Casco Bay breeze. [volume] (South Harpswell, Me.) 1901-1917, 1907-06-27
HOW THE RICH LIVE
By CLEVELAND nofFEn.

E~SA'S O. NeW 1Ofk, QSCldreS u
friend of mine. who pays $4,000 a
season for the rent OF his cottage.
To be sure this cottage is a hand
some stone house in attractive
grounds. perhaps the costliest Of
those that are rented regularly vary
Ing from $4,000 to $1,000 for the
three or four months is an ordinary
affair in Newport. and occasionally
when one OF the millionaire villas is
to let-one OF those splendid places
by the sea. with stables and green
houses and the glamour of impos-
Ing names, We've taken Granite
Point, my dear. from the Edgar US"
then the price is $4,000 or $751;
600 from June to September. And
people glad to pay It!
A Dollar a Foot For Land.
AS a matter of fact, $4,000 is a
small enough sim to pay when one
considers what the owner has al
ready paid for the land, the house
End the grounds. suppose no sum-
mer city in the world can show such
lavish expenditure in so small an
area, for fashionable Newport, or
the heart Of 1t, is comprised within
two or three square miles at one
corner Of little island.
Over all the rest of this island you
may pick up land for a song, but
here on this southwestern point you
will pay, roughly speaking, one dol
lar square foot. which means $43,-
600 an acre; and none of these show
places occupies less than one acre,
while most of them have four or
five and few have. ten or twelve
So the unimproved land alone repre-
sents small fortune lit was farm
land thirty years ago in the Ochre
Point region, now worth millions)
cost half million or a quarter of a
million each, and some a full million
real palaces-with another million
inside in furniture and objects of
art. The simple stone wall around
one OF these million-dollar places lit
belongs to f. j. Berwind) cost $780,
600. Its gates and carvings kept
the stonecutters busy for year. Sig
nificant is it not? 100000 for a
stone wall!
Trees Mt Nine Hundred Per.
And here I may point out the ex-
traordinary way in which Viewpoints
bare lawns have been transformed
into shaded parks, with rows of an
cestral beeches and cedars, one
would say, all grown to order over
night by the fiat of Money wills it."
Here, for instance, is a fine horse
chestnut, its branches spread sixty
1eet and your extended arms scarcely
compass its girth. Surely, you say.
this tree has stood here for genera
tons. Not at all; it has stood here
Tor two or three months. And tho
same is true of those NAPLES down
the driveway and OF that rare old
tulip tree by the hedge, and of yon-
der group of sturdy red cedars. One
year ago the NAPLES were growing
twenty miles away, the horse chest
nut thirty miles away, and the tulip
tree fifty miles away. Then the order
came that these trees must shade
and beautify this lawn and frame
picture OF the sea for the piazza
people. So two gangs of Italians
were sent forth with picks and SHOW
els, and under each chosen tree
they dug two tunnels, leaving the
roots in great ball of solid earth.
Then they skidded IL up on heavy
timbers and moved IL on rollers, and
made 1T fast on a special truck, and
hitched on thirty horses-for the
weight was thirty tons-and thus
mile after mile they dragged 1t here
and planted 1t, and the time con-
W Cd
was nine hundred dollars for .fat
one tree!
or course. 1t costs less to move
smaller trees. Three or four hum
dred dollars apiece will give you a
modest grove; but even so, with
acres to cover, IL is clear that your
Dill Tor shade may run far into the
thousands. And there are forty
places In Newport U have IL from
the leading forist) where the run
ming expenses of gardens. green
houses, trees. lawns. hedges. etc,
amount to $4,000 or $4,000 a year.
and several places where these ex-
penses are much more than that
one place in particular where half a
million has been spent on the
srouhus ana where twenty men are
required for the mere details Of
landscape gardening.
Florists Must Live.
II might be supposed that, with ex-
tensive greenhouses to draw upon,
the mistress OF one of these hand
some places would have flowers in
abundance for all occasions, but such
Is not the case. The greenhouses
merely supply the family's daily
needs and a florist is called upon
Tor elaborate dinners, balls and fetes.
80 that fashionable family will
easily spend a thousand dollars a
month In the season simply on fow-
ers Tor small dinners, such as are
given say once a week. A thousand
dollars does not go far when your
guests sit under canopies OF Ameri-
can Beauty roses. spreading over the