Our town friends, who fly from the heat and dust, and menacing diseases
and insupportable _ennui_, of their city residence during the months of
July and August, may have an escape, but they have little enjoyment. We
admire the heroism with which they endure, year after year, the
discomforts of a country hotel, or the packing in the narrow,
half-furnished bed-rooms and rather warm attics of rural lodging-houses,
and the general abatement and contraction of creature-comforts, in such
startling contrast to the abounding luxuries of their own city palaces.
But they are right. The country, at any discount, is better, in the
fearful heats of July and August, than the town with its hot, unquiet
nights and polluted air. Any hillside or valley in the country, and a
shelter under any roof in or upon them, with the broad cope of heaven
above, (not cut into patches and fragments by intervening walls and
chimney-tops,) and broad fields, and grass, and corn, and woodlands, and
their flowers and freshening dews and breezes, and all Nature's infinite
variety, is better than every appliance and contrivance of luxury, with
the din, the suffocation, and unrest of city life.