It possesses essentially the same character to the north, although the shore is occasionally higher and bolder, as at the picturesque promontory of Magnolia, and Cape Ann exhibits more of the hotel and popular life. But to live in one's own cottage, to choose his calling and dining acquaintances, to make the long season contribute something to cultivation in literature, art, music—to live, in short, rather more for one's self than for society—seems the increasing tendency of the men of fortune who can afford to pay as much for an acre of rock and sand at Manchester as would build a decent house elsewhere. The tourist does not complain of this, and is grateful that individuality has expressed itself in the great variety of lovely homes, in cottages very different from those on the Jersey coast, showing more invention, and good in form and color.
There are New-Yorkers at Manchester, and Bostonians at Newport; but who was it that said New York expresses itself at Newport, and Boston at Manchester and kindred coast settlements? This may be only fancy. Where intellectual life keeps pace with the accumulation of wealth, society is likely to be more natural, simpler, less tied to artificial rules, than where wealth runs ahead. It happens that the quiet social life of Beverly, Manchester, and that region is delightful, although it is a home rather than a public life. Nowhere else at dinner and at the chance evening musicale is the foreigner more likely to meet sensible men who are good talkers, brilliant and witty women who have the gift of being entertaining, and to have the events of the day and the social and political problems more cleverly discussed. What is the good of wealth if it does not bring one back to freedom, and the ability to live naturally and to indulge the finer tastes in vacation-time?
After all, King reflected, as the party were on their way to the Isles of Shoals, what was it that had most impressed him at Manchester? Was it not an evening spent in a cottage amid the rocks, close by the water, in the company of charming people? To be sure, there were the magical reflection of the moonlight and the bay, the points of light from the cottages on the rocky shore, the hum and swell of the sea, and all the mystery of the shadowy headlands; but this was only a congenial setting for the music, the witty talk, the free play of intellectual badinage, and seriousness, and the simple human cordiality that were worth all the rest.
What a kaleidoscope it is, this summer travel, and what an entertainment, if the tourist can only keep his “impression plates” fresh to take the new scenes, and not sink into the state of chronic grumbling at hotels and minor discomforts! An interview at a ticket-office, a whirl of an hour on the rails, and to Portsmouth, anchored yet to the colonial times by a few old houses, and resisting with its respectable provincialism the encroachments of modern smartness, and the sleepy wharf in the sleepy harbor, where the little steamer is obligingly waiting for the last passenger, for the very last woman, running with a bandbox in one hand, and dragging a jerked, fretting child by the other hand, to make the hour's voyage to the Isles of Shoals.
(The shrewd reader objects to the bandbox as an anachronism: it is no longer used. If I were writing a novel, instead of a veracious chronicle, I should not have introduced it, for it is an anachronism. But I was powerless, as a mere narrator, to prevent the woman coming aboard with her bandbox. No one but a trained novelist can make a long-striding, resolute, down-East woman conform to his notions of conduct and fashion.)
If a young gentleman were in love, and the object of his adoration were beside him, he could not have chosen a lovelier day nor a prettier scene than this in which to indulge his happiness; and if he were in love, and the object absent, he could scarcely find a situation fitter to nurse his tender sentiment. Doubtless there is a stage in love when scenery of the very best quality becomes inoperative. There was a couple on board seated in front of the pilot-house, who let the steamer float along the pretty, long, landlocked harbor, past the Kittery Navy-yard, and out upon the blue sea, without taking the least notice of anything but each other. They were on a voyage of their own, Heaven help them! probably without any chart, a voyage of discovery, just as fresh and surprising as if they were the first who ever took it. It made no difference to them that there was a personally conducted excursion party on board, going, they said, to the Oceanic House on Star Island, who had out their maps and guide-books and opera-glasses, and wrung the last drop of the cost of their tickets out of every foot of the scenery. Perhaps it was to King a more sentimental journey than to anybody else, because he invoked his memory and his imagination, and as the lovely shores opened or fell away behind the steamer in ever-shifting forms of beauty, the scene was in harmony with both his hope and his longing. As to Marion and the artist, they freely appropriated and enjoyed it. So that mediaeval structure, all tower, growing out of the rock, is Stedman's Castle—just like him, to let his art spring out of nature in that way. And that is the famous Kittery Navy-yard!
“What do they do there, uncle?” asked the girl, after scanning the place in search of dry-docks and vessels and the usual accompaniments of a navy-yard.
“Oh, they make 'repairs,' principally just before an election. It is very busy then.”