New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1878-08-22
coon SOCIETY.

One good effect of the fashion in late years
of Summer migration from town to country
is, that those who go have an opportunity OF
making their way into better society than any
they have known. Many fat, pushing little
matron, no doubt, will shake her head in
credulously over this assertion. Has she not
dragged her husband, season after season, TO
Newport the Branch, the Springs, dressing,
Sinking, maneuvrng, all TO make her way
into certain set, and what has it profited
herl They snubbed her abroad, and always
cut her dead if they met her afterward at
home. "No, no." she declares, Summer
holidays are no time 10 get into good So
"cietyD She and her pretty, tawdry, yapid
girls sit miserable and enyious on the hotel
porch or in the ballroom watching the gay,
indifferent crowds go by, not knowing that all
the men and women have their eye fixed
upon some circle" little higher than their
own, which they would like to enter.
Meanwhile, Tad, her boy, down spearing for
cells with the fishermen or ont in the bayfield,,
dirty, freckled disi equitable, has made his way
into better company than You shall find III any
court in Europe. He has no notion of any such
thing; talk to him of nature, its meaning, and
cells he is after or partrldges f; he skins, shoots
and munches them afterward; what is the
eternal cry Of the sea to him, or the tender
splendors of the dawn7 Yet no matter how
coarse or practical he is, no has uncon-
sciously learned the wholesome lesson taught
by good companions. He has gone outside
of the town and town thoughts, and found out
there is big world lying beyond, world of
growth, of slow, gentle, mighty changes, with
which money has nothing to do. Not that the
town culture is bad for the boy; if he can
have but one kind of education, let him have
that at its best. Our teachers are but just now
beginning to see the necessity of giving him
both kinds. In Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania
outdoor schools are formed. in which the boys
are taken out to live with Nature, with teach
ers beside them to interpret her meanings.
The success of the schools, of course, will de-
pend on what sort of interpreters these are.
But even poor Tad, who is voted a bore by
his mother and nuisance by the farmer,
grows more simple and genuine in living thus
face to face with the beginning of things. A
weeks camping out will shatter his self-con-
ceit and throw him back on his own resources
more than reading all the wisdom of Epicte-
tus or the high thinking of Plato. 1t is some
thing for him even to see that potato can
sprout and grow with no sharp dealing or ref
crence to the money market. He does not
know that he is learning lesson, but he
learns it all the same. A Summer spent in
the mountains or at the shore (not in the ho-
tel, mind you) will fill his memory with rare,
fine pictures which will last until his old age,
and bring Nature closer to him than years of
porting over VirgiIs Eelogues.
Tad finds his way into this best of all good
company for the same reason that he finds
his way into bad--he is q born explorer, be-
ing a boy. But his mother and sisters sit in
doors and stare at the german aud Worth
dresses and his father spares time 10 rush
down from the Office on Sunday, and brings
the papers and the priee-current with him,
aud the rest of us go TO the country for the
fresh air or the fishing, or perhaps the snipe,
and chatter necessarily about Communism, OF
BeaconsGeld and his Indian Empress, or Edi-
son, or complain that we fluid SO few eompan-