with summer folks from a great summer resort beyond us, and their lights
reveal the pretty fashions of hats and gowns in all the charm of the
latest lines and tints. But there is an increasing democracy in these
splendors, and one might easily mistake a passing excursionist from some
neighboring inland town, or even a local native with the instinct of
clothes, for a social leader from York Harbor.

With the falling leaf, the barge-like open cars close up into well-warmed
saloons, and falter to hourly intervals in their course. But we are
still far from the falling leaf; we are hardly come to the blushing or
fading leaf. Here and there an impassioned maple confesses the autumn;
the ancient Pepperrell elms fling down showers of the baronet's fairy
gold in the September gusts; the sumacs and the blackberry vines are
ablaze along the tumbling black stone walls; but it is still summer, it
is still summer: I cannot allow otherwise!




III.

The other day I visited for the first time (in the opulent indifference
of one who could see it any time) the stately tomb of the first
Pepperrell, who came from Cornwall to these coasts, and settled finally
at Kittery Point. He laid there the foundations of the greatest fortune
in colonial New England, which revolutionary New England seized and
dispersed, as I cannot but feel, a little ruthlessly. In my personal
quality I am of course averse to all great fortunes; and in my civic
capacity I am a patriot. But still I feel a sort of grace in wealth a
century old, and if I could now have my way, I would not have had their