United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Villages -- Fiction
Socially as well, the town had changed. Not only is the native stock
more travelled, speaking--entirely without an air--of trips to the
Yellowstone, to Europe, Chicago, or Santa Barbara, but a new element has
invaded the little country. It goes in the fall, but it comes again each
summer, drawn by the green beauty of the spot, and it has left its
impress.
The revisiting wanderer observed, as in a dream, an immaculate coupé
with a couple of men on the box who behaved quite as if they were about
to enter the park in the full glare of Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth
Avenue, though they were but on a street of the little country among
farm wagons. The outfit was ascertained to belong to a summer resident
who was said, by common report, to "have wine right on the table at
every meal." No one born out of Little Arcady can appraise the
revolutionary character of this circumstance at anything like its true
value.
Further, in the line of vehicular sensationalism, a modish wicker-bodied
phaeton and a minute pony-cart were seen on a pleasant afternoon to
issue from a driveway far up a street that now has a name, but which
used to be adequately identified by saying "up toward the Fair Grounds."
The phaeton was occupied by two ladies, one rather old, to whom a couple
of half-grown children in the pony-cart kissed their hands and shouted.
They were not permitted to follow the phaeton, however, as they seemed
to have wished. Its shock-headed pony, driven by an aged negro who
scolded both children with a worn and practised garrulity, was turned in
another direction. One of the children, a little dark-faced girl of
eight or nine, called "Little Miss" by the driver, was repeatedly
threatened in the fiercest tone by him because of her perilous twistings
to look back at the phaeton. The cart was followed by a liver-and-white
setter; a young dog, it seemed, from his frenzied caperings and his
manner of appearing to think of something else in the midst of every
important moment.
There proved to be two papers in the town, as of old, but the _Argus_
was now published twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. The wanderer
eagerly scanned its columns for familiar names and for something of the
town's old tone; but with little success.
Said one item, "A string of electric lights, on a street leading up one
of our hills, looks like a necklace of brilliants on the bosom of the
night." Old Little Arcady had not electric lights; nor the _Argus_ this
exuberance of simile.
Again: "This new game of golf that the summer folks play seems to have
too much walking for a good game and just enough game to spoil a good
walk." Golf in the Little Country!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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