in sight; the hotel seemed riding at anchor on the swell of a placid sea.
I was going to call the Altrurian's attention to this fanciful resemblance
when I remembered that he had not been in our country long enough to have
seen a Fall River boat, and I made toward the house without wasting the
comparison upon him. But I treasured it up in my own mind, intending some
day to make a literary use of it.

The guests were sitting in friendly groups about the piazzas or in rows
against the walls, the ladies with their gossip and the gentlemen with
their cigars. The night had fallen cool after a hot day, and they all had
the effect of having cast off care with the burden of the week that was
past, and to be steeping themselves in the innocent and simple enjoyment
of the hour. They were mostly middle-aged married folk, but some were old
enough to have sons and daughters among the young people who went and came
in a long, wandering promenade of the piazzas, or wove themselves through
the waltz past the open windows of the great parlor; the music seemed one
with the light that streamed far out on the lawn flanking the piazzas.
Every one was well-dressed and comfortable and at peace, and I felt that
our hotel was in some sort a microcosm of the republic.

We involuntarily paused, and I heard the Altrurian murmur: "Charming,
charming! This is really delightful!"

"Yes, isn't it?" I returned, with a glow of pride. "Our hotel here is a
type of the summer hotel everywhere; it's characteristic in not having
anything characteristic about it; and I rather like the notion of the
people in it being so much like the people in all the others that you
would feel yourself at home wherever you met such a company in such a
house. All over the country, north and south, wherever you find a group of
hills or a pleasant bit of water or a stretch of coast, you'll find some