror
is always present, with one familiar with the coast, to qualify the
gentleness of its lovelier aspects. It has all moods. Perhaps the most
exhilarating is that on a brilliant day, when shore and sea sparkle in
the sun, and the waves leap high above the cliffs, and fall in diamond
showers.

This Sunday the shore was in its most gracious mood, the landscape as
if newly created. There was a light, luminous fog, which revealed just
enough to excite the imagination, and refined every outline and softened
every color. Mr. King and Irene left the carriage to follow the road,
and wandered along the sea path. What softness and tenderness of color
in the gray rocks, with the browns and reds of the vines and lichens!
They went out on the iron fishing-stands, and looked down at the shallow
water. The rocks under water took on the most exquisite shades--purple
and malachite and brown; the barnacles clung to them; the long
sea-weeds, in half a dozen varieties, some in vivid colors, swept over
them, flowing with the restless tide, like the long locks of a drowned
woman's hair. King, who had dabbled a little in natural history, took
great delight in pointing out to Irene this varied and beautiful life
of the sea; and the girl felt a new interest in science, for it was all
pure science, and she opened her heart to it, not knowing that love can
go in by the door of science as well as by any other opening. Was
Irene really enraptured by the dear little barnacles and the exquisite
sea-weeds? I have seen a girl all of a flutter with pleasure in a
laboratory when a young chemist was showing her the retorts and the
crooked tubes and the glass wool and the freaks of color which the
alkalies played with the acids. God has made them so, these women, and
let us be thankful for it.

What a charm there was about everything! Occasionally the mist became so
thin that a long line of coast and a great breadth of sea were visible,
with the white sails drifting.

“There's nothing like it,” said King--“there's nothing like this island.
It seems as if the Creator had determined to show man, once for all,
a landscape perfectly refined, you might almost say with the beauty
of high-breeding, refined in outline, color, everything softened into
loveliness, and yet touched with the wild quality of picturesqueness.”

“It's just a dream at this moment,” murmured Irene. They were standing
on a promontory of rock. “See those figures of people there through
the mist--silhouettes only. And look at that vessel--there--no--it has
gone.”

As she was speaking, a sail-vessel began to loom up large in the
mysterious haze. But was it not the ghost of a ship? For an instant it
was coming, coming; it was distinct; and when it was plainly in sight
it faded away, like a dissolving view, and was gone. The appearance was
unreal. What made it more spectral was the bell on the reefs, swinging
in its triangle, always sounding, and the momentary scream of the
fog-whistle. It was like an enchanted coast. Regaining the carriage,
they drove out to the end, Agassiz's Point, where, when the mist lifted,
they saw the sea all round dotted with sails, the irregular coasts and
islands with headlands and lighthouses, all the picture still, land and
water in a summer swoon.

Late that afternoon all the party were out upon the cliff path in front
of the cottages. There is no more lovely sea stroll in the world, the
way winding over the cliff edge by the turquoise sea, where the turf,
close cut and green as Erin, set with flower beds and dotted with
noble trees, slopes down, a broad pleasure park, from the stately and
picturesque villas. But it was a social mistake to go there on Sunday.
Perhaps it is not the height of good form to walk there any day, but Mr.
King did not know that the fashion had changed, and that on Sunday this
lovely promenade belongs to the butlers and the upper maids, especially
to the butlers, who make it resplendent on Sunday afternoons when the
weather is good. As the weather had thickened in the late afternoon, our
party walked in a dumb-show, listening to the soft swish of the waves on
the rocks below, and watching the figures of other promenaders, who were
good enough ladies and gentlemen in this friendly mist.

The next day Mr. King made a worse mistake. He remembered that at high
noon everybody went down to the first beach, a charming sheltered place
at the bottom of the bay, where the rollers tumble in finely from the
south, to bathe or see others bathe. The beach used to be lined with
carriages at that hour, and the surf, for a quarter of a mile, presented
the appearance of a line of picturesquely clad skirmishers going out to
battle with the surf. Today there were not half a dozen carriages and
omnibuses altogether, and the bathers were few-nursery maids, fragments
of a day-excursion, and some of the fair conventionists. Newport was not
there. Mr. King had led his party into another social blunder. It has
ceased to be fashionable to bathe at Newport.

Strangers and servants may do so, but the cottagers have withdrawn their
support from the ocean. Saltwater may be carried to the house and used
without loss of caste, but bathing in the surf is vulgar. A gentleman
may go down and take a dip alone--it had better be at an early hour--and
the ladies of the house may be heard to apologize for his eccentricity,
as if his fondness for the water were abnormal and quite out of
experience. And the observer is obliged to admit that promiscuous
bathing is vulgar, as it is plain enough to be seen when it becomes
unfashionable. It is charitable to think also that the cottagers have
made it unfashionable because it is vulgar, and not because it is a
cheap and refreshing pleasure accessible to everybody.

Nevertheless, Mr. King's ideas of Newport were upset. “It's a little
off color to walk much on the cliffs; you lose caste if you bathe in the
surf. What can you do?”

“Oh,” explained Miss Lamont, “you can make calls; go to teas and
receptions and dinners; belong to the Casino, but not appear there much;
and you must drive on the Ocean Road, and look as English as you can.
Didn't you notice that Redfern has an establishment on the Avenue?
Well, the London girls wear what Redfern tells them to wear-much to the
improvement of their appearance--and so it has become possible for a
New-Yorker to become partially English without sacrificing her native
taste.”

Before lunch Mrs. Bartlett Glow called on the Bensons, and invited
them to a five-o'clock tea, and Miss Lamont, who happened to be in the
parlor, was included in the invitation. Mrs. Glow was as gracious as
possible, and especially attentive to the old lady, who purred
with pleasure, and beamed and expanded into familiarity under the
encouragement of the woman of the world. In less than ten minutes Mrs.
Glow had learned the chief points in the family history, the state of
health and habits of pa (Mr. Benson), and all about Cyrusville and its
wonderful growth. In all this Mrs. Glow manifested a deep interest, and
learned, by observing out of the corner of her eye, that Irene was in
an agony of apprehension, which she tried to conceal under an increasing
coolness of civility. “A nice lady,” was Mrs. Benson's comment when Mrs.
Glow had taken herself away with her charmingly-scented air of frank
cordiality--“a real nice lady. She seemed just like our folks.”

Irene heaved a deep sigh. “I suppose we shall have to go.”

“Have to go, child? I should think you'd like to go. I never saw such a
girl--never. Pa and me are just studying all the time to please you, and
it seems as if--” And the old lady's voice broke down.

“Why, mother dear”--and the girl, with tears in her eyes, leaned over
her and kissed her fondly, and stroked her hair--“you are just as good
and sweet as you can be; and don't mind me; you know I get in moods
sometimes.”

The old lady pulled her down and kissed her, and looked in her face with
beseeching eyes.

“What an old frump the mother is!” was Mrs. Glow's comment to Stanhope,
when she next met him; “but she is immensely amusing.”

“She is a kind-hearted, motherly woman,” replied King, a little sharply.

“Oh, motherly! Has it come to that? I do believe you are more than half
gone. The girl is pretty; she has a beautiful figure; but my gracious!
her parents are impossible--just impossible. And don't you think she's
a little too intellectual for society? I don't mean too intellectual, of
course, but too mental, don't you know--shows that first. You know what
I mean.”

“But, Penelope, I thought it was the fashion now to be intellectual--go
in for reading, and literary clubs, Dante and Shakespeare, and political
economy, and all that.”

“Yes, I belong to three clubs. I'm going to one tomorrow morning. We are
going to take up the 'Disestablishment of the English Church.' That's
different; we make it fit into social life somehow, and it doesn't
interfere. I'll tell you what, Stanhope, I'll take Miss Benson to the
Town and County Club next Saturday.”

“That will be too intellectual for Miss Benson. I suppose the topic will
be Transcendentalism?”

“No; we have had that. Professor Spor, of Cambridge, is going to lecture
on Bacteria--if that's the way you pronounce it--those mites that get
into everything.”

“I should think it would be very improving. I'll tell Miss Benson that
if she stays in Newport she must improve her mind.”

“You can make yourself as disagreeable as you like to me, but mind you
are on your good behavior at dinner tonight, for the Misses Pelham will
be here.”

The five-o'clock at Mrs. Bartlett Glow's was probably an event to nobody
in Newport except Mrs. Benson. To most it was only an incident in the
afternoon round and drive, but everybody liked to go there, for it
is one of the most charming of the moderate-sized villas. The lawn is
planted in exquisite taste, and the gardener has set in the open spaces
of green the most ingenious devices of flowers and foliage plants, and
nothing could be more enchanting than the view from the wide veranda on
the sea side. In theory, the occupants lounge there, read, embroider,
and swing in hammocks; in point of fact, the breeze is usually so strong
that these occupations are carried on indoors.

The rooms were well filled with a moving, chattering crowd when the
Bensons arrived, but it could not be said that their entrance was
unnoticed, for Mr. Benson was conspicuous, as Irene had in vain hinted
to her father that he would be, in his evening suit, and Mrs. Benson's
beaming, extra-gracious manner sent a little shiver of amusement through
the polite civility of the room.

“I was afraid we should be too late,” was Mrs. Benson's response to the
smiling greeting of the hostess, with a most friendly look towards the
rest of the company. “Mr. Benson is always behindhand in getting dressed
for a party, and he said he guessed the party could wait, and--”

Before the sentence was finished Mrs. Benson found herself passed on and
in charge of a certain general, who was charged by the hostess to get
her a cup of tea. Her talk went right on, however, and Irene, who was
still standing by the host, noticed that wherever her mother went there
was a lull in the general conversation, a slight pause as if to catch
what this motherly old person might be saying, and such phrases as,
“It doesn't agree with me, general; I can't eat it,” “Yes, I got the
rheumatiz in New Orleans, and he did too,” floated over the hum of talk.

In the introduction and movement that followed Irene became one of a
group of young ladies and gentlemen who, after the first exchange of
civilities, went on talking about matters of which she knew nothing,
leaving her wholly out of the conversation. The matters seemed to
be very important, and the conversation was animated: it was about
so-and-so who was expected, or was or was not engaged, or the last
evening at the Casino, or the new trap on the Avenue--the delightful
little chit-chat by means of which those who are in society exchange
good understandings, but which excludes one not in the circle. The young
gentleman next to Irene threw in an explanation now and then, but she
was becoming thoroughly uncomfortable. She could not be unconscious,
either, that she was the object of polite transient scrutiny by the
ladies, and of glances of interest from gentlemen who did not approach
her. She began to be annoyed by the staring (the sort of stare that a
woman recognizes as impudent admiration) of a young fellow who leaned
against the mantel--a youth in English clothes who had caught very
successfully the air of an English groom. Two girls near her, to whom
she had been talking, began speaking in lowered voices in French, but
she could not help overhearing them, and her face flushed hotly when
she found that her mother and her appearance were the subject of their
foreign remarks.

Luckily at the moment Mr. King approached, and Irene extended her hand
and said, with a laugh, “Ah, monsieur,” speaking in a very pretty Paris
accent, and perhaps with unnecessary distinctness, “you were quite
right: the society here is very different from Cyrusville; there they
all talk about each other.”

Mr. King, who saw that something had occurred, was quick-witted enough
to reply jestingly in French, as they moved away, but he asked, as soon
as they were out of ear-shot, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” said the girl, recovering her usual serenity. “I only said
something for the sake of saying something; I didn't mean to speak so
disrespectfully of my own town. But isn't it singular how local and
provincial society talk is everywhere? I must look up mother, and then I
want you to take me on the veranda for some air. What a delightful house
this is of your cousin's!”

The two young ladies who had dropped into French looked at each other
for a moment after Irene moved away, and one of them spoke for both when
she exclaimed: “Did you ever see such rudeness in a drawing-room!
Who could have dreamed that she understood?” Mrs. Benson had been
established very comfortably in a corner with Professor Slem, who was
listening with great apparent interest to her accounts of the early life
in Ohio. Irene seemed relieved to get away into the open air, but she
was in a mood that Mr. King could not account for. Upon the veranda they
encountered Miss Lamont and the artist, whose natural enjoyment of the
scene somewhat restored her equanimity. Could there be anything more
refined and charming in the world than this landscape, this hospitable,
smiling house, with the throng of easy-mannered, pleasant-speaking
guests, leisurely flowing along in the conventional stream of social
comity. One must be a churl not to enjoy it. But Irene was not sorry
when, presently, it was time to go, though she tried to extract some
comfort from her mother's enjoyment of the occasion. It was beautiful.
Mr. Benson was in a calculating mood. He thought it needed a great deal
of money to make things run so smoothly.

Why should one inquire in such a paradise if things do run smoothly?
Cannot one enjoy a rose without pulling it up by the roots? I have no
patience with those people who are always looking on the seamy side. I
agree with the commercial traveler who says that it will only be in the
millennium that all goods will be alike on both sides. Mr. King made
the acquaintance in Newport of the great but somewhat philosophical
Mr. Snodgrass, who is writing a work on “The Discomforts of the Rich,”
 taking a view of life which he says has been wholly overlooked. He
declares that their annoyances, sufferings, mortifications, envies,
jealousies, disappointments, dissatisfactions (and so on through the
dictionary of disagreeable emotions), are a great deal more than those
of the poor, and that they are more worthy of sympathy. Their troubles
are real and unbearable, because they are largely of the mind. All these
are set forth with so much powerful language and variety of illustration
that King said no one could read the book without tears for the rich of
Newport, and he asked Mr. Snodgrass why he did not organize a society
for their relief. But the latter declared that it was not a matter
for levity. The misery is real. An imaginary case would illustrate his
meaning. Suppose two persons quarrel about a purchase of land, and one
builds a stable on his lot so as to shut out his neighbor's view of the
sea. Would not the one suffer because he could not see the ocean, and
the other by reason of the revengeful state of his mind? He went on
to argue that the owner of a splendid villa might have, for reasons he
gave, less content in it than another person in a tiny cottage so small
that it had no spare room for his mother-in-law even, and that in fact
his satisfaction in his own place might be spoiled by the more
showy place of his neighbor. Mr. Snodgrass attempts in his book a
philosophical explanation of this. He says that if every man designed
his own cottage, or had it designed as an expression of his own ideas,
and developed his grounds and landscape according to his own tastes,
working it out himself, with the help of specialists, he would be
satisfied. But when owners have no ideas about architecture or about
gardening, and their places are the creation of some experimenting
architect and a foreign gardener, and the whole effort is not to express
a person's individual taste and character, but to make a show, then
discontent as to his own will arise whenever some new and more showy
villa is built. Mr. Benson, who was poking about a good deal, strolling
along the lanes and getting into the rears of the houses, said, when
this book was discussed, that his impression was that the real object of
these fine places was to support a lot of English gardeners, grooms,
and stable-boys. They are a kind of aristocracy. They have really made
Newport (that is the summer, transient Newport, for it is largely a
transient Newport). “I've been inquiring,” continued Mr. Benson, “and
you'd be surprised to know the number of people who come here, buy or
build expensive villas, splurge out for a year or two, then fail or get
tired of it, and disappear.”

Mr. Snodgrass devotes a chapter to the parvenues at Newport. By the
parvenu--his definition may not be scientific--he seems to mean a person
who is vulgar, but has money, and tries to get into society on the
strength of his money alone. He is more to be pitied than any other
sort of rich man. For he not only works hard and suffers humiliation in
getting his place in society, but after he is in he works just as hard,
and with bitterness in his heart, to keep out other parvenues like
himself. And this is misery.

But our visitors did not care for the philosophizing of Mr.
Snodgrass--you can spoil almost anything by turning it wrong side out.
They thought Newport the most beautiful and finished watering-place in
America. Nature was in the loveliest mood when it was created, and art
has generally followed her suggestions of beauty and refinement. They
did not agree with the cynic who said that Newport ought to be walled
in, and have a gate with an inscription, “None but Millionaires allowed
here.” It is very easy to get out of the artificial Newport and to come
into scenery that Nature has made after artistic designs which artists
are satisfied with. A favorite drive of our friends was to the Second
Beach and the Purgatory Rocks overlooking it. The photographers and the
water-color artists have exaggerated the Purgatory chasm into a Colorado
canon, but anybody can find it by help of a guide. The rock of this
locality is a curious study. It is an agglomerate made of pebbles and
cement, the pebbles being elongated as if by pressure. The rock is
sometimes found in detached fragments having the form of tree trunks.
Whenever it is fractured, the fracture is a clean cut, as if made by
a saw, and through both pebbles and cement, and the ends present the
appearance of a composite cake filled with almonds and cut with a knife.
The landscape is beautiful.

“All the lines are so simple,” the artist explained. “The shore, the
sea, the gray rocks, with here and there the roof of a quaint cottage
to enliven the effect, and few trees, only just enough for contrast with
the long, sweeping lines.”

“You don't like trees?” asked Miss Lamont.

“Yes, in themselves. But trees are apt to be in the way. There are
too many trees in America. It is not often you can get a broad, simple
effect like this.”

It happened to be a day when the blue of the sea was that of the
Mediterranean, and the sky and sea melted into each other, so that a
distant sail-boat seemed to be climbing into the heavens. The waves
rolled in blue on the white sand beach, and broke in silver. Three
young girls on horseback galloping in a race along the hard beach at the
moment gave the needed animation to a very pretty picture.

North of this the land comes down to the sea in knolls of rock breaking
off suddenly-rocks gray with lichen, and shaded with a touch of other
vegetation. Between these knifeback ledges are plots of sea-green grass
and sedge, with little ponds, black, and mirroring the sky. Leaving this
wild bit of nature, which has got the name of Paradise (perhaps because
few people go there), the road back to town sweeps through sweet farm
land; the smell of hay is in the air, loads of hay encumber the roads,
flowers in profusion half smother the farm cottages, and the trees of
the apple-orchards are gnarled and picturesque as olives.

The younger members of the party climbed up into this paradise one day,
leaving the elders in their carriages. They came into a new world, as
unlike Newport as if they had been a thousand miles away. The spot
was wilder than it looked from a distance. The high ridges of rock lay
parallel, with bosky valleys and ponds between, and the sea shining in
the south--all in miniature. On the way to the ridges they passed clean
pasture fields, bowlders, gray rocks, aged cedars with flat tops like
the stone-pines of Italy. It was all wild but exquisite, a refined
wildness recalling the pictures of Rousseau.

Irene and Mr. King strolled along one of the ridges, and sat down on
a rock looking off upon the peaceful expanse, the silver lines of the
curving shores, and the blue sea dotted with white sails.

“Ah,” said the girl, with an inspiration, “this is the sort of
five-o'clock I like.”

“And I'm sure I'd rather be here with you than at the Blims' reception,
from which we ran away.”

“I thought,” said Irene, not looking at him, and jabbing the point of
her parasol into the ground, “I thought you liked Newport.”

“So I do, or did. I thought you would like it. But, pardon me, you seem
somehow different from what you were at Fortress Monroe, or even at
lovely Atlantic City,” this with a rather forced laugh.

“Do I? Well, I suppose I am; that is, different from what you thought
me. I should hate this place in a week more, beautiful as it is.”

“Your mother is pleased here?”

The girl looked up quickly. “I forgot to tell you how much she thanked
you for the invitation to your cousin's. She was delighted there.”

“And you were not?”

“I didn't say so; you were very kind.”

“Oh, kind; I didn't mean to be kind. I was purely selfish in wanting you
to go. Cannot you believe, Miss Benson, that I had some pride in having
my friends see you and know you?”

“Well, I will be as frank as you are, Mr. King. I don't like being shown
off. There, don't look displeased. I didn't mean anything disagreeable.”

“But I hoped you understood my motives better by this time.”

“I did not think about motives, but the fact is” (another jab of the
parasol), “I was made desperately uncomfortable, and always shall be
under such circumstances, and, my friend--I should like to believe you
are my friend--you may as well expect I always will be.”

“I cannot do that. You under--”

“I just see things as they are,” Irene went on, hastily. “You think I
am different here. Well, I don't mind saying that when I made your
acquaintance I thought you different from any man I had met.” But now
it was out, she did mind saying it; and stopped, confused, as if she had
confessed something. But she continued, almost immediately: “I mean I
liked your manner to women; you didn't appear to flatter, and you didn't
talk complimentary nonsense.”

“And now I do?”

“No. Not that. But everything is somehow changed here. Don't let's talk
of it. There's the carriage.”

Irene arose, a little flushed, and walked towards the point. Mr. King,
picking his way along behind her over the rocks, said, with an attempt
at lightening the situation, “Well, Miss Benson, I'm going to be just as
different as ever a man was.”




V. NARRAGANSETT PIER AND NEWPORT AGAIN; MARTHA'S VINEYARD AND PLYMOUTH

We have heard it said that one of the charms, of Narragansett Pier is
that you can see Newport from it. The summer dwellers at the Pier talk a
good deal about liking it better than Newport; it is less artificial and
more restful. The Newporters never say anything about the Pier. The Pier
people say that it is not fair to judge it when you come direct from
Newport, but the longer you stay there the better you like it; and if
any too frank person admits that he would not stay in Narragansett a day
if he could afford to live in Newport, he is suspected of aristocratic
proclivities.

In a calm summer morning, such as our party of pilgrims chose for an
excursion to the Pier, there is no prettier sail in the world than that
out of the harbor, by Conanicut Island and Beaver-tail Light. It is a
holiday harbor, all these seas are holiday seas--the yachts, the sail
vessels, the puffing steamers, moving swiftly from one headland to
another, or loafing about the blue, smiling sea, are all on pleasure
bent. The vagrant vessels that are idly watched from the rocks at the
Pier may be coasters and freight schooners engaged seriously in trade,
but they do not seem so. They are a part of the picture, always to be
seen slowly dipping along in the horizon, and the impression is that
they are manoeuvred for show, arranged for picturesque effect, and that
they are all taken in at night.

The visitors confessed when they landed that the Pier was a contrast to
Newport. The shore below the landing is a line of broken, ragged, slimy
rocks, as if they had been dumped there for a riprap wall. Fronting this
unkempt shore is a line of barrack-like hotels, with a few cottages
of the cheap sort. At the end of this row of hotels is a fine granite
Casino, spacious, solid, with wide verandas, and a tennis-court--such a
building as even Newport might envy. Then come more hotels, a cluster
of cheap shops, and a long line of bath-houses facing a lovely curving
beach. Bathing is the fashion at the Pier, and everybody goes to the
beach at noon. The spectators occupy chairs on the platform in front of
the bath-houses, or sit under tents erected on the smooth sand. At high
noon the scene is very lively, and even picturesque, for the ladies
here dress for bathing with an intention of pleasing. It is generally
supposed that the angels in heaven are not edified by this promiscuous
bathing, and by the spectacle of a crowd of women tossing about in the
surf, but an impartial angel would admit that many of the costumes here
are becoming, and that the effect of the red and yellow caps, making a
color line in the flashing rollers, is charming. It is true that there
are odd figures in the shifting melee--one solitary old gentleman, who
had contrived to get his bathing-suit on hind-side before, wandered
along the ocean margin like a lost Ulysses; and that fat woman and
fat man were never intended for this sort of exhibition; but taken
altogether, with its colors, and the silver flash of the breaking waves,
the scene was exceedingly pretty. Not the least pretty part of it was
the fringe of children tumbling on the beach, following the retreating
waves, and flying from the incoming rollers with screams of delight.
Children, indeed, are a characteristic of Narragansett Pier--children
and mothers. It might be said to be a family place; it is a good deal so
on Sundays, and occasionally when the “business men” come down from the
cities to see how their wives and children get on at the hotels.

After the bathing it is the fashion to meet again at the Casino and take
lunch--sometimes through a straw--and after dinner everybody goes for a
stroll on the cliffs. This is a noble sea-promenade; with its handsome
villas and magnificent rocks, a fair rival to Newport. The walk, as
usually taken, is two or three miles along the bold, rocky shore, but
an ambitious pedestrian may continue it to the light on Point Judith.
Nowhere on this coast are the rocks more imposing, and nowhere do they
offer so many studies in color. The visitor's curiosity is excited by a
massive granite tower which rises out of a mass of tangled woods planted
on the crest of the hill, and his curiosity is not satisfied on nearer
inspection, when he makes his way into this thick and gloomy forest,
and finds a granite cottage near the tower, and the signs of neglect and
wildness that might mark the home of a recluse. What is the object of
this noble tower? If it was intended to adorn the landscape, why was it
ruined by piercing it irregularly with square windows like those of a
factory?

One has to hold himself back from being drawn into the history and
romance of this Narragansett shore. Down below the bathing beach is the
pretentious wooden pile called Canonchet, that already wears the air
of tragedy. And here, at this end, is the mysterious tower, and an ugly
unfinished dwelling-house of granite, with the legend “Druid's Dream”
 carved over the entrance door; and farther inland, in a sandy and
shrubby landscape, is Kendall Green, a private cemetery, with its
granite monument, surrounded by heavy granite posts, every other one of
which is hollowed in the top as a receptacle for food for birds. And one
reads there these inscriptions: “Whatever their mode of faith, or creed,
who feed the wandering birds, will themselves be fed.” “Who helps the
helpless, Heaven will help.” This inland region, now apparently deserted
and neglected, was once the seat of colonial aristocracy, who exercised
a princely hospitality on their great plantations, exchanged visits and
ran horses with the planters of Virginia and the Carolinas, and were
known as far as Kentucky, and perhaps best known for their breed of
Narragansett pacers. But let us get back to the shore.

In wandering along the cliff path in the afternoon, Irene and Mr. King
were separated from the others, and unconsciously extended their stroll,
looking for a comfortable seat in the rocks. The day was perfect. The
sky had only a few fleecy, high-sailing clouds, and the great expanse of
sea sparkled under the hectoring of a light breeze. The atmosphere was
not too clear on the horizon for dreamy effects; all the headlands were
softened and tinged with opalescent colors. As the light struck them,
the sails which enlivened the scene were either dark spots or shining
silver sheets on the delicate blue. At one spot on this shore rises
a vast mass of detached rock, separated at low tide from the shore by
irregular bowlders and a tiny thread of water. In search of a seat the
two strollers made their way across this rivulet over the broken rocks,
passed over the summit of the giant mass, and established themselves
in a cavernous place close to the sea. Here was a natural seat, and
the bulk of the seamed and colored ledge, rising above their heads and
curving around them, shut them out of sight of the land, and left them
alone with the dashing sea, and the gulls that circled and dipped their
silver wings in their eager pursuit of prey. For a time neither
spoke. Irene was looking seaward, and Mr. King, who had a lower seat,
attentively watched the waves lapping the rocks at their feet, and the
fine profile and trim figure of the girl against the sky. He thought he
had never seen her looking more lovely, and yet he had a sense that she
never was so remote from him. Here was an opportunity, to be sure, if he
had anything to say, but some fine feeling of propriety restrained him
from taking advantage of it. It might not be quite fair, in a place so
secluded and remote, and with such sentimental influences, shut in as
they were to the sea and the sky.

“It seems like a world by itself,” she began, as in continuation of her
thought. “They say you can see Gay Head Light from here.”

“Yes. And Newport to the left there, with its towers and trees rising
out of the sea. It is quite like the Venice Lagoon in this light.”

“I think I like Newport better at this distance. It is very poetical.
I don't think I like what is called the world much, when I am close to
it.”

The remark seemed to ask for sympathy, and Mr. King ventured: “Are you
willing to tell me, Miss Benson, why you have not seemed as happy at
Newport as elsewhere? Pardon me; it is not an idle question.” Irene, who
seemed to be looking away beyond Gay Head, did not reply. “I should
like to know if I have been in any way the cause of it. We agreed to
be friends, and I think I have a friend's right to know.” Still no
response. “You must see--you must know,” he went on, hurriedly, “that it
cannot be a matter of indifference to me.”

“It had better be,” she said, as if speaking deliberately to herself,
and still looking away. But suddenly she turned towards him, and the
tears sprang to her eyes, and the words rushed out fiercely, “I wish I
had never left Cyrusville. I wish I had never been abroad. I wish I had
never been educated. It is all a wretched mistake.”

King was unprepared for such a passionate outburst. It was like a rift
in a cloud, through which he had a glimpse of her real life. Words of
eager protest sprang to his lips, but, before they could be uttered,
either her mood had changed or pride had come to the rescue, for she
said: “How silly I am! Everybody has discontented days. Mr. King, please
don't ask me such questions. If you want to be a friend, you will let me
be unhappy now and then, and not say anything about it.”

“But, Miss Benson--Irene--”

“There--'Miss Benson' will do very well.”

“Well, Miss--Irene, then, there was something I wanted to say to you the
other day in Paradise--”

“Look, Mr. King. Did you see that wave? I'm sure it is nearer our feet
than when we sat down here.”

“Oh, that's just an extra lift by the wind. I want to tell you. I must
tell you that life--has all changed since I met you--Irene, I--”

“There! There's no mistake-about that. The last wave came a foot higher
than the other!”

King sprang up. “Perhaps it is the tide. I'll go and see.” He ran up the
rock, leaped across the fissures, and looked over on the side they had
ascended. Sure enough, the tide was coming in. The stones on which they
had stepped were covered, and a deep stream of water, rising with every
pulsation of the sea, now, where there was only a rivulet before. He
hastened back. “There is not a moment to lose. We are caught by the
tide, and if we are not off in five minutes we shall be prisoners here
till the turn.”

He helped her up the slope and over the chasm. The way was very plain
when they came on, but now he could not find it. At the end of every
attempt was a precipice. And the water was rising. A little girl on
the shore shouted to them to follow along a ledge she pointed out, then
descend between two bowlders to the ford. Precious minutes were lost
in accomplishing this circuitous descent, and then they found the
stepping-stones under water, and the sea-weed swishing about the
slippery rocks with the incoming tide. It was a ridiculous position
for lovers, or even “friends”--ridiculous because it had no element of
danger except the ignominy of getting wet. If there was any heroism in
seizing Irene before she could protest, stumbling with his burden among
the slimy rocks, and depositing her, with only wet shoes, on the shore,
Mr. King shared it, and gained the title of “Life-preserver.” The
adventure ended with a laugh.

The day after the discovery and exploration of Narragansett, Mr. King
spent the morning with his cousin at the Casino. It was so pleasant
that he wondered he had not gone there oftener, and that so few people
frequented it. Was it that the cottagers were too strong for the Casino
also, which was built for the recreation of the cottagers, and that they
found when it came to the test that they could not with comfort come
into any sort of contact with popular life? It is not large, but no
summer resort in Europe has a prettier place for lounging and reunion.
None have such an air of refinement and exclusiveness. Indeed, one of
the chief attractions and entertainments in the foreign casinos and
conversation-halls is the mingling there of all sorts of peoples,
and the animation arising from diversity of conditions. This popular
commingling in pleasure resorts is safe enough in aristocratic
countries, but it will not answer in a republic.

The Newport Casino is in the nature of a club of the best society. The
building and grounds express the most refined taste. Exteriorly the
house is a long, low Queen Anne cottage, with brilliant shops on the
ground-floor, and above, behind the wooded balconies, is the clubroom.
The tint of the shingled front is brown, and all the colors are low and
blended. Within, the court is a mediaeval surprise. It is a miniature
castle, such as might serve for an opera scene. An extension of
the galleries, an ombre, completes the circle around the plot of
close-clipped green turf. The house itself is all balconies, galleries,
odd windows half overgrown and hidden by ivy, and a large gilt
clock-face adds a touch of piquancy to the antique charm of the facade.
Beyond the first court is a more spacious and less artificial lawn,
set with fine trees, and at the bottom of it is the brown building
containing ballroom and theatre, bowling-alley and closed tennis-court,
and at an angle with the second lawn is a pretty field for lawn-tennis.
Here the tournaments are held, and on these occasions, and on ball
nights, the Casino is thronged.

If the Casino is then so exclusive, why is it not more used as a
rendezvous and lounging-place? Alas! it must be admitted that it is not
exclusive. By an astonishing concession in the organization any person
can gain admittance by paying the sum of fifty cents. This tax is
sufficient to exclude the deserving poor, but it is only an inducement
to the vulgar rich, and it is even broken down by the prodigal
excursionist, who commonly sets out from home with the intention of
being reckless for one day. It is easy to see, therefore, why the charm
of this delightful place is tarnished.

The band was playing this morning--not rink music--when Mrs. Glow and
King entered and took chairs on the ombre. It was a very pretty scene;
more people were present than usual of a morning. Groups of half a
dozen had drawn chairs together here and there, and were chatting and
laughing; two or three exceedingly well-preserved old bachelors, in the
smart rough morning suits of the period, were entertaining their lady
friends with club and horse talk; several old gentlemen were reading
newspapers; and there were some dowager-looking mammas, and seated by
them their cold, beautiful, high-bred daughters, who wore their visible
exclusiveness like a garment, and contrasted with some other young
ladies who were promenading with English-looking young men in flannel
suits, who might be described as lawn-tennis young ladies conscious
of being in the mode, but wanting the indescribable atmosphere of
high-breeding. Doubtless the most interesting persons to the student
of human life were the young fellows in lawn-tennis suits. They had the
languid air which is so attractive at their age, of having found out
life, and decided that it is a bore. Nothing is worth making an exertion
about, not even pleasure. They had come, one could see, to a just
appreciation of their value in life, and understood quite well
the social manners of the mammas and girls in whose company they
condescended to dawdle and make, languidly, cynical observations. They
had, in truth, the manner of playing at fashion and elegance as in
a stage comedy. King could not help thinking there was something
theatrical about them altogether, and he fancied that when he saw them
in their “traps” on the Avenue they were going through the motions for
show and not for enjoyment. Probably King was mistaken in all this,
having been abroad so long that he did not understand the evolution of
the American gilded youth.

In a pause of the music Mrs. Bartlett Glow and Mr. King were standing
with a group near the steps that led down to the inner lawn. Among them
were the Postlethwaite girls, whose beauty and audacity made such a
sensation in Washington last winter. They were bantering Mr. King about
his Narragansett excursion, his cousin having maliciously given the
party a hint of his encounter with the tide at the Pier... Just at this
moment, happening to glance across the lawn, he saw the Bensons coming
towards the steps, Mrs. Benson waddling over the grass and beaming
towards the group, Mr. Benson carrying her shawl and looking as if he
had been hired by the day, and Irene listlessly following. Mrs. Glow saw
them at the same moment, but gave no other sign of her knowledge than by
striking into the banter with more animation. Mr. King intended at once
to detach himself and advance to meet the Bensons. But he could
not rudely break away from the unfinished sentence of the younger
Postlethwaite girl, and the instant that was concluded, as luck would
have it, an elderly lady joined the group, and Mrs. Glow went through
the formal ceremony of introducing King to her. He hardly knew how it
happened, only that he made a hasty bow to the Bensons as he was shaking
hands with the ceremonious old lady, and they had gone to the door
of exit. He gave a little start as if to follow them, which Mrs. Glow
noticed with a laugh and the remark, “You can catch them if you run,”
 and then he weakly submitted to his fate. After all, it was only an
accident which would hardly need a word of explanation. But what Irene
saw was this: a distant nod from Mrs. Glow, a cool survey and stare from
the Postlethwaite girls, and the failure of Mr. King to recognize his
friends any further than by an indifferent bow as he turned to speak to
another lady. In the raw state of her sensitiveness she felt all this as
a terrible and perhaps intended humiliation.

King did not return to the hotel till evening, and then he sent up his
card to the Bensons. Word came back that the ladies were packing, and
must be excused. He stood at the office desk and wrote a hasty note to
Irene, attempting an explanation of what might seem to her a rudeness,
and asked that he might see her a moment. And then he paced the corridor
waiting for a reply. In his impatience the fifteen minutes that he
waited seemed an hour. Then a bell-boy handed him this note:

   “MY DEAR MR. KING,--No explanation whatever was needed. We never
   shall forget your kindness. Good-by.
                       IRENE BENSON”

He folded the note carefully and put it in his breast pocket, took it
out and reread it, lingering over the fine and dainty signature, put it
back again, and walked out upon the piazza. It was a divine night,
soft and sweet-scented, and all the rustling trees were luminous in the
electric light. From a window opening upon a balcony overhead came the
clear notes of a barytone voice enunciating the oldfashioned words of an
English ballad, the refrain of which expressed hopeless separation.

The eastern coast, with its ragged outline of bays, headlands,
indentations, islands, capes, and sand-spits, from Watch Hill, a
favorite breezy resort, to Mount Desert, presents an almost continual
chain of hotels and summer cottages. In fact, the same may be said of
the whole Atlantic front from Mount Desert down to Cape May. It is to
the traveler an amazing spectacle. The American people can no longer
be reproached for not taking any summer recreation. The amount of money
invested to meet the requirements of this vacation idleness is enormous.
When one is on the coast in July or August it seems as if the whole
fifty millions of people had come down to lie on the rocks, wade in the
sand, and dip into the sea. But this is not the case. These crowds are
only a fringe of the pleasure-seeking population. In all the mountain
regions from North Carolina to the Adirondacks and the White Hills,
along the St. Lawrence and the lakes away up to the Northwest, in every
elevated village, on every mountain-side, about every pond, lake,
and clear stream, in the wilderness and the secluded farmhouse, one
encounters the traveler, the summer boarder, the vacation idler, one is
scarcely out of sight of the American flag flying over a summer resort.
In no other nation, probably, is there such a general summer hejira, no
other offers on such a vast scale such a variety of entertainment, and
it is needless to say that history presents no parallel to this general
movement of a people for a summer outing. Yet it is no doubt true that
statistics, which always upset a broad generous statement such as I have
made, would show that the majority of people stay at home in the summer,
and it is undeniable that the vexing question for everybody is where to
go in July and August.

But there are resorts suited to all tastes, and to the economical as
well as to the extravagant. Perhaps the strongest impression one has
in visiting the various watering-places in the summer-time, is that the
multitudes of every-day folk are abroad in search of enjoyment. On the
New Bedford boat for Martha's Vineyard our little party of tourists
sailed quite away from Newport life--Stanhope with mingled depression
and relief, the artist with some shrinking from contact with anything
common, while Marion stood upon the bow beside her uncle, inhaling the
salt breeze, regarding the lovely fleeting shores, her cheeks glowing
and her eyes sparkling with enjoyment. The passengers and scene,
Stanhope was thinking, were typically New England, until the boat made a
landing at Naushon Island, when he was reminded somehow of Scotland,
as much perhaps by the wild furzy appearance of the island as by the
“gentle-folks” who went ashore.

The boat lingered for the further disembarkation of a number of horses
and carriages, with a piano and a cow. There was a farmer's lodge at the
landing, and over the rocks and amid the trees the picturesque roof
of the villa of the sole proprietor of the island appeared, and gave a
feudal aspect to the domain. The sweet grass affords good picking for
sheep, and besides the sheep the owner raises deer, which are destined
to be chased and shot in the autumn.

The artist noted that there were several distinct types of women on
board, besides the common, straight-waisted, flat-chested variety. One
girl who was alone, with a city air, a neat, firm figure, in a traveling
suit of elegant simplicity, was fond of taking attitudes about the
rails, and watching the effect produced on the spectators. There was
a blue-eyed, sharp-faced, rather loose-jointed young girl, who had the
manner of being familiar with the boat, and talked readily and freely
with anybody, keeping an eye occasionally on her sister of eight years,
a child with a serious little face in a poke-bonnet, who used the
language of a young lady of sixteen, and seemed also abundantly able to
take care of herself. What this mite of a child wants of all things, she
confesses, is a pug-faced dog. Presently she sees one come on board in
the arms of a young lady at Wood's Holl. “No,” she says, “I won't ask
her for it; the lady wouldn't give it to me, and I wouldn't waste
my breath;” but she draws near to the dog, and regards it with rapt
attention. The owner of the dog is a very pretty black-eyed girl
with banged hair, who prattles about herself and her dog with perfect
freedom. She is staying at Cottage City, lives at Worcester, has been
up to Boston to meet and bring down her dog, without which she couldn't
live another minute. “Perhaps,” she says, “you know Dr. Ridgerton, in
Worcester; he's my brother. Don't you know him? He's a chiropodist.”

These girls are all types of the skating-rink--an institution which is
beginning to express itself in American manners.

The band was playing on the pier when the steamer landed at Cottage City
(or Oak Bluff, as it was formerly called), and the pier and the gallery
leading to it were crowded with spectators, mostly women a pleasing
mingling of the skating-rink and sewing-circle varieties--and gayety
was apparently about setting in with the dusk. The rink and the ground
opposite the hotel were in full tilt. After supper King and Forbes took
a cursory view of this strange encampment, walking through the streets
of fantastic tiny cottages among the scrub oaks, and saw something of
family life in the painted little boxes, whose wide-open front
doors gave to view the whole domestic economy, including the bed,
centre-table, and melodeon. They strolled also on the elevated plank
promenade by the beach, encountering now and then a couple enjoying the
lovely night. Music abounded. The circus-pumping strains burst out of
the rink, calling to a gay and perhaps dissolute life. The band in the
nearly empty hotel parlor, in a mournful mood, was wooing the guests who
did not come to a soothing tune, something like China--“Why do we mourn
departed friends?” A procession of lasses coming up the broad walk,
advancing out of the shadows of night, was heard afar off as the
stalwart singers strode on, chanting in high nasal voices that lovely
hymn, which seems to suit the rink as well as the night promenade and
the campmeeting:

   “We shall me--um um--we shall me-eet, me-eet--um um
    --we shall meet,
   In the sweet by-am-by, by-am-by-um um-by-am-by.
   On the bu-u-u-u--on the bu-u-u-u--on the bu-te-ful shore.”

In the morning this fairy-like settlement, with its flimsy and eccentric
architecture, took on more the appearance of reality. The season was
late, as usual, and the hotels were still waiting for the crowds that
seem to prefer to be late and make a rushing carnival of August, but the
tiny cottages were nearly all occupied. At 10 A.M. the band was playing
in the three-story pagoda sort of tower at the bathing-place, and the
three stories were crowded with female spectators. Below, under the
bank, is a long array of bath-houses, and the shallow water was alive
with floundering and screaming bathers. Anchored a little out was a
raft, from which men and boys and a few venturesome girls were diving,
displaying the human form in graceful curves. The crowd was an immensely
good-humored one, and enjoyed itself. The sexes mingled together in the
water, and nothing thought of it, as old Pepys would have said, although
many of the tightly-fitting costumes left less to the imagination than
would have been desired by a poet describing the scene as a phase of the
'comedie humaine.' The band, having played out its hour, trudged back to
the hotel pier to toot while the noon steamboat landed its passengers,
in order to impress the new arrivals with the mad joyousness of the
place. The crowd gathered on the high gallery at the end of the pier
added to this effect of reckless holiday enjoyment. Miss Lamont was
infected with this gayety, and took a great deal of interest in this
peripatetic band, which was playing again on the hotel piazza before
dinner, with a sort of mechanical hilariousness. The rink band opposite
kept up a lively competition, grinding out go-round music, imparting, if
one may say so, a glamour to existence. The band is on hand at the pier
at four o'clock to toot again, and presently off, tramping to some other
hotel to satisfy the serious pleasure of this people.

While Mr. King could not help wondering how all this curious life would
strike Irene--he put his lonesomeness and longing in this way--and what
she would say about it, he endeavored to divert his mind by a study of
the conditions, and by some philosophizing on the change that had come
over American summer life within a few years. In his investigations he
was assisted by Mr. De Long, to whom this social life was absolutely
new, and who was disposed to regard it as peculiarly Yankee--the
staid dissipation of a serious-minded people. King, looking at it
more broadly, found this pasteboard city by the sea one of the most
interesting developments of American life. The original nucleus was
the Methodist camp-meeting, which, in the season, brought here twenty
thousand to thirty thousand people at a time, who camped and picnicked
in a somewhat primitive style. Gradually the people who came here
ostensibly for religious exercises made a longer and more permanent
occupation, and, without losing its ephemeral character, the place
grew and demanded more substantial accommodations. The spot is very
attractive. Although the shore looks to the east, and does not get the
prevailing southern breeze, and the beach has little surf, both water
and air are mild, the bathing is safe and agreeable, and the view of the
illimitable sea dotted with sails and fishing-boats is always pleasing.
A crowd begets a crowd, and soon the world's people made a city larger
than the original one, and still more fantastic, by the aid of paint and
the jigsaw. The tent, however, is the type of all the dwelling-houses.
The hotels, restaurants, and shops follow the usual order of flamboyant
seaside architecture. After a time the Baptists established a camp,
ground on the bluffs on the opposite side of the inlet. The world's
people brought in the commercial element in the way of fancy shops for
the sale of all manner of cheap and bizarre “notions,” and introduced
the common amusements. And so, although the camp-meetings do not begin
till late in August, this city of play-houses is occupied the summer
long. The shops and shows represent the taste of the million,
and although there is a similarity in all these popular coast
watering-places, each has a characteristic of its own. The foreigner has
a considerable opportunity of studying family life, whether he lounges
through the narrow, sometimes circular, streets by night, when it
appears like a fairy encampment, or by daylight, when there is no
illusion. It seems to be a point of etiquette to show as much of the
interiors as possible, and one can learn something of cooking and
bed-making and mending, and the art of doing up the back hair. The
photographer revels here in pictorial opportunities. The pictures of
these bizarre cottages, with the family and friends seated in front,
show very serious groups. One of the Tabernacle--a vast iron hood or
dome erected over rows of benches that will seat two or three thousand
people--represents the building when it is packed with an audience
intent upon the preacher. Most of the faces are of a grave, severe type,
plain and good, of the sort of people ready to die for a notion. The
impression of these photographs is that these people abandon themselves
soberly to the pleasures of the sea and of this packed, gregarious life,
and get solid enjoyment out of their recreation.

Here, as elsewhere on the coast, the greater part of the population
consists of women and children, and the young ladies complain of the
absence of men--and, indeed, something is desirable in society besides
the superannuated and the boys in round-abouts.

The artist and Miss Lamont, in search of the picturesque, had the
courage, although the thermometer was in the humor to climb up to ninety
degrees, to explore the Baptist encampment. They were not rewarded by
anything new except at the landing, where, behind the bath-houses, the
bathing suits were hung out to dry, and presented a comical spectacle,
the humor of which seemed to be lost upon all except themselves. It
was such a caricature of humanity! The suits hanging upon the line and
distended by the wind presented the appearance of headless, bloated
forms, fat men and fat women kicking in the breeze, and vainly trying
to climb over the line. It was probably merely fancy, but they declared
that these images seemed larger, more bloated, and much livelier
than those displayed on the Cottage City side. When travelers can be
entertained by trifles of this kind it shows that there is an absence of
more serious amusement. And, indeed, although people were not wanting,
and music was in the air, and the bicycle and tricycle stable was well
patronized by men and women, and the noon bathing was well attended, it
was evident that the life of Cottage City was not in full swing by the
middle of July.

The morning on which our tourists took the steamer for Wood's Holl
the sea lay shimmering in the heat, only stirred a little by the land
breeze, and it needed all the invigoration of the short ocean voyage to
brace them up for the intolerably hot and dusty ride in the cars through
the sandy part of Massachusetts. So long as the train kept by the
indented shore the route was fairly picturesque; all along Buzzard Bay
and Onset Bay and Monument Beach little cottages, gay with paint and
fantastic saw-work explained, in a measure, the design of Providence
in permitting this part of the world to be discovered; but the sandy
interior had to be reconciled to the deeper divine intention by a
trial of patience and the cultivation of the heroic virtues evoked by a
struggle for existence, of fitting men and women for a better country.
The travelers were confirmed, however, in their theory of the effect of
a sandy country upon the human figure. This is not a juicy land, if
the expression can be tolerated, any more than the sandy parts of
New Jersey, and its unsympathetic dryness is favorable to the
production--one can hardly say development of the lean, enduring,
flat-chested, and angular style of woman.

In order to reach Plymouth a wait of a couple of hours was necessary at
one of the sleepy but historic villages. There was here no tavern, no
restaurant, and nobody appeared to have any license to sell anything for
the refreshment of the travelers. But at some distance from the station,
in a two-roomed dwelling-house, a good woman was found who was willing
to cook a meal of victuals, as she explained, and a sign on her front
door attested, she had a right to do. What was at the bottom of the
local prejudice against letting the wayfaring man have anything to eat
and drink, the party could not ascertain, but the defiant air of the
woman revealed the fact that there was such a prejudice. She was a
noble, robust, gigantic specimen of her sex, well formed, strong as an
ox, with a resolute jaw, and she talked, through tightly-closed teeth,
in an aggressive manner. Dinner was ordered, and the party strolled
about the village pending its preparation; but it was not ready when
they returned. “I ain't goin' to cook no victuals,” the woman explained,
not ungraciously, “till I know folks is goin' to eat it.” Knowledge of
the world had made her justly cautious. She intended to set out a good
meal, and she had the true housewife's desire that it should be eaten,
that there should be enough of it, and that the guests should like it.
When she waited on the table she displayed a pair of arms that would
discourage any approach to familiarity, and disincline a timid person to
ask twice for pie; but in point of fact, as soon as the party became her
bona-fide guests, she was royally hospitable, and only displayed anxiety
lest they should not eat enough.

“I like folks to be up and down and square,” she began saying, as she
vigilantly watched the effect of her culinary skill upon the awed little
party. “Yes, I've got a regular hotel license; you bet I have. There's
been folks lawed in this town for sellin' a meal of victuals and not
having one. I ain't goin' to be taken in by anybody. I warn't raised in
New Hampshire to be scared by these Massachusetts folks. No, I hain't
got a girl now. I had one a spell, but I'd rather do my own work. You
never knew what a girl was doin' or would do. After she'd left I found
a broken plate tucked into the ash-barrel. Sho! you can't depend on a
girl. Yes, I've got a husband. It's easier to manage him. Well, I tell
you a husband is better than a girl. When you tell him to do anything,
you know it's going to be done. He's always about, never loafin' round;
he can take right hold and wash dishes, and fetch water, and anything.”

King went into the kitchen after dinner and saw this model husband, who
had the faculty of making himself generally useful, holding a baby on
one arm, and stirring something in a pot on the stove with the other. He
looked hot but resigned. There has been so much said about the position
of men in Massachusetts that the travelers were glad of this evidence
that husbands are beginning to be appreciated. Under proper training
they are acknowledged to be “better than girls.”

It was late afternoon when they reached the quiet haven of Plymouth--a
place where it is apparently always afternoon, a place of memory and
reminiscences, where the whole effort of the population is to hear and
to tell some old thing. As the railway ends there, there is no danger
of being carried beyond, and the train slowly ceases motion, and stands
still in the midst of a great and welcome silence. Peace fell upon the
travelers like a garment, and although they had as much difficulty
in landing their baggage as the early Pilgrims had in getting theirs
ashore, the circumstance was not able to disquiet them much. It seemed
natural that their trunks should go astray on some of the inextricably
interlocked and branching railways, and they had no doubt that when they
had made the tour of the State they would be discharged, as they finally
were, into this cul-de-sac.

The Pilgrims have made so much noise in the world, and so powerfully
affected the continent, that our tourists were surprised to find they
had landed in such a quiet place, and that the spirit they have left
behind them is one of such tranquillity. The village has a charm all its
own. Many of the houses are old-fashioned and square, some with colonial
doors and porches, irregularly aligned on the main street, which is
arched by ancient and stately elms. In the spacious door-yards the
lindens have had room and time to expand, and in the beds of bloom the
flowers, if not the very ones that our grandmothers planted, are the
sorts that they loved. Showing that the town has grown in sympathy with
human needs and eccentricities, and is not the work of a surveyor, the
streets are irregular, forming picturesque angles and open spaces.

Nothing could be imagined in greater contrast to a Western town, and
a good part of the satisfaction our tourists experienced was in the
absence of anything Western or “Queen Anne” in the architecture.

In the Pilgrim Hall--a stone structure with an incongruous
wooden-pillared front--they came into the very presence of the early
worthies, saw their portraits on the walls, sat in their chairs, admired
the solidity of their shoes, and imbued themselves with the spirit of
the relics of their heroic, uncomfortable lives. In the town there was
nothing to disturb the serenity of mind acquired by this communion.
The Puritan interdict of unseemly excitement still prevailed, and the
streets were silent; the artist, who could compare it with the placidity
of Holland towns, declared that he never walked in a village so silent;
there was no loud talking; and even the children played without noise,
like little Pilgrims... God bless such children, and increase their
numbers! It might have been the approach of Sunday--if Sunday is still
regarded in eastern Massachusetts--that caused this hush, for it was now
towards sunset on Saturday, and the inhabitants were washing the fronts
of the houses with the hose, showing how cleanliness is next to silence.

Possessed with the spirit of peace, our tourists, whose souls had been
vexed with the passions of many watering-places, walked down Leyden
Street (the first that was laid out), saw the site of the first house,
and turned round Carver Street, walking lingeringly, so as not to break
the spell, out upon the hill-Cole's Hill--where the dead during the
first fearful winter were buried. This has been converted into a
beautiful esplanade, grassed and graveled and furnished with seats, and
overlooks the old wharves, some coal schooners, and shabby buildings, on
one of which is a sign informing the reckless that they can obtain there
clam-chowder and ice-cream, and the ugly, heavy granite canopy erected
over the “Rock.” No reverent person can see this

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