F LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Chap.f?.2'£iCopyright No.,„ Shelf.^i/_£r_B S UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Newport American Summer Resorts The North Shore. By Robert Grant. With Illustrations by ^V. T. Smed- LEY. Newport. By W. C. Brovvnell. With Illustrations by W. S. Van- DERBiLT Allen. Bar Harbor. By F. Marion Craw- ford. With Illustrations by C. S. Rein- HART. Lenox. By George A. HiBBARD. With Illustrations by W. S. Van- derbilt Allen. ^^■^ Each i2mo. Cloth. Price, 75 cents AMERICAN SUMMER RESORTS N E JV P O R T if' BY W, C, BROWNELL ILLUSTRATED BT W. S. VANDERBIUr ALLEN IpU^^O-J' CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEIV YORK MDCCCXCVI \^- Cofy right, iSg./, iSgb, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS F81 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS BcUevue Avenue — Afternoon An Afternoon Spin . The Casino ^adrangle — Morning Exercising the Thoroughbreds . The Ball-roo7n of the Casino In Front of the Casino An Old Revolutionary House . On the Cliffs Scene on the Beach . Bass-fishing Stand . Yacht Club and Landing Stage . Yachting . . . • Page Frontispiece 5 II 19 23 2g 37 43 53 61 7^ 75 AjLant'C The Stage and the Spectacle A NEWPORT I THE STAGE AND THE SPECTACLE beneficent fairy of gesthetlc predilec- tions could not have arranged a composition containing more efficient con- trast and balance than Newport presents in its combination of old and new, of the quaint and the elegant, picturesque- ness and culture. Nowhere else does fashion rest with such feathery lightness on such a solid pedestal. The mundane extravagance gains immensely by bemg re- lated, seemingly at least and as to ocular setting, to a background of natural beauty and grave decorum. The background gains a little, too. The people that inhabit it, addicted as they are to observant criticism of " sum- Neivport nier visitors," nevertheless receive an elec- tric fillip from their contact with what is gay and joyous and no doubt fleeting. In spite of their most conscientious efforts they are affected in a way that broadens their horizon in proportion as it sharpens their critical faculties. They " size up " the brilliant butterflies that but hover about the lovely town a few brief months of the year, and in rather remorseless fashion ; but they are justifiably if secretly proud of their opportunities for doing so. What other city with any pretensions to be a watering-place has any such chance ^ The whole town is in consequence visibly braced up. The clerks in the shops along Thames Street betray the influence in their deportment. A higher standard of manners than would otherwise obtain is universally apparent. School - children, even, treat each other with noticeably more decorousness than elsewhere. The comedy of society, in fact, is repeated, in infinite and often humorous trituration. But the result is pleasant. The hack- drivers are, socially considered, poseurs. ^^^ They crack jokes with their fares if they J^f^;^^ divine responsiveness, but their self-respect Spectacle is still more obvious than their compan- ionability ; the " old Newporter " is not above showing the place to a party of negro visitors whom he drives down the Avenue with conspicuous good-humor, but it is his good-humor that is the most striking element of the spectacle. Even in such extreme instances one perceives the effect of the social ideal due to the "summer visitor." On the other hand, an impartial chron- icle must admit that the moral effect of a foreign body of wealth, leisure, and meas- urable frivolity in an environment of thrifty commonplace, such as indigenous Newport for the most part is, has its weak side. Brought up in more or less close contact with, and at any rate constant sight of, the attractive activities of so much ir- responsible wealth, the strictly Newport people — who once constituted a very honorable and peculiarly self-respecting Nezcport community — have suffered a sensible de- moralization. Not "hatred** nor "un- charitableness " has been the result of this contact with superior forces, but certainly "envy" has had a subtle influence, with the result that " Newport " has come to mean less to them and to others. The town is still — and may be in the future still more — an interesting place to spec- ulate about as a New England town of excellent traditions and unequalled at- tractions, but unquestionably it has lost something of its once very positive char- acter through contact with ideals and ex- amples by no means its own. Among the shop-keepers — especially among those whom recent changes in " business meth- ods " have rather relegated to the business background — and among the householders on the streets leading from Thames Street to what used to be called " the Hill,'* I am sure one would find an echo of such a judgment. At first sight and to those who take but a perfunctory view of Newport this may An Afternoon Spin 'Ws '■hr *^i^ /. . .A 1 h^^'.^M^Wi\ seem of slight importance. But to my The own mind that which makes Newport '"^r, L and the what it is, is the balance hitherto main- spectacle tained between a self-respecting, organic, and permanent community and the artifi- cial, decorative, and more or less transitory element that makes it our chief watering- place. If the latter of these forces with- draws into exclusiveness, which to anyone who knows its composition may easily seem ridiculous, but which may never- theless occur ; or if the former declines into vulgarity and the loss of self-respect involved in the bravado of self-assertion, to which constant envy of what is quite beyond one's reach indubitably may lead, Newport as we know it now and have known it for years will certainly suffer a sea change. In other words, the future of Newport is, one must admit, consider- ably complicated by the peril of snobbish- ness, and snobbishness of both varieties exemplified by the Anglo-Saxon race. The English snob, according to an acute ob- server, meanly admires what is above him, 7 Neivport the American meanly despises what is be- neath him. Newport undoubtedly has its full share of both species, but it has also, I think, the unusual advantage of sincerely attaching both to it, with the consequent prospect of circumventing each of them. The place is supposed to owe its growth and eminence to the summer residents. It really owes these to four persons — all of them indigenous. They would nowadays be called " the Big Four." Without their foresight and reaUzation of its poten- tialities, the city would still be what it was before the war, when its summer life was almost altogether a desultory and caravan- sary affair. It owes them, indeed, more or less indirectly, the summer residents themselves. Without their labor of prep- aration and seduction, opening streets and drives, modelling estates out of barren tracts, artistically cutting up the landscape into attractive lots, stimulating civic Im- provements, making known and visually exhibiting the immense attractiveness of the place to everyone who had taste and The money, Newport would have been to-day ^^j],^^ far different in almost every trait that now Spectade makes it " Newport." They found their account in the process, of course. They were or became capitalists in the course of advancing the interests and widening the prospects of the town. And, naturally, they are now forgotten. I need mention but one of them ; but anyone who knows Newport well, or at least anyone who has known it as I have for upwards of thirty years, will appreciate what I mean to inti- mate in querying what the city would now be had it not been for the intelligence and enlightened enthusiasm of the late Alfred Smith, a man of ideas and imagination which, applied to anything more tangible and determinate than the gradual evolu- tion of the first watering-place in this country, would have given him a national reputation. One needs but a passing re- flection upon the imagination and ideas of our American " smart set " to assure him whether or no it is likely that unassisted 9 Newport it would have hit upon the real Eden of America wherein to erect its " barbarian castles " and display its varied and leis- urely activities. The summer residents do not all be- long to the " smart set," it is needless to say. Indeed, I doubt if any watering- place in the world of anything like equal eminence has a summer population char- acterized by so much elegance and refine- ment. There was long ago a large nucleus of elegance and refinement in Newport, and it has since grown proportionately with the increase of those whom envy and emulation have gathered around it ; but certainly for these latter the way was made easy and its advantages indicated by the enterprise, energy, and enthusiasm of the men I have alluded to. Somewhat mixed the summer population now un- doubtedly is. It has grown so large as to have grades and classes of its own. And to judge from the newspapers, which scru- pulously record its doings, it has posses- The Casino ^ad- rangle — Morning sion of the town from June to October. The It has certainly worked a great change in ^"^r, / & ^ and the the summer Hfe of the place. Spectacle This was always artificial and exotic, and always delightfully so. But the rise and immensely increased number of great fortunes have worked changes in Newport as they have everywhere else. Less here, however, than elsewhere, I am inclined to think, and certainly less here than is gen- erally supposed. It is a commonplace that the hotels have been supplanted by the cottages. The Ocean House survives somewhat as a landmark and a reminis- cence, but in obvious isolation. You can no longer sit on its broad piazza and watch with interest the serried defile of equipages — almost all of them readily to be identified. The Atlantic, the Fillmore, and the Bellevue are only memories, though to anyone who knew them even in their decadence and when they no longer har- bored Southern folk and Southern man- ners with all the gayety and light-hearted camaraderie, characteristically Southern, 13 Neivport they are charming memories still. Can it be that the hotel life of Narragansett Pier, for example, is a fair reproduction of its old-time Newport analogue ? But this is a question of only speculative interest. As a matter of fact, hotel life has disap- peared in Newport. What is curious, however, I think, is that so few people are alive to the fact that cottage life is just as feasible for persons of modest means. People go to James- town, on Conanicut Island, every summer and live in the hotels that have magically sprung up there at prices which would more than enable them to live in Newport cottages. Tastes differ proverbially, and I can fancy — for I have even met — people who preferred a Jamestown barrack to a Newport cottage at the same price, main- taining that the life was freer in James- town. I dare say it is ; it is freer still at Asbury Park, N. J. Costume and man- ners may both be legitimately more neg- liges than would be quite seemly in a denser population and amid surroundings 14 that suggest more decorum. But there T^he are persons to whom a certain decree of ^^^,\ ^ , , , ^ . and the decorum is in itself pleasant to witness spectacle and practise, and to these life in Newport during the season may be as simple as it is in a village. To such persons the only obstacle to enjoyment is the constant presence of an elaborate and expensive life which they cannot share. This has capac- ities for making the envious and the feeble-minded, people who have no pride of tradition or shrewdness of philosophy or instinctive fastidiousness, extremely un- happy, no doubt. For others with small means the advantages of Newport are unequalled. The markets seem high- priced, especially to a New Yorker, but they are much more than counter-balanced by the low rents ; and the conveniences obtainable at low rentals, due to the way in which cottage-building has been specu- latively overdone, are unexampled. Bath- ing, rowing, sailing, driving, walking, picnicking are to be had in perfection, under a sky of infinite delicacy, in an atmosphere 15 Newport of unique softness, and in an environment of natural beauty and artistic distinction that exists nowhere else. Then there is the passing show — the social spectacle. The social spectacle as well as the summer life has greatly changed of recent years. Opening the Ocean Drive from the end of the Avenue to the Fort made a great difference to it. Ten miles more of macadam prodigiously dis- seminated the stately procession that used to pass decorously up and down the Avenue, turning at Bailey's Beach and at Kay Street where the houses ceased. Though the procession is much augmented nowadays it no longer produces the same effect as formerly, and has, indeed, ceased to be a procession ; the " establishments," as they used to be called, are strung along without cumulative effect. And owing to their greater number no one knows and can gossip about more than one in three of them. "Newport" seems less con- densed in consequence. Its old lovers feel a certain lack. i6 The Shige and the The procession's smartness, too (an epithet, by the way, we should not have thought of using twenty years ago), is now Spectacle deeply infiltrated by plebeian elements — Stewart's, Hazard's, and other so-called " drags," with their mammoth loads of excursionists anxiously curious to see and fix in the memory the mansions they have read about in the Sunday papers, and also frequently recurrent vehicles of the ultra- shirt-sleeved bourgeoisie of the town itself, in whom the desire of parade has alto- gether outrun the capacity of creditably attaining it. These new elements " have a good time," in our American idiom,'and cer- tainly no place in our democratic country, not even Newport, can consistently elevate any ideal above that of providing people in general with a good time at any cost to the aesthetic or other sensibilities of " the rem- nant." Only, a laudator temporis acti in thinking of Newport may, perhaps, with- out feeling quite a snob, make the reflection that the present situation is the result of artificial rather than of natural selection. 17 Newport This overlay of nouvelles couches is ob- vious elsewhere than in the driving pro- cession, of course, with the result of social and political rather than aesthetic cheer to the spectator. The accursed but conve- nient trolley system clangs and sizzes through erstwhile sedate Spring Street and out the wide expanse of elm-lined Broad Street, now characteristically be- come Broadway. The colored population has increased after its prolific racial fash- ion, and the anomaly of a barouche full of darky dandies and dusky belles con- ducted by an Irish, or even, as I have be- fore mentioned, a native Newport driver, is a frequent phenomenon. The appalling excursionist from Providence and Paw- tucket, with his and her paper bags and odor of peanuts and ginger-pop, infests the squares, the cliffs, the beach, and awakens echoes with enjoyment. The Irish contingent has augmented propor- tionally with the African. The city gov- ernment is largely in its hands, with perhaps the usual consequence of its own i8 Exercising the Thor- ouyhbreds »;vra«>; >^> The Stage and the prosperity and a deterioration of public works in general. There are larger crowds of expectorating loafers around the Post- Spectacle office and the City Hall. The commer- cial traveller, with his samples and his manners, is more numerous. In fine, the city is no longer, to the eye as well as in fact, composed of a summer aristocracy and a resident bourgeoisie, their self-re- specting admirers. It has moved with the rest of the world and with similar results. But with all its changes, which the dilettante or the lover of old Newport may deplore, it is perhaps more pre-emi- nently than ever the loveliest, the seren- est and most smiling, the most obvi- ously cultivated civic ensemble that the country possesses. y Newport T II THE SUMMER LIFE HE quality of the summer life is its elegance ; its defect is its artificiality. It is undoubtedly elegant, but its elegance is not quite a natural evolution. It is sur- rounded with ease, comfort and distinction not merely material, but aesthetic. Its stage is carpeted with the loveliest of lawns and decorated with the greatest profusion of flowers anywhere to be seen. It is characterized by a great deal of high- breeding, of decorum triumphing over frivolity, of taste, reserve and composure. A large element of it certainly is superior to the envious fleering or the obsequious flattery of vulgarity. Its self-respect is perfectly obvious and real. But one would like to see this carried a little farther, to the point, I mean, of unconsciousness, of absolute free play. Self respect is admir- al ^ "^ The Ball- room of the Casino able, but respect for one's traditions is admirable also. The Newport summer life has traditions, and it should not aban- don them in the chameleon-like way char- acteristic of it, and appear imitative and artificial. It is only comparatively new, and yet, by its rather systematic imitation of what is positively old — by its studied modelling of itself on English country life, with which it really has but the most superficial relations in the world — it cre- ates the effect of a reflection and not of an original. In English country life the flowers make no such display, it is true, but the lawns are deeper and richer, the houses have infinitely older associations, and the entire environment is infinitely more established and sedate. Why aban- don our own heritage of vivacity and high- spirited decorousness in favor of an exotic ideal ? Anglomania is, perhaps, not con- spicuous in Newport, certainly not in comparison with the rest of the East ; but in Newport it is less excusable than elsewhere, and its effects more regrettable ^5 The Sum me* Life Neivport accordingly : in Newport more than any- where else with us imitation by the new thing of the old, failure to insist on one's own idiosyncrasies, and, as Arnold says of ritualistic practices, " vehement adop- tion of rites till yesterday unknown," seem to imply that we do not " know a good thing when we see it." So great, however, is the unifying power of Newport that when its summer life ap- pears in any concrete manifestation one feels that to inquire into it is eminently to inquire too curiously. It is true that with the extension of the drive, the decline of the hotel-life and their withdrawal from the beach, the summer people are certainly less in evidence than they were formerly. They make far less of a spectacle for pro- fane contemplation, and somewhat con- sciously and uneasily, perhaps, study exclusiveness, if not seclusion. They visit among themselves and have teas and dinners to themselves, quite as they do in their several winter social circles. It is perfectly clear that they do not have any- 26 thing like the good time they or their fathers and mothers used to have; but that is their. affair, and is only interesting as it affects and modifies " Newport." They still come out quite strong — as they are beginning to learn to say — at the Casino ; though the Casino has never paid for itself and is a monument to the unwis- dom of its originators' efforts to domes- ticate an essentially foreign institution. It embodies the transplanted fancies of the staid burghers of Holland in conjunction with the predilections of the lawn-loving Englishman, and includes a restaurant more or less reminiscent of France. But it has been found to be unduly costly and adjudged to have " forced the note." Yet it has weekly concerts and dances which at all events the outer fringe of the society people do not hesitate to attend and par- ticipate in, and it witnesses one festival in the year to which they contribute their presence with the utmost cordiality — the annual lawn-tennis tournament. There are probably few prettier scenes The Summer Life 27 Newport than that of which this contest is the cen- tre. Perfectly trimmed lawns swept by the freshest and daintiest morning dresses, young men in flannels, rosy with health and irresponsibility, fashion in its freest and least conscious manifestations, the mass of *' best people " in their most at- tractive inadvertence, the rising seats around the courts clad in the most refresh- ing variety of clear-colored costumes pricked out with patches of brilliant para- sols, the water-color note everywhere, as a painter would say, and the well-groomed young fellows in the centre of the com- position obviously exhibiting both strength and skill — make a picture which for com- bined animation and refinement, both of actors and spectators, it would be difficult to match anywhere. Jean Beraud — or better still Raffaelli or Forain — would find it quite as well worth fixing as Long- champ, though the types, of course, are less various. Newport owes, too, to the summer res- ident, not only a high standard of social 28 In Front oj the Cusino life and a decorous employment of leisure, ^^^^^^ but also an esthetic ideal of architecture /^"''' and landscape gardening. Architecture has perhaps been as much travestied as illustrated. The feeblest whimsies abound. Reflections in frame of reverend stone motifs are not infrequent. The art of building is often caricatured in houses of which the only inspiration is plainly the desire to be conspicuous. And though some of the old houses, such as the Bareda mansion and Mr. Wetmore's palace, are their own excuse for being, there are not a few elaborate examples of exaggerated bad taste and worse grammar. On the other hand, to leave the Vanderbilt and other palaces quite aside, such a house as Richardson built for Mr. Sherman, or that of Mr. Marquand by Hunt, and others easily mentioned, form a notable leaven and rectify the eflTect produced by perhaps the predominant inapposite sportiveness. But there is no doubt at all of the im- mense service to the place rendered by the summer resident's landscape gardener, who 31 Neivport has covered broad acres of it with lawns and boscages, clumps of trees and bushes, heaps of flowery luxuriance walled in by privet and buckthorn, and has more than any other agency, except the climate and the natural lay of the land, exhibited the potentialities of elegance inherent in these latter. A good word should be said, in addition, for the way in which — often an awkward and somewhat absurd instrument in the hands of Providence — the summer resident has circumvented the purely util- itarian and ignoble activities that, left to themselves, would have done their disas- trous utmost to vulgarize Newport, wholly and deplorably unconscious that the life of the goose that lays for them such golden eggs was really in peril. The Old Totuti III THE OLD TOWN THE old town may be called pictur- esque in distinction from the general pictorial effect that is noticeable. It is full of narrow streets and quaint turnings ; little squares left undisturbed by the march of municipal improvements within their old-time staid and rectilinear demarca- tion ; trapezoidal houses built originally, it is evident, in exemplification of the sound principle that expression of function is the one thing needful in architecture ; gently inclining gambrels in themselves a a composition. But even its streets and houses, its courts, impasses, and docks have as detail too much character and individ- ual sap justly to be termed the mere material of a picturesque whole. They have none of the indeterminate and huddled look of the detail of Amalfi or 33 Newport Assisi. They make a harmony that is sensibly organic. They are individually quaint now and then, without, how- ever, the sharp accent that we usually associate with quaintness, and they fit the landscape " like the paper on the wall." Some of the narrow gambrel-roofed houses have gables that gaze on the streets, on which they often look, like human faces. Cotton's Court, Wanton Avenue, and similar places, contracted as they evidently are in area, have an air of complication and variety that tempt and would reward the exploring sense. Curious juxtaposi- tions of shop, dwelling, stable, warehouse, and what not form incomparable "nooks." The public buildings are interesting. The City Hall, admired by Allston, is a charming bit of classic, and the State House a colonial monument of much dig- nity and character. The jail, on Marl- borough Street, is absolutely delightful and characteristically domestic ; there is a legend of its one prisoner once complaining because there was no lock on her door. 34 In all the world probably there is nothing The like the Long; Wharf, with its succession ^ of boat-builders' shops, tenements, ignoble saloons, heaps of junk, sail-boat moorings and floats, terminating in the railway freight station and the steamboat wharf. It is hardly changed within my own recol- lection. Deacon GrofFs succession to James Hart, the boat-builder and letter, in whose airy shop a parliament of local sages meets now as it has for several dec- ades, amid the shavings and spars, the oars and " tackle," to look out over the harbor and speculate on the political state of the nation and the social state of the town, is the chief variation I note, and that is not revolutionary. On the hottest day there is always a breeze here, and much to be learned besides. Nor is there anything, I fancy, quite like Thames Street from end to end — the business street of the town — though its banks and butcher-shops, and book-stores and fish-markets, and hardware and dry- goods and haberdashery are punctuated 35 Ne-wport and faintly diversified with dwellings now and then. They have been dwellings a long while, and count many generations of probably the same families. The sub- dued note of age, of " silence and slow time," is distinctly audible, and vibrates gently throughout the old town, with its gray and white and green blinds ; but I must admit that of recent years there has been to some extent an intrusive discord of commercial modernity even here. The one-price clothing store, the bee-hives of humming retail industry, and the uni- versal emporium are foreign bodies in the general environment and contribute a for- eign color to the quaint old street — like an overflow of Fall River or Providence. But as yet they have not greatly detracted from the general character of the thor- oughfare, which is still sufficient to afford one of the most piquant contrasts in the world, I think, when the drags and dog- carts, the broughams and phaetons of fashion weave their way along its narrow length at what it pleases everyone's hu- 36 An Old Rcvolu- \ tionary House «:;- I morous fancy to call the shopping hour. Thames Street, whatever its transforma- tions, will indefinitely, no doubt, continue to perform its distinguished function of binding together summer and winter, transitory and permanent Newport with a notable welding force. The Point, too, is a part of the old town, and is rather neglected, which it should not be. It is somewhat inacces- sible, and anyone who lives there or in- habits the neighborhood for a summer has need, perhaps, of a horse and trap of some kind. But it has its advantages and qual- ities of its own. To begin with, it is very far removed from the artificial summer life. One may live there as much in re- treat as at Jamestown. Land is very cheap, and if I were tempted to "build " in New- port I am not at all sure that I should not select some site on the water's edge in this region. One could have his fill of still- water bathing, his cat-boat and row-boat, and a certain measure of seclusion wholly consonant with the most delightful out- 39 The Old Toiun Neivport of-doors activity and within easy reach of whatever is attractive in the town itself. A more nearly perfect embodiment of rus in urbe it would be difficult to find than the stretch of bay shore here, fringed by substantial houses, and an equally substan- tial local community that is in Newport but not, in the ordinary and superficial sense, of it. 40 The Avenue^ the Chff Walk and the IV Drl've . THE AVENUE, THE CLIFF WALK AND THE DRIVE \TEWPORT is longitudinally divided ^^ by three main streets which run north and south. Following mainly the harbor line and projecting thitherward its many slips is Thames Street, where is al- most all the business of the town, extendinp- from the cemetery, with its characteristic contrast of old and new, the old slate carv- ings of winged cherubs' heads hard by the joint product of La Farge and St. Gaudens, to the lower end of the harbor. A few rods up the hill Spring Street, with its prim houses and old Trinity and other churches, parallels it, running from just above the Parade or Mall, where the State House is south to the ocean. And on the crest of the ridge are the nearly straight two miles and a half of Bellevue Avenue. At its Neivport north end is the romantic and trimly kept Jews' Cemetery, celebrated by Longfellow, where sleep amid flowers and cypresses Abraham and Judah Touro and other Hebrews, who amply repaid the early toleration and respect here extended to their race long before it received them elsewhere. Next come residences, board- ing-houses, a little row of lesser commerce, the Newport Reading-room — the club euphemistically so called — the Redwood Library, now a more hushed but less hospitable bookish retreat than many old Newporters remember it, and Touro Park, where the Old Stone Mill stands and a band plays on summer evenings. Then a stretch of shops till one gets to Bath Road, the broad street leading to the beach, the Casino, and the stiff, stark caravansery of the Ocean House just beyond. Here begins the succession of cottages and chateaux of the summer resident, set wide apart in elegant lawns bordered with hedges and blazing with flowers, that ex- tends for a couple of miles to the sea. 42 And the slope that shelves gently eastward '^^^ from the crest of the hill that the Avenue follows has also within the past few lustra (especially in the neighborhood of Ochre Point) been covered with elaborate man- sions, the average of whose pretensions exceeds perhaps that of those appertaining to the Avenue itself. This is the region — the rough parallelogram formed by the Avenue, the cliffs bordering the sea a half mile or so to the east, the southern shore, and an east and west line from about the Ocean House to a point a little south of the Beach — where chiefly reside the sum- mer people whose activities the papers chronicle so copiously, and where, better perhaps than anywhere else, an American may see his " young [and old] barbarians all at play" — to recall Arnold's application of the line to Oxford. The northeastern part of the city has grown greatly also of recent years, and is covered with cottages of modest cost and considerable architec- tural character. Past the Beach is another district whose houses, some of them ample 43 A-uenuCy the Cliff Walk and the Dri've Newport and elaborate, stand in notable isolation amid rural fields, then Paradise with its farm-houses, ponds, junipers and gray rocks, the Second Beach, and finally Sach- uest Point, which brings one to the Sea- connet River and the verge of Newport. All around here and north from the town proper delightful drives lead out into the island itself Six miles out is the Glen, an almost artificial arrangement of romantic nature, driving whither one may stop at Mrs. Durfee's for tea and wafi^es, and enjoy a truly English interior. Then there are Pebbly Beach, with its curi- ous geological conformations, and ro- mantically situated, cool and cosey St. Mary's Chapel, and Vaucluse and its de- serted close, eloquent in reflections such as Mr. Swinburne has crystallized in his incomparable " A Forsaken Garden ; " and no end of quaint cross-roads and long vistas beneath overhanging elms or be- tween trim poplars — the whole greatly vivified and highly colored by the local inhabitant, with his sturdy and salient 44 characteristics, lounging in front of coun- The try stores and post-offices, or jogging past ^Z"rff in his open wagon, smiling the while, with tvaik and good-natured cynicism, at any exuberance '^^ ^''''^' you and your party may exhibit. To go back to the town itself, there are, to begin with, the two miles and more of the Cliff Walk. Setting out from the Beach the sea is on one's left, its near shallows, "with green and yellow sea- weed strewn," and beyond its stretch of varying blues and purples, the long, grace- ful reach of Easton's Point, at the end of which a solitary cottage stands sentinel, and shimmering in the more distant haze the shore of Seaconnet and its neighbor- ing rocky islets around which the breakers are flashing in foam. On the right of the path, which undulates along its edges and rises and falls with its rolling unevenness, extends that succession of lawns which, more than any other feature perhaps, sets the pitch of Newport's elegance. In these smooth expanses of soft green glowing with unexampled profusion of 47 Newport aristocratic flowers, the art and nature of the place meet in effective fusion. So ele- gant is it all that one fails to note how high and rugged are the cliffs themselves, the highest on the Atlantic coast from Cape Ann to Yucatan. On a day of storm, with the waves driving in from the ocean and beating angrily against them, they are more impressive ; but they are always picturesque and make a striking dividing line between the sea, wherein the forces of nature are always visibly at play, peaceful or turbulent, and the broad shelf of land which the hand of man has moulded and decorated with the most cul- tivated art. Curious, is it not, that cer- tain proprietors of the villas to which these lawns appertain should have tried by every means to circumvent the undoubted riparian right of all the world to follow this unequalled path at its will, provided trespass be avoided ? They are new- comers, one infers, to Newport at any rate, if not to id omne genus, for a prolonged submission to Newport influences could 48 hardly fail to modify the Hyrcanlan hearts The and Boeotian brains to which in such cir- "^^'''"'' the Cliff cumstances as these monopoly could sug- waik and geSt itself. ^^^ T)ri-ve Beyond the southern extremity of the Cliff Walk, and extending westward to Castle Hill (whence one may see the fringe of hotels and cottages that compose Narragansett Pier) and Fort Adams, stretches out the charming region known of old as Price's Neck — variegated with ponds and embayments, hill and dale, rock and marsh, and skirted and reticu- lated with the famous Ocean Drive and its tributaries. The Ocean Drive is unique in the world ; and to my own taste its mingling of stimulus and suavity, its alter- nations of wildness and culture, its invigor- ating iodine-laden breezes, the sedative softness of its mists, the piquant aroma ot its huckleberry bushes, the infinite variety of its " effects," combine to produce an impression to which that left by the Cor- nice from Nice to Genoa is a shade sac- charine and monotonous. This and the 49 Newport Paradise country are the regions that appeal most, perhaps, to the few landscape painters who have had the sense to appre- ciate that in Newport they had but to reproduce, whereas elsewhere the heavy burthen of origination is generally laid upon them. Mr. La Farge is a notable exception, by the way ; and curiously, thus, it is the most imaginative of our painters who, almost alone, has illustrated the most pictorial landscape that we have. The Neck has been greatly changed within the last few years, and some fastid- ious spirits who are displeased with any intrusion of man into the realm of nature have esteemed it " destroyed." It has been cut up by a network of roads, it is true. It is no longer Rocky Farm, with its happy combination of wildness and composure, its sudden bush and brier-clad declivities, its stretches of marsh, and wide vistas of uneven but undulating grace. It is shorn into cultivated aspect, and graded into landscape art. The land- scape painter has, perhaps, a legitimate re- regret. But the nicest and most svmpa- ^^^ thetic taste has dictated the process, and the lay of the ground and its character as a whole have been carefully considered. The geologic outline has been preserved, and even its accidents have been appreci- ated as advantages instead of artificially circumvented. It has not lost its effect of local ensemble^ and the houses — the cas- tles, rather — now stationed on its crests and dominating the points of view do not detract from this effect, but on the other hand, contribute to it an element of dis- tinctly elegant interest. The change, at all events, is at the charge of the summer residents. To me, I confess, it is to be charged to their credit. A'vcnue^ the Cliff Walk and the Dri-ve 51 Neivport THE BEACH ANOTHER effect of the evolution of the summer resident as an important and controlhng class has been the transfor- mation — I was about to say the destruction — of the Beach. The Beach is no longer what it used to be. The " bathing hour," with all its characteristic features, has de- parted. You may bathe at any hour when you can find a " house," but it is no longer fashionable to bathe at all. There are a few private houses sometimes occupied, and at Bailey's Beach others whose owners use them very constantly, but the bathing at the Beach as a feature of social summer life is over. The carriages do not come down and draw up on the sand to watch the bathers. The place is no longer a rendezvous both for bathers and specta- tors, as, say, the plage at Trouville is. 5^ Scene on the Beach Beach " Society " has abandoned it, and in gen- ^^^ eral, probably, confines itself to " tubbing." The philosophic lover of Newport must recognize the change as inevitable, no doubt, but the sentimentalist may be per- mitted to regret it. Perhaps it would have been asking too much of the summer peo- ple, to preserve in this respect the simplic- ity and really democratic elegance which they evinced before they became con- sciously so much of a force as to be un- easily careful with regard to even chance companionship. And it must be confessed that of late years the Beach has been in- vaded by people with whom fastidiousness may excusably find it disagreeable to min- gle. On Sundays it is given over to ex- cursionists and servants, as was quite to have been expected, of course, with the increase of Newport's general popularity and its facilities of access by rail and water. But even on week-days it has "developed" immensely in a popular direction. "Pa- vilions " that recall Coney Island more than old Newport have arisen, and the 55 Ne'wport aroma of chowder pervades them. The travelling photographer sets up his shanty. Wrapping-paper abounds, and " lunches " are surreptitiously munched. The sun- shine and salt air minister to the greatest good of the greatest number. Of the " best people " in general, onlv those who find the bathing hyg^ienic or positively pleasurable, enter the water, and only their immediate friends attend and observe them. Still I, for one, cannot help thinking that things might have been different but for the societv fiat that bathing was to be considered unfashionable, and that the fiat itself rather unnecessarily preceded any real occasion for it. Certainly, were the natural advantages of the Beach appreci- ated as are those of European watering places whose summer population is both popular and select, thev would be utilized instead of neglected. They are, as a mat- ter of fact, unequalled. There is but one natural disadvantage ; the Beach fronts southward, and after a storm gets more than its due proportion of seaweed ; and 56 seaweed is a distinct discount upon the pleasure of bathing. Otherwise it is un- rivalled. It is absolutely safe. It shelves in the gentlest gradation. The water is alwavs warm. Even at high tide there is plenty of room for carriages. The dunes are hi^h enough to ajfbrd protection from the wind when it happens to come from the north. It is a mile in extent and af- fords a driving promenade at low tide ot almost unique exhilaration. The "scene" is invariably animating. Indeed, it must not be supposed that in finding excuses for the " best people's " recent neglect, one really quite acquits them of stupidit}- in the matter — only, in speaking of most of their characteristic manifestations, one is naturally more in- terested in explaining them than in specu- lating about their intelligence and tact. There are plenrv of people who bathe daily in the season at the Beach, and have done so, thev and their fathers and moth- ers, for more seasons than most of the now prominent summer residents can Neivport count, and who get along very well both without the old confraternity and with the new popular element, with whom visual association only is necessary, and that in general more interesting than disquieting. But, of course, the number of persons in any community whose breeding is suffi- ciently sound to give them a sense of se- curity in such matters is comparatively limited, and however philosophic they are in this instance, I fancy they will welcome the formal social re-establishment of the Beach, even at the expense of the social differentiation by which alone perhaps this may have to be accomplished. 5^ The Climate and the Landscape VI THE CLIMATE AND THE LANDSCAPE F^OR rheumatic and respiratory maladies ■'• there are no doubt better cHmates than that of Newport, and there are others whose tonic properties are greater. But the Newport cHmate is balm to those manifold temperaments that are consciously or un- consciously threatened with any manner of nervous valetudinarianism. It is a poultice to the nerves, an anodyne to irritability, a sedative to excitement, and an assuagement of exhaustion. It not only performs the important function of keeping the skin moist, but it is balm to the tired mind. Arriving from New York in the early summer morning, the sensation of relaxed tension, of being swathed in soft salt damp- ness, of breathing the primeur of iodize 1 air, is sybaritic. One proceeds to sleep like and long and often as a child. One 59 Neivport lyiay almost speak of quaffing deep draughts of dreamless repose. And in ensuing days the blessedness of having fatigue assail only the physique and spare the faculties is unspeakable ; one is tran- quilly instead of feverishly alert. There are "dog days," of course. From July 25th to September ist exertion is profitless and energy misplaced. The fog that drifts in from the southeast and strug- gles with the sun, vainly in the morning and victoriously in the late afternoon, com- plicates abnormally any unusually high temperature. It does not last long and oftenest is condensed by the wind's shift- ing to northeast into cooling downpours that one enjoys from piazzas, the dripping trees and damp fragrance of every thing hav- ing a distinctly tonic effect. And though it is in July and August that the lotos-eating, which the soft climate and insular atmos- phere make an almost universal habit in Newport, most prevails ; this is, as the French say, un petit malheur. The segre- toper esser felice is not really in " a smiling 60 Bass- fishing Stand mistress and a cup of Falernian " — it is, to t^' anyone who has ever eaten of this ambro- ^^TT •' ^ and the sia, in the lotos of Newport. More than Landscape anywhere else there are days here " always afternoon/' days on which one may even with a sense of elation that exceeds that of virtue forget what elsewhere is duty. The most prosaic submit to the spell of the place. Everyone is physically lazy with- out suffering mental stagnation. A larger proportion of Newport boys return to the place of their nativity, probably, than is true of any other even New England town — drawn back, after no doubt often futile vicissitudes in the exterior world, by the loadstone of its subtle attractiveness. No one once inoculated with its serene and searching charm ever thoroughly recovers his independence, I think. His energy may be sapped by it, but his spirit is soothed and for him the battle of life is won by avoiding profitless engagements and tempering one's ambitions. But more potent even than the caressing climate in its effect on a delicately organ- 63 Neivport ized sensorium is the Newport landscape —its aristocratic lines, its elegant expanse, its confident high-bred air as it lies stretched out in the sunlight or yields itself to the soft enfolding of sea mist. I remember a Newport lady writing from Athens itself to her little nephew at home, " Don't you think it is a piece of good fortune to live in the most beautiful place in the world ? '' and share her sentiment. Everything is pictorial ; every series of objects is an en- semble; the vista in any direction exceeds the interest of the purely picturesque— the picturesque with its crudity, its fortuitous- ness, its animated and uneasy helter-skelter. Nature here is conscious— by comparison with much of our American landscape, infinitely developed. She is elegant and reserved as well as suave, and smiles at one with patrician softness and delicate sympathy, as who should say, " To enjoy me depends a good deal on yourselt." ^ At the crest of a yellow-green elevation, variegated with browns and shaded with cool grasses, the granite elbows itself grace- 64 The Climate and the fully out of the earth and warms itself in the moisture-tempered sunshine. A white clouds rests affectionately on it as you Landscape look up from the hollow, truly Titian- esque in its depth of fulness. The sky at the horizon is a light blue, like a child's sash. Streaks of vapor are spun across the zenith, toward which the blue deepens into sapphire. The beach is white — white, however, over which every tint plays in opaline iridescence. Berkeley's rock stretches out purple, sage, and olive, to- ward the sea. The white sand dunes are crested with yellow sedge. Black rocks jut out on the sea horizon. The after- noon curtain of gray shadow gradually de- scends in front of the Purgatory ledge. Five or six dark dots of bathers (there is no " hour " for bathing at the Second Beach) move about in the ripple of the gently dissolving breakers. A wreath of children is running along the damp sand that fringes the ebb and flow, starting the sandpipers from tip-toeing into brief flight. Seaweed carts drawn by oxen and horses 65 Nenvport are hauling away their dripping loads at the other end of the two-mile crescent. The clouds are violet at the north hori- zon and white overhead, and long, grace- ful lines of shore frame the ever-changing blue-green of the ocean on two sides of the triangle of which the sky forms the third. Back from the beach is "Para- dise "—but indeed paradise is all around one. Or take a July morning down at Bail- ey's Beach, at the end of the Avenue and the beginning of the Ocean Drive. The sun illumines every cranny of the rocks. Above them are slopes covered with bright-green, shiny huckleberry bushes, and beyond a little grove of artistically placed pine saplings. Over the hill is an elaborately picturesque house. Seaward the sand glistens and sparkles, wet from the spray, the water folding itself over it in narrow hems. The rocks are seamed and spongified and accented with gold- brown seaweed, and their own local^ color runs the gamut from brown with pinkish 66 tints to cool gray, from fawn and mauve t^^^ to pearl. Above are the constant Titian- '^'^'f r ana the esque clouds, overflowing with opaline Landscape effulgence. A bloom of gray Timothy furze rests on the deeper green of the splotches of grass. The varied blue and green of the water whose wimples are winking in the sun ranges from cobalt to malachite. Spouting Rock is booming melodiously nearby. A couple of six- year-olds in fresh light blue cambric dresses are climbing an adjoining accliv- ity, showing in delicate contrast of values against the green and gray hillside. Around all and unifying everything the moist Newport air tones and centralizes into a true picture the various objects that it makes contribute to a harmonious color composition. What is especially characteristic of the Newport landscape is the co-operation it demands in the beholder's appreciation. It appeals to one's alertness, rather than to a lazy receptivity. You miss its qual- ity entirely if your own faculties are not 67 ^-f- in a state of real activity. This does not exclude composure or imply excitement. There Is nothing keyed up, nothing espe- cially exhilarating in the soft air and suave prospect stretching out In every direction wherever one may be. Only still less Is there any enervation, any relaxing som- nolency inviting to the far niente state of the mind. One's soul Is distinctly " In- vited," not soothed In any narcotic sense. The appeal of the place is to an intelligent rather than a purely sensuous apprecia- tion. You know why you like It, why it charms and wins you, why. Indeed, It takes a never-to-be-disengaged hold on the very fibre of your affections, why you remember and regret It on Lake Geneva, in Venice, In Sorrento, why and how, in a' word, it Is beautiful. 68 The Harbor VII THE HARBOR NEWPORT Harbor is one of the best roadsteads in the world, being land- locked, easy of access, and having no bar. But its utilitarian advantages are slight in comparison with its aesthetic attractiveness. It is not merely one of the most, but, I think, from what I have heard and seen, the most beautiful of the world's harbors. Of course, such an opinion is largely a matter of taste, and a lover of Newport, so far from dissembling his partiality, is inclined to profess it. There are doubtless en- chanting fjords in Norway, and reef-pro- tected stretches of lovely purple water in the tropics ; there are the Bay of Naples, whose beauties no amount of cockney admiration can render commonplace, and the blue reaches around the Piraeus and Phalerum and Salamis. There are Con- 69 Neivport stantinople and the Golden Horn, and so on. So far as my own experience goes, the water view from the Athenian Acro- poHs gives one the nearest approach to the sensation produced by Newport Har- bor. Arriving at the Piraeus from Naples, the Italian drop-curtain seems to have lifted and disclosed a scene of natural beauty, in whose presence one's memory of the Vesuvian Bay is that of an exotic and artificial aspect. When the sensitive traveller awakes after a night on the Sound boat, now moored to Long Wharf, and notes the gradual unfolding of the placid prospect before him, as the summer sun comes up over the gray roofs and green trees of the town, and reveals the beautiful Rhode Island Harbor and its refined land- scape environment, he feels, to be sure, that his eyes, which closed the night be- fore on the actual world, are opening on the delectable phenomena of fairyland it- self Yet, the sense of contrast once over- come, the impression of the sense is curiously like that of the Athenian Harbor. There is the same commingled softness and freshness, the same briUiancy com- bined with suavity of color, the same gray-green envelope thinly overlaying the same stony geologic structure, the same absence of tropicality on the one hand and presence of exquisiteness on the other. Newport Harbor, however, is too ac- tively characteristic for even the least fan- ciful comparisons. As day advances it becomes a busy as well as a beautiful scene. The wharves that jut out into it, covered with piles of lumber and (pi- quantly) heaps of junk, do not attest great commercial agitation. But the Con- anicut ferry-boat issues at regular intervals from her slip, the Fort Adams and Tor- pedo Station and Coaster's Harbor launches ply back and forth, the Wick- ford and Narragansett Pier boats, and an ever-increasing number of excursion steamers from Providence, Bristol, Fall River, Rocky Point and Block Island churn their way among the yachts and trading-schooners at anchor ; and the fleet 73 The Hark Newport of cat-boats glides breezily hither and thither in all directions, but plainly without specific destination and following courses laid by the fancy of absolute leisure. The sense of life and activity is omnipresent. The air is salt and full of savor. Lobster- pot buoys bump against a passing keel and bob in its wake. Fishermen with short briar pipes and sou'westers lean lazily against the tillers of their boats coming in from " outside " laden with the day's catch. " Naphtha boats " spin along with incredible speed, puffing stertorously. Beyond Goat Island lies one — or two or ^YQ — of the White Squadron, spick-span in the sunlight. Up at Coaster's Harbor the boys are drilling on the slope to the music of a brassy band heard faintly across the stretch of water. The " wash " of the Richmond flutters aloft. A crack cutter shoots by leaning over like a skater, and skimming the smooth water like a seagull. Sensations are of all kinds, and the connoisseur doubtless has his preferences. 74 Yachting For myself I know no sensuous beatitude The equal to that to be realized in the stern- sheets of a cat-boat in Newport Harbor of a bright August afternoon. It is so exquisitely poised between anodyne and excitant. You must know how to " sail a boat," and though no great seamanship is implied in the competent management of a cat-boat, in which it is said only a hibber or an expert navigator ever comes to grief, there is enough of the unexpected to be considered to demand constant attention. A reasonably spirited horse requires less of his rider, when you re- member the number of extraneities to be looked out for in a populous harbor, to say nothing of wind and weather eccen- tricities. You may have a party or not, but with your hand on the tiller, even in the serenest sailing it is the boat and the environment that furnish the acutest pleasure, to anyone of philosophic years at least. 77 Neivport VIII THE TOWN IN WINTER TN winter the town is still unique. The ■'■ wealth of leafage has disappeared and the multitude of trees is even more no- ticeable in its bareness than in its clothed estate. It counts less as a restful and mysterious mass and emphasizes itself by its starkness. Myriads of sere and gray branches glisten in the bright sunshine and cast a network of shadow over the sidewalks and houses. Dusky spaces and rich boscages have given place to the staccato tenuity of arboreal anatomy — sharp accents everywhere instead of the soft toning of the deep green summer luxuriance. The quaint houses look in consequence insubstantial, tiny and iso- lated ; the background in which they were set and into which they fitted so cosily is gone, and they stand out in somewhat In- 78 The Toivn significant silhouette. One divines, how- ever, the interior comfort of contented /„'^'^,„,,^ hibernation. Spring, summer, and " the season " are coming, and even in frame structures and in icy weather such a pros- pect is sufficiently sustaining. The ma- cadam is rigid and furrowed by the frost. An occasional stretch of brick pavement oozes trickling rills at noonday. The long plank walks, interspersed with ash and clinker substitutes at recurrent inter- vals, echo crisply to an incredible distance the tread of a brisk pedestrian of a Sun- day returning from church. The air is absolutely still. Sounds carry miracul- ously. One may hear a dog bark or a wagon rumble as if by telephone from a spot beyond identification. After Thanksgiving and toward Christ- mas a silver sheen succeeds the autumn bloom as this in its time had overlaid the summer warmth and soft suffusions of color. On a brisk December day, which begins with ringing clearness and crisp- ness, it takes the sun but an hour or 79 Newport two to bring everything into a harmony, whose keynote, higher than at any other season here, is yet of a mellower brilliance than elsewhere in America at this time a similar temperature suffers. The lotos- eating season is over, plainly, yet there is the same agreeable absence of demand on any specific energies as in summer. The envelope of color — that delightful garment that Newport never puts off — is as evi- dent to the senses as in mid-summer, though more silvery in quality, as I said. At noon there is positive warmth — a glow that one enjoys the more for feeling a little as if one had earned it, with other than the hot-house enervation born of whiffs of roses and orange trees and tempting one to forget the season instead of improve it that is characteristic of Can- nes and San Raphael. The water is blue, beautifully blue, but of a hue more marked by crispness than suavity and full of character. There are no breakers, as earlier in the season, or as in and after foul weather, but the ceaseless folding over 80 and self-hemming of the long, tranquil ^^^ waves in regular recurrence is eloquent .^^ ^^.^^^. to the eye, as their faint but voluminous sound is to the ear, of the steady pulsa- tions of the Atlantic, beside which the plashing ripple of the Mediterranean seems special and occasional. Over the eastern hill and out at Para- dise the turf is grown dry and brown with the frost, yet the sense perceives that Nature is only sleeping, and notes an absence of that mortuary aspect which she wears at this season in New England gen- erally. The summer delicacy of color has grown, in steady autumnal gradation, diaphanous to the verge of dreariness, but has stopped there without overstepping the line. The slopes and fields and stretching marshes are not grayed into desolation, but harbor here and there, in little dells and hollows, or even more minutely vinder the lee of hummocks and tufts of herbage, warm hues and hints of green, color evidences of life reminis- cent of summer luxuriance, and softening 8i Nttvport the austerity of the prospect with an undertone of deeper and richer hue. And in key with this background the wealth of Paradise cedars and junipers contribute their evergreen freshness and vitahty, and attest the vigor of the deep-lying sap of Newport earth, the consciousness of whose presence prevents one from -petting About the frozen time." The sky, which always unites every detail under it into a pictorial composition in Newport, counts in winter more than ever in the fading competition of elements terrestrial. It is cloudless and of a soft cobalt hue during the early part of the day, if the sun be shining and if the curtain of gray mist and cold colorlessness, which of course, drops in winter with more fre- quency and less charm than in the sum- mer season, be lifted. But noon once past, on these bright winter days, a soft glow- ing light creepingly suffuses the western sky, and is faintly reflected in the eastern firmament. The most delicate of yellow- 82 greens imaginable is quietly distributed as ^^^ background, upon which purple cirrhus ^^''^^^ clouds speedily spread themselves in long, feathery plumes. Then the zenith be- comes sapphire, flushed at the fringe with salmon and pink wreaths of vapor. Fila- ments of mauve stretch themselves in haphazard fret-work across the heavens. The eastern half of the vault takes on a pervasive rose-leaf tint of pink. Then, as the sun sinks and the temperature falls and twilight comes on, there is a sudden burst of deep-red, that fades out into infinitely long horizontal ribbons of orange; the zenith grows dull and declines in lead color ; when finally the sun dis- appears beneath the rolling stretches of Conanicut, the clouds become more and more diaphanous and fade away into ever- lasting ether, that now shows itself unfath- omable and austerely blue, with two or three stars just blinking themselves into the reach of human vision. Walk down quaint and quaintly-called " Wanton Avenue " — an alley bordered 83 Nt^port y^\x\Y picturesque and preposterous frame buildings, one inhabited by an old New- port " character ;" the next a storeroom ; the next a boat-house — and look out over the incomparable harbor at such an hour as this — the hour of a winter sunset with the shades of night drawing themselves slowly together over the lovely scene. The water is steel-blue — a hard and chil- ling light reflected from its fretful wavelets. White cat-boats and sloops anchored near by bob briskly with the desultory rise and fall of the breeze-roughened water. There are faint red lights struggling with the coming obscurity and the dying daylight on Goat Island. Fort Adams is a dark and not unromantic mass of sombre lateral extension. The cold has blended all col- ors into a harmony of frigid witchery. Familiar objects — the City Wharf, with an unloading coal-schooner alongside ; Al- ger's and Groff's rickety piers ; the vast white mass of an Old Colony steamboat lying next the end of Long Wharf; the chimney of the torpedo station on Goat 84 Island — take on a romantic aspect as the '^'"^ accidents of a purely artistic and imma- ."^"3 terial ensemble. An hour or two later the boat leaves for New York. It is as hard to take it and leave this permanently enchanted spot, as if the season were midsummer. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ,'^.-^yi^ 014 075 712 3 L*.