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 entertaining travel, books of congenial history, books of pure fun, books of poetry ringing with merry canto, books of fine engravings, books that will rest the mind as well as purify the heart and elevate the whole life?  My hearers, there will not be an hour between this and the day of your death when you can afford to read a book lacking in moral principle.

VI.  Another temptation hovering all around our watering-places is the intoxicating beverage.  I am told that it is becoming more and more fashionable for woman to drink.  I care not how well a woman may dress, if she has taken enough of wine to flush her cheek and put glassiness on her eyes, she is intoxicated.  She may be handed into a $2500 carriage, and have diamonds enough to confound the Tiffanys—­she is intoxicated.  She may be a graduate of Packer Institute, and the daughter of some man in danger of being nominated for the Presidency—­she is drunk.  You may have a larger vocabulary than I have, and you may say in regard to her that she is “convivial,” or she is “merry,” or she is “festive,” or she is “exhilarated,” but you can not with all your garlands of verbiage cover up the plain fact that it is an old-fashioned case of drunk.