n literature, art, music--to live, in short, rather more
for one's self than for society--seems the increasing tendency of the
men of fortune who can afford to pay as much for an acre of rock and
sand at Manchester as would build a decent house elsewhere. The tourist
does not complain of this, and is grateful that individuality has
expressed itself in the great variety of lovely homes, in cottages very
different from those on the Jersey coast, showing more invention, and
good in form and color.

There are New-Yorkers at Manchester, and Bostonians at Newport; but who
was it that said New York expresses itself at Newport, and Boston at
Manchester and kindred coast settlements? This may be only fancy. Where
intellectual life keeps pace with the accumulation of wealth, society is
likely to be more natural, simpler, less tied to artificial rules,
than where wealth runs ahead. It happens that the quiet social life of
Beverly, Manchester, and that region is delightful, although it is a
home rather than a public life. Nowhere else at dinner and at the chance
evening musicale is the foreigner more likely to meet sensible men who
are good talkers, brilliant and witty women who have the gift of being
entertaining, and to have the events of the day and the social and
political problems more cleverly discussed. What is the good of wealth
if it does not bring one back to freedom, and the ability to live
naturally and to indulge the finer tastes in vacation-time?

After all, King reflected, as the party were on their way to the Isles
of Shoals, what was it that had most impressed him at Manchester? Was it
not an evening spent in a cottage amid the rocks, close by the water,
in the company of charming people? To be sure, there were the magical
reflection of the moonlight and the bay, the points of light from the
cottages on the rocky shore, the hum and swell of the sea, and all the
mystery of the shadowy headlands; but this was only a congenial setting
for the music, the witty talk, the free play of intellectual badinage,
and seriousness, and the simple human cordiality that were worth all the
rest.

What a kaleidoscope it is, this summer travel, and what an
entertainment, if the tourist can only keep his "impression plates"
fresh to take the new scenes, and not sink into the state of
chronic grumbling at hotels and minor discomforts! An interview at
a ticket-office, a whirl of an hour on the rails, and to Portsmouth,
anchored yet t