The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-07-20
THE SUMNER BOARDER.
Foolish Advice that Is Freely Ten
dered Him Every Season.

New York Evening Post.
If the milk at summer boarding places
could be as thick with cream as the news
papers at this season are full of advice to
the summer boarder, if the fresh vegetables
could be as plentiful the sapient direc-
tons OF editors and other writer's, every
body would be happy except the boarding
house keeper, who would not make any
money 1t is poor penny-a-liner who
cannot take a shy in June at the person
who is about to go on vacation. To read
the columns which are reeled off ii seems
that men and women who are able to wor-
~ along without assistance through the
ordinary affairs Of life must become sud-
denly daft when it comes to taking a bit
of rest. A writer in a Boston newspaper
has prepared list of instructions, which
have been copied enthusiastically in vari-
Gus parts of the country. He begins with
the absurd proposition that the summer
visitor must not consider himself above
the country people among whom he goes.
The visits of this writer to the country
must have been few and brief A city man
who goes into the country has to think him
self better than the countrymen he meets
in order to preserve his self-respect. What
is a city man TO do, after he has mistaken
a woolly lamb for a calf, announced his
opinion that a sickly looking cabbage plant
is a fine potato vine, and incurred the con-
tempt of the hired by unhitching the
wrong end of the trace in an effort 10 be
jaunty and helpful; what is he to do if he
does not consider himself superior to the
country people? He must so consider him
that he is idiot.
Then this Boston writer goes on, for he
is quite mad The summer boarder, he says.
should not brag about the city, and de-
scribe its attractions to the simple country
folk, especially the young, for fear of in
citing envy. The city man, also. must re-
frain from speaking about the hard work
which he observes has to be done on the
farm, of his idea of the relative dreari-
hess of the country in the winter time.
This line of advice shows a total miscon-
ception of the human spirit and its method
of extracting joy from the dull monotOny
of the days. OF course, the city man must
brag and the country man must bra &
back, and ten chances to one the country
man will come first under the wire. When
the hired man tells how he went to the fair,
and pounded fabulous pounds on the pound
ing machine, is the city man to sit there
like a worm, and not mention the price
that he paid for a box at the theater, or
the wonderful sights he has seen in and
about the saloon kept on Broadway by
Billy the Bruiser? 1t is absurd. The coun-
try man expects it, and while ii is being
told he is thinking up his next brag. He
could not do nearly we'll if it a
mOnologue Besides, what does a prophet
go out of his own country for? AS for the
rest of the instructions, they are off the
same piece. One of them is that the sum-
mer bOarder must not keep the small sons
of the place away from Sunday school in
order that they may show him where the
fishing is good. Perhaps not. but think
what sweet mercy IL would seem to the
little boys,