ragansett is essentially other than the
crowd at Newport--the two do not mix; but the difference is one of
degree rather than kind. The crowd at Newport is architecturally
perfect, while the crowd at Narragansett is in the adobe stage,--
that is the conspicuous difference; the one is pretentious and
lives in structures more or less permanent; the other lives in
trunks, and is even more pretentious. Neither, as a crowd, has
more than a superficial regard for the natural charms of its
surroundings. The people at both places are entirely preoccupied
with themselves--and their neighbors. At Newport a reputation is
like an umbrella--lost, borrowed, lent, stolen, but never
returned. Some one has cleverly said that the American girl,
unlike girls of European extraction, if she loses her reputation,
promptly goes and gets another,--to be strictly accurate, she
promptly goes and gets another's. What a world of bother could be
saved if a woman could check her reputation with her wraps on
entering the Casino; for, no matter how small the reputation, it
is so annoying to have the care of it during social festivities
where it is not wanted, or where, like dogs, it is forbidden the
premises. Then, too, if the reputation happens to be somewhat
soiled, stained, or tattered,--like an old opera cloak,--what
woman wants it about. It is difficult to sit on it, as on a wrap
in a theatre; it is conspicuous to hold in the lap where every one
may see its imperfections; perhaps the safest thing is to do as
many a woman does, ask her escort to look out for it, thereby
shifting the responsibility to him. It may pass through strange
vicissitudes in his careless hands,--he may drop it, damage it,
lose it, even destroy it, but she is reasonably sure that when the
time comes he will return her either the old in a tolerable state
of preservation, or a new one of some kind in its place.

Narragansett possesses this decided advantage over Newport, the
people do not know each other until it is too late. For six weeks
the gay little world moves on in blissful ignorance of antecedents
and reputations; no questions are asked, no information
volunteered save that disclosed by the hotel register,--
information frequently of apocryphal value. The gay beau of the
night may be the industrious clerk of the morrow; the baron of the
summer may be the barber of the winter; but what difference does
it make? If the beau beaus and the baron barons, is not the
femini