Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1888-10-02
'SCoNSET BY THE SEA.
PRENTICE MILFORD ON A PHASE OF
WATERING PLACE LIFE.
Summer Camps Along the Atlantic Sea-
shore-Quiet Charm of Nantucket-Life
in the Cottase-Quiet and Unpreten-
tious Enioyment-HOte1 Life.

l
There is a great change going on as re-
| CARDS the manner of life at the watering
| places on the Atlantic seaboard. 1t COM
| menced some fifteen or twenty years ago,
| when the seaside camp meeting system
begun and the Methodists and Baptists
| first caught the idea that they could COM
| bine religion, health, a wreStle with the
| ocean and protracted meeting at one and
| the same time. That led to the estab-
| lishment of the great UNCONVENTIONAL and
| religious summer camps at Ocean Grove
| and Asbury Park, just below Long
| Branch on the Jersey coast, Cottage City
| on Martha's Vineyard, where one-thi1d Of
| the Rev. De Witt Talmages congregation
| have recently been rusticating and SWIM
| ming, and several other smaller camps.
| The Spiritualists also tumbled to this
| fact, and are now every summer located
| thousands strong at Onset bay on the
Massachusetts, coast and Lake Pleasant in
the interior of that state, where they live
| liz tents or cheap cottages and receive
communications of all sorts through their
mediums from the higher and lower
| heavens. In fact. this summer seaside
camping is extending and gradually fill
| ing up every convenient point on the At
lantic coast from Maine to Maryland.
ALONG THE SHORE.
twenty-five years ago the south shore
| of Long Island was little occupied in this
way. Today there Is almost a continuous
string of summer cottages, hotels and
club houses from Brooklyn to the COM
mencement of the peninsula of Montauk.
The sporting clubs especially are apt to
take large slices of land, and as in cases
they have bought it cheap, theirs is likely
to prove a good investment. Besides, it
is becoming more and more "the thing"
for every city man who makes any pre-.
tension to style to have his summer cot9
tage somewhere, though it be no more
than tent with board floor or house
wooden as to frame and covered with cot
ton drilling, like those we used to run up
in the mines, and in which we added to
the commercial prosperity of the state Of
California by drinking corn whisky and
piling the empty bottles in cords without
the door.
A yearly increasing number of people
who visit the seaside during the summer
have come to discard the hotel and take
TO the cheaper and more informal cottage.
They hire them for the season, furnished.
The business of building and letting fur.
nished seaside cottages is increasing. The
system is also supersedins the summer
hotel. People live far cheaper and, for
that matter, far more informally and
consequently easier at their cottages than
at the hotels. They do not need to dress
for dinner or other occasions two or three
times day. They bring with them their
own help, buy their own provisions cook
their own meals, invite what friends they
may without much additional expense,
disrobe for their ocean baths at their
homes, walk down to the beach in their
bathing suits and walk back again drip
ping wet. This kind Of life brings people
nearer together and rubs off a good deal
of unnecessary stiffness The people who
so live are by no means always those Of
limited means. In Underhill's system Of
relatively cheap furnished cottages here
ut Siasconset, he has among his tenants
even New York millionaires, who take re-
spectively for the summer little one
stored, many chambered houses, which
cost him, furnished, from $500 to 81 200
apiece. They are neatly and tastefully
supplied with beds, all necessary table and
cooking furniture, conveniences for wash
ing, in fact, with everything needed for a
housekeeping family to pepper box, and
rent from 500 to $500 for the season.
THE COTTAGE SYSTEM.
This cottage system is quiet and unpre-
tentious. 1t does not take up much space
in the fashionable seaside news column Of
the daily paper. Peter Smith, the hun
dred millionaire, and his family have ten
times more space, ink and type given him
than have 100 of the cheap cottage resi-
dents. But the mass SO living in the SUM-
mer by the sea is increasing, and it in
wolves the best intelligence and sound
common sense of the land, who do not
come into the country to repeat the form
ality Of the city, and who can exist with
out sitting daily at an expensive hotel
table, on which must be all possible kinds
Of meat, fish and game, for which earth,
air and water have been ransacked; where
one half the food, despite the style in
which it is served, has lost its freshness
from overmuch refrigerationor absorption
of the conglomerate odors and fiavors
amid which II is cooked in the great hotel
kitchen-meals served with all the form
atty of high mass, and where you are
tyranniZed by an attendant demon of a
French or colored waiter, who 'sizes up
your style in thirty seconds, and is atten-
tive III proportion TO the lee you occa-
sionally slip into his palm, while you are
paying the landlord 81 day exclusive Of
extras, and an extra charge for an orange
threatened if you want to eat it in your
room when you have an appetite for it,
Of course, there are people who like this
style of living, and they should be graft
fed, and l am glad they are gratified, for
do love to see my fellow creatures, male,
female or otherwise, enjoying life in their
own way and as nature had formed them
to enjoy life. Moles best love existence
under ground, rats in sewers, mosquitoes
in swamps. and some people require more
style than they do good bread and butter,
and breathe in a certain sustenance and
satisfaction in living up TO the dress
parade and formality of the fashionable
watering place hotel, just as peacock is
made to feel happier and better by spread
ing his magnificent tail feathers or in see
ing its brother peacocks spread theirs
around it This Is varied world, and
varied human and inhuman nature ell
about Us, and everything and everybody
have their places and uses.-Prentice Null
ford in San Francisco Chronicle.
Novel Toboggan Slide