“My dear Mr. King,—­No explanation whatever was needed.  We never
shall forget your kindness.  Good-by. 
Irene Benson”

He folded the note carefully and put it in his breast pocket, took it out and reread it, lingering over the fine and dainty signature, put it back again, and walked out upon the piazza.  It was a divine night, soft and sweet-scented, 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 and relief, the artist with some shrinking from contact with anything common, while Marion stood upon the bow beside her uncle, inhaling the salt breeze, regarding the lovely fleeting shores, her cheeks glowing and her eyes sparkling with enjoyment.  The passengers and scene, Stanhope was thinking, were typically New England, until the boat made a landing at Naushon Island, when he was reminded somehow of Scotland, as much perhaps by the wild furzy appearance of the island as by the “gentle-folks” who went ashore.