eeping a private hotel in their cottages for a series of
summers, to shut them or let them, and go abroad for a much-needed rest,
leaving their Florindos to their clubs as in the days of their youth, or
even allowing them to live in their own houses with their cooks.

Nothing in this world, it seems, is quite what we want it to be; we
ourselves are not all that we could wish; and, whatever shape our
summering takes, the crumpled rose-leaf is there to disturb our repose.
The only people who have no crumpled rose-leaves under them are those
who have no repose, but stay striving on amid the heat of the city while
the prey of the crumpled rose-leaf is suffering among the hills or by
the sea. Those home-keeping Sybarites, composing seven-eighths of our
urban populations, immune from the anguish of the rose-leaf, form
themselves the pang of its victims in certain extreme cases; the thought
of them poisons the pure air, and hums about the sleepless rest-seeker
in the resorts where there are no mosquitoes. There are Florindos, there
are Lindoras, so sensitively conscienced that, in the most picturesque,
the most prettily appointed and thoroughly convenienced cottages, they
cannot forget their fellow-mortals in the summer hotels, in the
boarding-houses by sea or shore, in the farms where they have small
fruits, fresh vegetables, and abundance of milk and eggs; yes, they even
remember those distant relations who toil and swelter in the offices,
the shops, the streets, the sewers; and they are not without an
unavailing shame for their own good-fortune.

But is it really their good-fortune? They would not exchange it for the
better fortune of the home-keepers, and yet it seems worse than that of
people less voluntarily circumstanced. There is nothing left for
Florindo and Lindora to try, except spending the summer on a yacht,
which they see many other Florindos and Lindoras doing. Even these gay
voyagers, or gay anchorers (for they seem most of the time to be moored
in safe harbors), do not appear altogether to like their lot, or to be
so constantly contented with it but that they are always coming off in
boats to dine at the neighboring hotels. Doubtless a yacht has a
crumpled rose-leaf under it, and possibly the keelless hull of the
houseboat feels the irk of a folded petal somewhere.

Florindo and Lindora are not spoiled, she is sure of that in her own
case, for she has never been unreasonably exacting of circumstance. She
has