teaspoonful of calves-foot jelly. There is only one counterpart to
such a man as that, and that is the frothy young woman at the
watering-place, her conversation made up of French moonshine; what she
has on her head only equaled by what she has on her back; useless ever
since she was born, and to be useless until she is dead: and what they
will do with her in the next world I do not know, except to set her
upon the banks of the River Life for eternity to look sweet! God
intends us to admire music and fair faces and graceful step, but amid
the heartlessness and the inflation and the fantastic influences of
our modern watering-places, beware how you make life-long covenants!

V. Another temptation that will hover over the watering-place is that
of baneful literature. Almost every one starting off for the summer
takes some reading matter. It is a book out of the library or off the
bookstand, or bought of the boy hawking books through the cars. I
really believe there is more pestiferous trash read among the
intelligent classes in July and August than in all the other ten
months of the year. Men and women who at home would not be satisfied
with a book that was not really sensible, I found sitting on
hotel-piazzas or under the trees reading books the index of which
would make them blush if they knew that you knew what the book was.

"Oh," they say, "you must have intellectual recreation!" Yes. There is
no need that you take along into a watering-place "Hamilton's
Metaphysics" or some thunderous discourse on the eternal decrees, or
"Faraday's Philosophy." There are many easy books that are good. You
might as well say: "I propose now to give a little rest to my
digestive organs; and, instead of eating heavy meat and vegetables, I
will for a little while take lighter food--a little strychnine and a
few grains of ratsbane." Literary poison in August is as bad as
literary poison in December. Mark that. Do not let the frogs and the
lice of a corrupt printing-press jump and crawl into your Saratoga
trunk or White Mountain valise.

Would it not be an awful thing for you to be struck with lightning
some day when you had in your hand one of these paper-covered
romances--the hero a Parisian _roue_, the heroine an unprincipled
flirt--chapters in the book that you would not read to your children
at the rate of $100 a line? Throw out all that stuff from your summer
baggage. Are there not good books that are easy to read--books of
ente