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."