Atlantic Coast (U.S.) -- Description and travel -- Fiction
But there are resorts suited to all tastes, and to the economical as
well as to the extravagant. Perhaps the strongest impression one has
in visiting the various watering-places in the summer-time, is that the
multitudes of every-day folk are abroad in search of enjoyment. On the
New Bedford boat for Martha's Vineyard our little party of tourists
sailed quite away from Newport life--Stanhope with mingled depression
and relief, the artist with some shrinking from contact with anything
common, while Marion stood upon the bow beside her uncle, inhaling the
salt breeze, regarding the lovely fleeting shores, her cheeks glowing
and her eyes sparkling with enjoyment. The passengers and scene,
Stanhope was thinking, were typically New England, until the boat made a
landing at Naushon Island, when he was reminded somehow of Scotland,
as much perhaps by the wild furzy appearance of the island as by the
“gentle-folks” who went ashore.
The boat lingered for the further disembarkation of a number of horses
and carriages, with a piano and a cow. There was a farmer's lodge at the
landing, and over the rocks and amid the trees the picturesque roof
of the villa of the sole proprietor of the island appeared, and gave a
feudal aspect to the domain. The sweet grass affords good picking for
sheep, and besides the sheep the owner raises deer, which are destined
to be chased and shot in the autumn.
The artist noted that there were several distinct types of women on
board, besides the common, straight-waisted, flat-chested variety. One
girl who was alone, with a city air, a neat, firm figure, in a traveling
suit of elegant simplicity, was fond of taking attitudes about the
rails, and watching the effect produced on the spectators. There was
a blue-eyed, sharp-faced, rather loose-jointed young girl, who had the
manner of being familiar with the boat, and talked readily and freely
with anybody, keeping an eye occasionally on her sister of eight years,
a child with a serious little face in a poke-bonnet, who used the
language of a young lady of sixteen, and seemed also abundantly able to
take care of herself. What this mite of a child wants of all things, she
confesses, is a pug-faced dog. Presently she sees one come on board in
the arms of a young lady at Wood's Holl. “No,” she says, “I won't ask
her for it; the lady wouldn't give it to me, and I wouldn't waste
my breath;” but she draws near to the dog, and regards it with rapt
attention. The owner of the dog is a very pretty black-eyed girl
with banged hair, who prattles about herself and her dog with perfect
freedom. She is staying at Cottage City, lives at Worcester, has been
up to Boston to meet and bring down her dog, without which she couldn't
live another minute. “Perhaps,” she says, “you know Dr. Ridgerton, in
Worcester; he's my brother. Don't you know him? He's a chiropodist.”
These girls are all types of the skating-rink--an institution which is
beginning to express itself in American manners.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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