The age-herald., 1898-07-10
Copyright, 1898. ]

The time has now come when lovely woman, having stopped to folly in the way of leaving everything too late, is searching for a summer place. She reads guidebooks and sends to all the railroads for those pamphlets that de-
 scribe cheap and nasty farmhouses. She
 answers advertisements by the hun-- dreds, and she is willing to take every
 body's advice as to where she is to abide during the long summer days. She
 is uncertain as to whether it is the mountain or sea air that she wants. She claims a positive contempt for big hotel, but nothing will induce her to go
 into a boarding house. The kind of
 place she wants is in reality the one
 which is next door to heaven-absolute-
 ly the ideal.
 In the first place, it must be near
 enough the city for the father of the
 tribe to come out Friday evening and remain until Monday morning. Then 1t
 must be too far from the city for all ones poor relations to come down and
 spend the day. The rooms must be
 comfortable, and yet she doesn't pro-
 pose to pay the price that the landlord
 demands. She would prefer to be near a lake, because she would like the boys
 to learn the difference between an eel
 and a rattlesnake, and yet she would like to be far enough from the lake to
 prevent there being a funeral in the family. She wishes the boys to learn to swim, but she has a sort of an idea that in learning this accomplishment they would better begin in the bathtub. She doesn't know that the little tikes have been swimming this many a day and that they learned in what might be called a practical fashion-that is to say, the biggest boy threw the littlest one in the water and warned him if he I didn't swim to shore he would not only l drown, but get thrashing.
 Then she would like an aristocratic neighborhood-a neghborhood where there are some nice young fellows who are likely to inherit some good old ducats-but it must be the sort of place where aristocracy and shabbiness go
 hand in hand, since on account of the
 war she must economize, and the girls
 have got to wear last seasons frocks
 fixed over. Then she feels as if she had longing to get where she would be free from the bondage of servants and able to eat her dinner as if she were an independent woman. So she travels for
 hours on a hot day over a dusty road
 only to find that advertisements do not
 always picture things as they are and
 that the country home so beautifully
 described doesn't compare for coolness with her own house in the city. Then she goes cavorting around trying to find resting place where there is country air Thank goodness, you can have plen- ty of that without being charged extra for every mouthful, plenty of grass, mountains at the back of it, water not very far from it,, fresh butter and veg etables, milk from a COW and not from a tin can, and chickens that were not witnesses of the late C.. Washington's will
 It is almost unnecessary to say that
 this place is never found, but every
 blessed woman among us looks for it
 every summer, sheds bitter tears over the unreliability of printed descriptions and then trots off to the best place that she can get and tries to be happy. If
 there is anybody in the world who
 knows a rather lonely and somewhat
 lorn place where they know how to
 make corn bread, serve chickens fried
 in gravy after the Maryland fashion,
 make good cup of coffee and where
 permission is accorded one to dress as
 one pleases, to read when one pleases
 and not to get too intimate with the family unless one sb desires, let her or him write to me. I don't pretend to say there are not such places. I only say that somehow or other we don't seem to find them, and yet we don't demand much
 The average country boarding house keeper takes a dislike to the woman from the city who has come to rest. She objects fiercely to your wearing a cloth skirt, a shirt waist, lying in hammock and reading. She thinks it is your duty as a Christian to bring along all your best frocks, to show them to her, to tell her how much they cost and who made them, and then when the usual fair is given she prefers that you should dress as if you were going to the opera, for then her special chum can whisper to her: "Oh say, Marthy, ain't them city women wicked, showing their necks that way and their arms all | bare! I call it perfectly indecent! And | before the minister tool" And the lady | who entertains a few guests for a con- sideration says in response: Well! | We'll When you have seen as much of | the world as have-I once staid nearly | two weeks in New York city-you will 1 know that as bad as these women look they might be worse" And you hear this doubtful praise. But when party | go to a farmhouse and lie around on the grass and in hammocks and read and play with the chickens and find out exactly how much intelligence turkey | has (and if you devoted a month to | studying a turkey, as l once did. you would know that he has a lot more | sense than men; I will tell you why some day, but that will ie story) and don't wear far
 and are not overanxious tS
 fo r,a;Ix ffo; 10.