ted, and all the rustling trees were luminous in the electric
light. From a window opening upon a balcony overhead came the clear
notes of a barytone voice enunciating the oldfashioned words of an
English ballad, the refrain of which expressed hopeless separation.

The eastern coast, with its ragged outline of bays, headlands,
indentations, islands, capes, and sand-spits, from Watch Hill, a favorite
breezy resort, to Mount Desert, presents an almost continual chain of
hotels and summer cottages. In fact, the same may be said of the whole
Atlantic front from Mount Desert down to Cape May. It is to the traveler
an amazing spectacle. The American people can no longer be reproached
for not taking any summer recreation. The amount of money invested to
meet the requirements of this vacation idleness is enormous. When one is
on the coast in July or August it seems as if the whole fifty millions of
people had come down to lie on the rocks, wade in the sand, and dip into
the sea. But this is not the case. These crowds are only a fringe of
the pleasure-seeking population. In all the mountain regions from North
Carolina to the Adirondacks and the White Hills, along the St. Lawrence
and the lakes away up to the Northwest, in every elevated village, on
every mountain-side, about every pond, lake, and clear stream, in the
wilderness and the secluded farmhouse, one encounters the traveler, the
summer boarder, the vacation idler, one is scarcely out of sight of the
American flag flying over a summer resort. In no other nation, probably,
is there such a general summer hejira, no other offers on such a vast
scale such a variety of entertainment, and it is needless to say that
history presents no parallel to this general movement of a people for a
summer outing. Yet it is no doubt true that statistics, which always
upset a broad generous statement such as I have made, would show that the
majority of people stay at home in the summer, and it is undeniable that
the vexing question for everybody is where to go in July and August.

But there are resorts suited to all tastes, and to the economical as well
as to the extravagant. Perhaps the strongest impression one has in
visiting the various watering-places in the summer-time, is that the
multitudes of every-day folk are abroad in search of enjoyment. On the
New Bedford boat for Martha's Vineyard our little party of tourists
sailed quite away from Newport life--Stanhope with mingled depression