impresses me is
the extreme gravity of these people--no fun, no hilarity, no letting
themselves loose for a good time, as they say. Probably they like it, but
they seem to have no capacity for enjoying themselves; they have no
vivacity, no gayety--what a contrast to a party in France or Germany off
for a day's pleasure--no devices, no resources."

"Yes, it's all sad, respectable, confoundedly uninteresting. What does
the doctor say?" asked the artist.

"I know what the doctor will say," put in Miss Summer, "but I tell you
that what this crowd needs is missionary dressmakers and tailors. If I
were dressed that way I should feel and act just as they do. Well,
Selina?"

"It's pretty melancholy. The trouble is constant grinding work and bad
food. I've been studying these people. The women are all--"

"Ugly," suggested the artist.

"Well, ill-favored, scrimped; that means ill-nurtured simply. Out of the
three hundred there are not half a dozen well-conditioned, filled out
physically in comfortable proportions. Most of the women look as if they
had been dragged out with indoor work and little intellectual life, but
the real cause of physical degeneration is bad cooking. If they lived
more out-of-doors, as women do in Italy, the food might not make so much
difference, but in our climate it is the prime thing. This poor physical
state accounts for the want of gayety and the lack of beauty. The men,
on the whole, are better than the women, that is, the young men. I don't
know as these people are overworked, as the world goes. I dare say,
Nettie, there's not a girl in this crowd who could dance with you through
a season. They need to be better fed, and to have more elevating
recreations-something to educate their taste."

"I've been educating the taste of one excursionist this morning, a
good-faced workman, who was prying about everywhere with a curious air,
and said he never'd been on an excursion before. He came up to me in the
office, deferentially asked me if I would go into the parlor with him,
and, pointing to something hanging on the wall, asked, 'What is that?'
'That,' I said, 'is a view from Sunset Rock, and a very good one.' 'Yes,'
he continued, walking close up to it, 'but what is it?' 'Why, it's a
painting.' 'Oh, it isn't the place?' 'No, no; it's a painting in oil,
done with a brush on a piece of canvas--don't you see--,made to look like
the view over there from the rock, colors and all.' 'Yes, I thought,
perh