But the crowd—­the crowd—­the painted throng that steps to the tune of a fiddle, that hangs on the moods of a caterer, whose inspiration is a good dinner, whose aspiration is a new dance,—­ that crowd is never missed by any one who really delights in the manifold attractions of nature.

Not that the crowd at Narragansett is essentially other than the crowd at Newport—­the two do not mix; but the difference is one of degree rather than kind.  The crowd at Newport is architecturally perfect, while the crowd at Narragansett is in the adobe stage,—­ that is the conspicuous difference; the one is pretentious and lives in structures more or less permanent; the other lives in trunks, and is even more pretentious.  Neither, as a crowd, has more than a superficial regard for the natural charms of its surroundings.  The people at both places are entirely preoccupied with themselves—­and their neighbors.  At Newport a reputation is like an umbrella—­lost, borrowed, lent, stolen, but never returned.  Some one has cleverly said that the American girl, unlike girls of European extraction, if she loses her reputation, promptly goes and gets another,—­to be strictly accurate, she promptly goes and gets another’s.  What a world of bother could be saved if a woman could check her reputation with her wraps on entering the Casino; for, no matter how small the reputation, it is so annoying to have the care of it during social festivities where it is not wanted, or where, like dogs, it is forbidden the premises.  Then, too, if the reputation happens to be somewhat soiled, stained, or tattered,—­like an old opera cloak,—­what woman wants it about.  It is difficult to sit on it, as on a wrap in a theatre; it is conspicuous to hold in the lap where every one may see its imperfections; perhaps the safest thing is to do as many a woman does, ask her escort to look out for it, thereby shifting the responsibility to him.  It may pass through strange vicissitudes in his careless hands,—­he may drop it, damage it, lose it, even destroy it, but she is reasonably sure that when the time comes he will return her either the old in a tolerable state of preservation, or a new one of some kind in its place.

Narragansett possesses this decided advantage over Newport, the people do not know each other until it is too late.  For six weeks the gay little world moves on in blissful ignorance of antecedents and reputations; no questions are asked, no information volunteered save that disclosed by the hotel register,—­ information frequently of apocryphal value.  The gay beau of the night may be the industrious clerk of the morrow; the baron of the summer may be the barber of the winter; but what difference does it make?  If the beau beaus and the baron barons, is not the feminine cup of happiness filled to overflowing? the only requisite being that beau and baron shall preserve their incognito to the end; hence the season must be short in order that no one’s identity may be discovered.