the other by reason of the revengeful state of his mind?  He went on to
argue that the owner of a splendid villa might have, for reasons he gave,
less content in it than another person in a tiny cottage so small that it
had no spare room for his mother-in-law even, and that in fact his
satisfaction in his own place might be spoiled by the more showy place of
his neighbor.  Mr. Snodgrass attempts in his book a philosophical
explanation of this.  He says that if every man designed his own cottage,
or had it designed as an expression of his own ideas, and developed his
grounds and landscape according to his own tastes, working it out
himself, with the help of specialists, he would be satisfied.  But when
owners have no ideas about architecture or about gardening, and their
places are the creation of some experimenting architect and a foreign
gardener, and the whole effort is not to express a person's individual
taste and character, but to make a show, then discontent as to his own
will arise whenever some new and more showy villa is built.  Mr. Benson,
who was poking about a good deal, strolling along the lanes and getting
into the rears of the houses, said, when this book was discussed, that
his impression was that the real object of these fine places was to
support a lot of English gardeners, grooms, and stable-boys.  They are a
kind of aristocracy.  They have really made Newport (that is the summer,
transient Newport, for it is largely a transient Newport).  "I've been
inquiring," continued Mr. Benson, "and you'd be surprised to know the
number of people who come here, buy or build expensive villas, splurge
out for a year or two, then fail or get tired of it, and disappear."

Mr. Snodgrass devotes a chapter to the parvenues at Newport.  By the
parvenu--his definition may not be scientific--he seems to mean a person
who is vulgar, but has money, and tries to get into society on the
strength of his money alone.  He is more to be pitied than any other sort
of rich man.  For he not only works hard and suffers humiliation in
getting his place in society, but after he is in he works just as hard,
and with bitterness in his heart, to keep out other parvenues like
himself.  And this is misery.

But our visitors did not care for the philosophizing of Mr. Snodgrass--
you can spoil almost anything by turning it wrong side out.  They thought
Newport the most beautiful and finished watering-place in America.
Nature was in the loveliest mood when it was created, and art has
generally followed her suggestions of beauty and refinement.  They did
not agree with the cynic who said that Newport ought to be walled in,
and have a gate with an inscription, "None but Millionaires allowed
here."  It is very easy to get out of the artificial Newport and to come
into scenery that Nature has made after artistic designs which artists
are satisfied with.  A favorite drive of our friends was to the Second
Beach and the Purgatory Rocks overlooking it.  The photographers and the
water-color artists have exaggerated the Purgatory chasm into a Colorado
canon, but anybody can find it by help of a guide.  The rock of this
locality is a curious study.  It is an agglomerate made of pebbles and
cement, the pebbles being elongated as if by pressure.  The rock is
sometimes found in detached fragments having the form of tree trunks.
Whenever it is fractured, the fracture is a clean cut, as if made by a
saw, and through both pebbles and cement, and the ends present the
appearance of a composite cake filled with almonds and cut with a knife.
The landscape is beautiful.

"All the lines are so simple," the artist explained.  "The shore, the
sea, the gray rocks, with here and there the roof of a quaint cottage to
enliven the effect, and few trees, only just enough for contrast with the
long, sweeping lines."

"You don't like trees?" asked Miss Lamont.

"Yes, in themselves.  But trees are apt to be in the way.  There are too
many trees in America.  It is not often you can get a broad, simple
effect like this."

It happened to be a day when the blue of the sea was that of the
Mediterranean, and the sky and sea melted into each other, so that a
distant sail-boat seemed to be climbing into the heavens.  The waves
rolled in blue on the white sand beach, and broke in silver.  Three young
girls on horseback galloping in a race along the hard beach at the moment
gave the needed animation to a very pretty picture.

North of this the land comes down to the sea in knolls of rock breaking
off suddenly-rocks gray with lichen, and shaded with a touch of other
vegetation.  Between these knifeback ledges are plots of sea-green grass
and sedge, with little ponds, black, and mirroring the sky.  Leaving this
wild bit of nature, which has got the name of Paradise (perhaps because
few people go there), the road back to town sweeps through sweet farm
land; the smell of hay is in the air, loads of hay encumber the roads,
flowers in profusion half smother the farm cottages, and the trees of the
apple-orchards are gnarled and picturesque as olives.

The younger members of the party climbed up into this paradise one day,
leaving the elders in their carriages.  They came into a new world,
as unlike Newport as if they had been a thousand miles away.  The spot
was wilder than it looked from a distance.  The high ridges of rock lay
parallel, with bosky valleys and ponds between, and the sea shining in
the south -all in miniature.  On the way to the ridges they passed clean
pasture fields, bowlders, gray rocks, aged cedars with flat tops like the
stone-pines of Italy.  It was all wild but exquisite, a refined wildness
recalling the pictures of Rousseau.

Irene and Mr. King strolled along one of the ridges, and sat down on a
rock looking off upon the peaceful expanse, the silver lines of the
curving shores, and the blue sea dotted with white sails.

"Ah," said the girl, with an inspiration, "this is the sort of five-
o'clock I like."

"And I'm sure I'd rather be here with you than at the Blims' reception,
from which we ran away."

"I thought," said Irene, not looking at him, and jabbing the point of her
parasol into the ground, "I thought you liked Newport."

"So I do, or did.  I thought you would like it.  But, pardon me, you seem
somehow different from what you were at Fortress Monroe, or even at
lovely Atlantic City," this with a rather forced laugh.

"Do I?  Well, I suppose I am; that is, different from what you thought
me.  I should hate this place in a week more, beautiful as it is."

"Your mother is pleased here?"

The girl looked up quickly.  "I forgot to tell you how much she thanked
you for the invitation to your cousin's.  She was delighted there."

"And you were not?"

"I didn't say so; you were very kind."

"Oh, kind; I didn't mean to be kind.  I was purely selfish in wanting you
to go.  Cannot you believe, Miss Benson, that I had some pride in having
my friends see you and know you?"

"Well, I will be as frank as you are, Mr. King.  I don't like being shown
off.  There, don't look displeased.  I didn't mean anything
disagreeable."

"But I hoped you understood my motives better by this time."

"I did not think about motives, but the fact is" (another jab of the
parasol), "I was made desperately uncomfortable, and always shall be
under such circumstances, and, my friend--I should like to believe you
are my friend--you may as well expect I always will be."

"I cannot do that.  You under--"

"I just see things as they are," Irene went on, hastily.  "You think I am
different here.  Well, I don't mind saying that when I made your
acquaintance I thought you different from any man I had met."  But now it
was out, she did mind saying it; and stopped, confused, as if she had
confessed something.  But she continued, almost immediately: "I mean I
liked your manner to women; you didn't appear to flatter, and you didn't
talk complimentary nonsense."

"And now I do?"

"No.  Not that.  But everything is somehow changed here.  Don't let's
talk of it.  There's the carriage."

Irene arose, a little flushed, and walked towards the point.  Mr. King,
picking his way along behind her over the rocks, said, with an attempt at
lightening the situation, " Well, Miss Benson, I'm going to be just as
different as ever a man was."




V

NARRAGANSETT PIER AND NEWPORT AGAIN; MARTHA'S VINEYARD AND PLYMOUTH

We have heard it said that one of the charms, of Narragansett Pier is
that you can see Newport from it.  The summer dwellers at the Pier talk a
good deal about liking it better than Newport; it is less artificial and
more restful.  The Newporters never say anything about the Pier.  The
Pier people say that it is not fair to judge it when you come direct from
Newport, but the longer you stay there the better you like it; and if any
too frank person admits that he would not stay in Narragansett a day if
he could afford to live in Newport, he is suspected of aristocratic
proclivities.

In a calm summer morning, such as our party of pilgrims chose for an
excursion to the Pier, there is no prettier sail in the world than that
out of the harbor, by Conanicut Island and Beaver-tail Light.  It is a
holiday harbor, all these seas are holiday seas--the yachts, the sail
vessels, the puffing steamers, moving swiftly from one headland to
another, or loafing about the blue, smiling sea, are all on pleasure
bent.  The vagrant vessels that are idly watched from the rocks at the
Pier may be coasters and freight schooners engaged seriously in trade,
but they do not seem so.  They are a part of the picture, always to be
seen slowly dipping along in the horizon, and the impression is that they
are manoeuvred for show, arranged for picturesque effect, and that they
are all taken in at night.

The visitors confessed when they landed that the Pier was a contrast to
Newport.  The shore below the landing is a line of broken, ragged, slimy
rocks, as if they had been dumped there for a riprap wall.  Fronting this
unkempt shore is a line of barrack-like hotels, with a few cottages of

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