village," while the real Joppa meant in the thoughts of the inhabitants
only the West End so to speak, where was a series of pretty villas and
commodious mansions running along a broad, handsome street, and
stretching for quite a distance along the border of the lake. For, oh!
best of all, Joppa had a lake. To speak of Joppa in the presence of a
Joppite, and not in the same breath to mention the lake with an
appreciative adjective, was to make as irrevocable a mistake as to be in
conversation with a poet and forget to quote from his latest poem; for
next to their wives, their dinners, and their ease, the Joppites loved
their beautiful little lake. And they had cause thus to love it, for
apart from its exquisite charm as the main feature of their landscape, it
gave them a substantial reason for existence. What could they have done
with their _dolce far niente_ lives, but for the fishing and rowing and
sailing and bathing and sliding and skating which it afforded them in
turn? It was all they had to keep them from settling down into a Rip Van
Winkle sleep, this dear little restless lake, that coaxed them out of
their land-torpor, and forced them occasionally to lend a manly hand to a
manly pursuit. For there was this distinguishing peculiarity about Joppa,
that no one in it seemed to need to work, or to have any manner of
business whatever. Its society, outside of the village, was formed wholly
of cultivated, refined, wealthy people, who had nothing in the world to
do, but idly to eat and drink up the riches of the previous generation.
It is a widely admitted truth, that one generation always gathers for
another, never for itself, and that the generation which is thus
generously gathered for, is invariably found willing to sacrifice without
a murmur any latent duty to harvest on its own account, consenting to
live out its life softly upon the hard-earned savings of its
predecessors, without regard to posterity, and calling itself "gentlemen"
where its fathers were content to be known as "men."