with a little more accessibility. As the reader doubtless knows, the
great mass of Boston society, thoughtful of its own weight and bulk,
transports itself down the North Shore scarcely further than Manchester
at the furthest; but there are more courageous or more detachable
spirits who venture into more distant regions. These contribute
somewhat toward peopling Bar Harbour in the summer, but they scarcely
characterise it in any degree; while at Campobello they settle in little
daring colonies, whose self-reliance will enlist the admiration of the
sympathetic observer. They do not refuse the knowledge of other colonies
of other stirps and origins, and they even combine in temporary alliance
with them. But, after all, Boston speaks one language, and New York
another, and Washington a third, and though the several dialects have
only slight differences of inflection, their moral accents render each
a little difficult for the others. In fact every society is repellant
of strangers in the degree that it is sufficient to itself, and is
incurious concerning the rest of the world. If it has not the elements
of self-satisfaction in it, if it is uninformed and new and restless,
it is more hospitable than an older society which has a sense of merit
founded upon historical documents, and need no longer go out of itself
for comparisons of any sort, knowing that if it seeks anything better
it will probably be disappointed. The natural man, the savage, is
as indifferent to others as the exclusive, and those who accuse the
coldness of the Bostonians, and their reluctant or repellant behaviour
toward unknown people, accuse not only civilisation, but nature itself.

That love of independence which is notable in us even in our most
acquiescent phases at home is perhaps what brings these cultivated and
agreeable people so far away, where they can achieve a sort of sylvan
urbanity without responsibility, and without that measuring of purses
which attends the summer display elsewhere. At Campobello one might be
poor with almost as little shame as in Cambridge if one were cultivated.
Mrs. Pasmer, who seldom failed of doing just the right thing for
herself, had promptly divined the advantages of Campobello for her
family. She knew, by dint of a little inquiry, and from the volunteer
information of enthusiasts who had been there the summer before, just
who was likely to be there during the summer with which she now found
herself confronted. Camp