Reflections and Comments 1865-1895Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
General
Reflections and Comments 1865-1895
Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
Essays
To these men, a Summer School of philosophy or theology, or anything
else, must be repose of the best sort. It gives light work of the
kind they love, free from all nagging, and in good air and fine
scenery. At such schools, too, one finds uses for "papers" that no
periodical will print, and which no audience would assemble to
listen to in a city in the busy part of the year, and to many men an
audience of any sort, interested or uninterested, is a great luxury.
The persons who perhaps find it hardest to get rest in summer are
brokers. Their activity in their business and the excitement
attending it are so great, that quiet to them, more than to most
other men, is a hell; so that their vacation is a problem not easy
of solution, except to the rich ones, who have yachts and horses
without limit. Even to those, every day of a vacation has to be full
of movement and change. An hour not filled by some sort of activity,
spent on a piazza or under a tree, is to them an hour wasted. A land
where it was always afternoon would be to them the most "odious
section of country" on earth. The story of one of them, who in Rome
lost flesh through pining for "the corner of Wall and William," is
well known. Such a man finds nearly all summer resorts vanity and
vexation of spirit, because none of them provides excitement. The
class known as financiers, such as presidents of banks and insurance
companies, is much better off, because it has Saratoga. Its members
have generally reached the time of life when men love to sit still,
and when the liver is torpid, and they are generally men of means,
and wear black broadcloth at all seasons, as being what they have
from their youth considered outward and visible signs of
"respectability" in the financial sense. What they need is a place
where they can have their livers roused without exercise, and this
the mineral water does for them; where they can see a good deal
going on and many evidences of wealth, without moving from their
chairs; and where their financial standing will follow them; and for
this there is perhaps no place in the country like Saratoga. Newport
has not nearly as much solidity. It is brighter and gayer and more
select, but though it contains enormous fortunes, a great fortune
does not here do so much for a man. It has to bear the competition
of youth and beauty and polo and lawn-tennis. The young man with
little besides a polo pony, an imported racquet, and good looks
counts for a good deal at Newport; at Saratoga he would be nobody.
THE SURVIVAL OF TYPES
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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