Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 131.djvu/390

384 the way, what did you say your name was? Oh, yes; I'll introduce you. Mr. ——, Miss ——." Where is papa? the English reader naturally asks; he is talking politics or business with a friend of two hours' standing on the piazza, and will probably go to bed at ten o'clock without disturbing the rest of the family. And mamma? She is sitting in a corner of the drawing-room chatting with another matron. It may or may not occur to her that she has never before seen the gentleman her daughter is dancing with. In any event, the evening is supposed to count only for itself, and the partner of the dance is a temporary convenience, having no necessary connection with any future social relations. As to the young man himself, he becomes one of the party from that moment, and is depended upon by the young ladies as an attendant in the drawing-room, on pleasure excursions, and at other times. By similar easy processes the acquaintances of families are brought about. A few words between the fathers or between the wives, a look and a smile between the daughters, and friendships warm enough for the purposes of summer society are formed at once. Personal congeniality is the only consideration among the ladies; politics and business are enough to interest the gentlemen in each other. All that we have thus seen in a small hotel goes on continually at Long Branch and Cape May, though the simple original processes are not so readily observed. The one thing that makes them possible, as I have said, is the universally recognized law, that "watering-place acquaintances" do not "count" after the season is over, except when both sides desire them to be permanent.

It is on account of this peculiar freedom of social intercourse, this temporary throwing off of restraints considered imperative at other seasons, that an American summer resort may be considered one of the pleasantest places in the world for the casual tourist. The way is even more open, if possible, to an English visitor than an American, the native ladies and gentlemen feeling a certain responsibility for the extension of hospitality; nor can any number of valuable letters take the place of the universal welcome — pro tem — extended to the stranger. One young Englishman of my acquaintance, whose face and manners are in themselves a passport, surprised me the other evening at a summer hotel where we were remaining but a single day. We had arrived about two hours before, and were watching a few ladies and gentlemen who were dancing and chatting in the drawing-room. My companion left my side, addressed one of the ladies pleasantly but respectfully, seemed to enter into a conversation, and presently became her partner in a quadrille. When we afterwards met I asked him how he had managed to walk so quietly over the few impediments which even I had always found. "Oh," he answered, "I told her I was English and a great way from home, and had no acquaintances here — and she took me up in a matronly sort of way, as if she felt it her duty to make me as comfortable as possible. I often do that in America, you know, at a summer resort." This, of course, is an extreme case: it implies tact and a very respectful manner on the part of the gentleman; and it could only happen, among people that can be called members of good society here, at a small place where the dangers of imposition by adventurers could never occur to the mind, as at Cape May or Long Branch. While, however, the proceeding is more direct than an American gentleman could safely venture upon, and the lady's approval depends on a good-natured recognition of a stranger's position, it involves no social principle which is not recognized here in the summer season. Except among that "strict" few, representing no general class, to whom I have already referred, the ladies most likely to resent such a direct self-presentation on the part of a polite foreign gentleman belong to a lower rather than an upper order of American society — to that class who feel obliged to follow the "rules" of etiquette, without trusting themselves to make their own exceptions as circumstances may suggest. 