There is Patterson the banker for instance, the employer of Rogers. He can go where he pleases, and he goes to Newport. One can see him any afternoon driving augustly on Bellevue Avenue or along the ocean drive, well gloved, well shod, and brilliantly necktied, in his landau beside Mrs. Patterson. They have been to Newport for years in summer, and their house, with its beautiful outlook to sea, has doubled and trebled in value. How do they pass their time? Entertain and let themselves be entertained. Dinners with formal comestibles, late dances, champagne luncheons, paté de fois gras picnics on a coach are their daily associations. Mr. and Mrs. Patterson are close upon sixty themselves, but they follow—a little more solemnly than formerly, but still without stint—the same programme, which grows more and more elaborate with each succeeding year. It was there that their youngest daughter was married six months ago, with widely heralded splendor, to a Russian nobleman who speaks beautiful English. May her lot be a happy one! The son, who went through the Keeley cure, and the elder daughter, who is separated from her husband, have spent their summers at Newport from their youth up.
There are comparatively few who have the means to live, or who do live just like Patterson, but there is many a man of fine instincts and with a sufficient income to maintain a summer home, who finds himself to-day oppressed by the incubus of things. He seeks rest, books, fresh air, the opportunity to enjoy nature—the sea, the foliage, the flowers—and yet he is harassed by things, the very things he has all winter, with a garnishment suitable to hot weather. He wishes to be still; and things keep him moving. He yearns to strip off, if not all his clothing, at least enough of it to give his lungs and his soul full play; but things keep him faultlessly dressed. He intends to slake his thirst only from the old oaken bucket or the milk-pail, and things keep his palate titillated with champagne and cocktails. Our old-time simplicity in summer is perhaps no longer possible in the large watering-places. It is even with considerable satisfaction that we don, and see our wives and children don, the attractive clothing which has taken the place of shirt-sleeves and flannel shirts as articles of toilette; but is it not time to cry halt in our procession toward luxury, if we do not wish to live on our nerves all the year round?
It is this difficulty in escaping the expenses and the formality of city life in the summer cottage or at the summer hotel, almost as much as the fact that the desirable locations near town have all been taken, which is inclining the American father to send his family to a distance. After twenty-five years of exploration the outlying beaches and other favorite resorts near our large cities have become so thoroughly appropriated that the man who wishes to build or own a summer home of his own is obliged to look elsewhere. As a consequence cottages have sprung up all along the line of our coast, from the farthest confines of Maine to New Jersey, on the shores of the lakes of the Middle West, and on the Pacific shore. Many of these are of a simple and attractive character, and generally they stand in small colonies, large enough for companionship and not too large for relaxation. With the similar double purpose of obtaining an attractive summer home at a reasonable price, and of avoiding the stock watering-place, city families are utilizing also the abandoned farm. There is not room for us all on the sea-coast; besides those of us whose winter homes are there are more likely to need inland or mountain air. There are thousands of beautiful country spots, many of them not so very far from our homes, where the run-down farm can be redeemed, if not to supply milk and butter, at least to afford a picturesque shelter and a lovely landscape during the season when we wish to be out of doors as much as possible. A very few changes, a very little painting and refurnishing will usually transform the farm-house itself into just the sort of establishment which a family seeking rest and quiet recreation ought to delight in. You may bring mosquito-frames for the windows if you like, and you must certainly test the well-water. Then swing your hammock between two apple-trees and thank Providence that you are not like so many of your friends and acquaintances, working the tread-mill of society in the dog-days.
Of course most men who have homes of this description at a distance cannot be with their families all the time. But, on the other hand, the conviction that a busy man can do better work in ten or eleven months than in twelve, is gaining ground, and most of us, if we only choose to, can slip away for at least three weeks. Many of the demands of modern civilization on the family purse cannot be resisted without leaving the husband and parent a little depressed; but it seems to me that a serious item of expense may be avoided, and yet all the genuine benefits and pleasures of a change of scene and atmosphere be obtained, if we only dismiss from our minds the idea of living otherwise than simply. A little house with very little in it, with a modest piazza, a skiff or sail-boat which does not pretend to be a yacht, a garden hoe and rake, a camera, books and a hammock, a rod which is not too precious or costly to break, one nag of plebeian blood and something to harness him to, rabbits in the barn and sunflowers in the garden, a walk to sunset hill and a dialogue with the harvest moon—why should we not set our summer life to such a tune, rather than hanker for the neighborhood of the big steam-yacht and polo-ground, for the fringe of the fashionable bathing beach, for the dust of the stylish equipage, and try in our several ways, and beyond our means, to follow the pace which is set for us by others?
The Summer Problem.
II.
Why? Largely on account of that newly created species, the American girl. From solicitude for her happiness and out of deference to her wishes. Many a father and mother would be delighted to pass the summer on an abandoned farm or in any other spot where it were possible to live simply and to be cool, comfortable, and lazy, but for fear of disappointing their young people—principally their daughters, who, unlike the sons, cannot yet come and go at will. Feminine youth has its inherent privileges everywhere, but the gentle sway which it exercises in other civilizations has become almost a sour tyranny here. Was there ever an American mother who knew anything portrayed in fiction? The American daughter is commonly presented as a noble-souled, original creature, whose principal mission in life, next to or incidental to refusing the man who is not her choice, is to let her own parents understand what weak, ignorant, foolish, unenlightened persons they are in comparison with the rising generation—both parents in some measure, but chiefly and utterly the mother. She is usually willing to concede that her father has a few glimmering ideas, and a certain amount of sense—horse business sense, not very elevating or inspiring—yet something withal. But she looks upon her poor dear mother as a feeble-minded individual of the first water. What we read in contemporary fiction in this realistic age is apt to be photographed from existing conditions. The newly created species of our homes does not always reveal these sentiments in so many words; indeed she is usually disposed to conceal from her parents as far as possible their own shortcomings, believing often, with ostrich-like complacency, that they have no idea what she really thinks of them. Quite frequently late in life it dawns upon her that they were not such complete imbeciles as she had adjudged them, and she revises her convictions accordingly. But often she lives superior to the end.