of a wharf and watch them. I wanted to beat about the
harbor in a catboat, and feel the tug and pull of the tiller. Kinney
protested that that was no way to spend a vacation or to invite
adventure. His face was set against Fairport. The conversation of
clam-diggers, he said, did not appeal to him; and he complained that at
Fairport our only chance of adventure would be my capsizing the catboat
or robbing a lobster-pot. He insisted we should go to the mountains,
where we would meet what he always calls "our best people." In
September, he explained, everybody goes to the mountains to recuperate
after the enervating atmosphere of the sea-shore. To this I objected
that the little sea air we had inhaled at Mrs. Shaw's basement
dining-room and in the subway need cause us no anxiety. And so, along
these lines, throughout the sleepless, sultry nights of June, July, and
August, we fought it out. There was not a summer resort within five
hundred miles of New York City we did not consider. From the information
bureaus and passenger agents of every railroad leaving New York, Kinney
procured a library of timetables, maps, folders, and pamphlets,
illustrated with the most attractive pictures of summer hotels, golf
links, tennis courts, and boat-houses. For two months he carried on a
correspondence with the proprietors of these hotels; and in comparing
the different prices they asked him for suites of rooms and sun parlors
derived constant satisfaction.

"The Outlook House," he would announce, "wants twenty-four dollars a day
for bedroom, parlor, and private bath. While for the same accommodations
the Carteret Arms asks only twenty. But the Carteret has no tennis
court; and then again, the Outlook has no garage, nor are dogs allowed
in the bedrooms."

As Kinney could not play lawn tennis, and as neither of us owned an
automobile or a dog, or twenty-four dollars, these details to me seemed
superfluous, but there was no health in pointing that out to Kinney.
Because, as he himself says, he has so vivid an imagination that what he
lacks he can "make believe" he has, and the pleasure of possession is
his.

Kinney gives a great deal of thought to his clothes, and the question of
what he should wear on his vacation was upon his mind. When I said I
thought it was nothing to worry about, he snorted indignantly. "_You_
wouldn't!" he said. "If _I'd_ been brought up in a catboat, and had a
tan like a red Indian, and hair like a Broadway blon