ulting the wife of minister and doctor, even if
holes are afterward picked in the result, and in this case a daughter
stands in the wife's place.

The beginning was two years back, when the Bluff colony began to be an,
object of speculation, followed in turn by censure, envy, and finally
aspiration that has developed this spring into an outbreak of emulation.

Ever since I can remember, social life has moved along quite smoothly
hereabout, the doings being regulated by the age and purses of the
participants. The householders who went to the city for a few winter
months were a little more precise in their entertaining than the born and
bred country folk. As they commonly dined at night, they asked people to
dinner rather than to supper, which is the country meal of state. But
lawn parties, picnics, and clambakes at the shore were pretty much on the
same scale, those who could afford it having music and employing a
caterer, while those who could not made no secret of the cause, and felt
neither jealous nor humiliated. A wagon load of neighbourly young people
might go on a day's excursion uncriticised, without thought of dragging a
mother or aunt in their wake as chaperon. In fact, though no one is more
particular than father in matters of real propriety, I cannot remember
being formally chaperoned in my life or of suffering a shadow of
annoyance for the lack.

Weddings were always home affairs among the strictly country folk, by
common consent and custom, no matter to what denomination the people
belonged. Those with contracted houses went quietly to parsonage or
rectory with a few near friends; others were married at the bride's home,
the ceremony followed by more or less merrymaking. A church wedding was
regarded as so great a strain upon the families that the young people had
no right to ask it, even if they so desired.

That has passed, at least for the time being, and all eyes are fixed upon
the movements of the Bluff people, and many feet are stumbling along in
their supposed footsteps. It would be really funny if it were not half
pitiful. The dear simple folk are so terribly in earnest that they do not
see that they are losing their own individuality and gaining nothing to
replace it.

The Whirlpoolers, though only here for the between seasons, are
constantly entertaining among themselves, and hardly a day passes but a
coaching party drives up from town with week-end golfers for whom a dance
is given, or stops