No, no, we would admire nothing, dare nothing, do nothing, but only suck in rosy health at every pore, pin our souls out on the holly hedge to sweeten, and forget what we had for breakfast.  Uneasy daemons that we are all winter, toiling gnomes of the mine and the forge—­“O spent ones of a workday age”—­can we not for one brief month in our year be Turks?

[Illustration:  Landing-place on the Inlet.]

Our doctors, slowly acquiring a little sense, are changing their remedies.  Where the cry used to be “drugs,” it now is “hygiene.”  But hygiene itself might be changed for the better.  We can imagine a few improvements in the materia medica of the future.  Where the physician used to order a tonic for a feeble pulse, he will simply hold his watch thoughtfully for sixty seconds and prescribe “Paris.”  Where he was wont to recommend a strong emetic, he will in future advise a week’s study of the works of art at our National Capital.  For lassitude, a donkey-ride up Vesuvius.  For color-blindness, a course of sunrises from the Rigi.  For deafness, Wachtel in his song of “Di quella Pira.”  For melancolia, Naples.  For fever, driving an ice-cart.  But when the doctor’s most remunerative patient comes along, the pursy manufacturer able to afford the luxury of a bad liver, let him consult the knob of his cane a moment and order “Atlantic City.”

—­Because it is lazy, yet stimulating.  Because it is unspoilt, yet luxurious.  Because the air there is filled with iodine and the sea with chloride of sodium.  Because, with a whole universe of water, Atlantic City is dry.  Because of its perfect rest and its infinite horizons.

But where and what is Atlantic City?  It is a refuge thrown up by the continent-building sea.  Fashion took a caprice, and shook it out of a fold of her flounce.  A railroad laid a wager to find the shortest distance from Penn’s treaty-elm to the Atlantic Ocean:  it dashed into the water, and a City emerged from its freight-cars as a consequence of the manoeuvre.  Almost any kind of a parent-age will account for Atlantis.  It is beneath shoddy and above mediocrity.  It is below Long Branch and higher up than Cape May.  It is different from any watering-place in the world, yet its strong individuality might have been planted in any other spot; and a few years ago it was nowhere.  Its success is due to its having nothing importunate about it.  It promises endless sea, sky, liberty and privacy, and, having made you at home, it leaves you to your devices.

[Illustration:  Congress hall.]