So this was Joppa, a place mighty in its own conceit, and high too in the
estimate of others, to whom it was becoming known as the gayest and the
prettiest of all dear little summer resorts; and thither strangers were
beginning to flock in considerable numbers each year, made warmly welcome
by the Joppites as an occasion for breaking out into an unending round of
parties and picnics and dinners and lunches and teas, and even breakfasts
when there was not room to crowd in any thing else. The summer was one
continual whirl from beginning to end. There were visitors and visits;
there was giving and receiving; there were flirtations and rumors of
flirtations; there was everything the human heart could desire in the way
of friendly hospitality and liveliest entertainment. Saratoga might be
well enough, and Newport would do in its way; but for solid perfection,
said the Joppites, there was no place in the world quite like Joppa.

But unknown to itself, Joppa nursed one apostate in its midst, one
unavowed but benighted little heretic, who so far from sharing these
sentiments and offering up nightly thanksgiving that despite her great
unworthiness she had been suffered to be born in Joppa, made it one of
her most fervent and reiterated petitions that she might not always have
to live there; that some time, if she were very good and very patient, it
might be granted her to go. She was so weary of it all: of the busy
idleness and the idle business, of the unthinking gayety and the gay
thoughtlessness, and of the nothingness that made up its all. She wanted,
she did not exactly know what, only something different; and to go, she
did not quite know where, only somewhere else. But she had been born in
Joppa, (quite without her permission,) and in Joppa she had lived for all
of twenty-four healthful, tranquil, uneventful years, spending
semi-occasional winters in New York, and, unlike all other Joppites,
returning always more and more discontented with her native place. Who
could ever have expected such treason in the heart of dear little Phebe