in fact his satisfaction in his own place might be spoiled by the more showy place of his neighbor.  Mr. Snodgrass attempts in his book a philosophical explanation of this.  He says that if every man designed his own cottage, or had it designed as an expression of his own ideas, and developed his grounds and landscape according to his own tastes, working it out himself, with the help of specialists, he would be satisfied.  But when owners have no ideas about architecture or about gardening, and their places are the creation of some experimenting architect and a foreign gardener, and the whole effort is not to express a person’s individual taste and character, but to make a show, then discontent as to his own will arise whenever some new and more showy villa is built.  Mr. Benson, who was poking about a good deal, strolling along the lanes and getting into the rears of the houses, said, when this book was discussed, that his impression was that the real object of these fine places was to support a lot of English gardeners, grooms, and stable-boys.  They are a kind of aristocracy.  They have really made Newport (that is the summer, transient Newport, for it is largely a transient Newport).  “I’ve been inquiring,” continued Mr. Benson, “and you’d be surprised to know the number of people who come here, buy or build expensive villas, splurge out for a year or two, then fail or get tired of it, and disappear.”

Mr. Snodgrass devotes a chapter to the parvenues at Newport.  By the parvenu—­his definition may not be scientific—­he seems to mean a person who is vulgar, but has money, and tries to get into society on the strength of his money alone.  He is more to be pitied than any other sort of rich man.  For he not only works hard and suffers humiliation in getting his place in society, but after he is in he works just as hard, and with bitterness in his heart, to keep out other parvenues like himself.  And this is misery.

But our visitors did not care for the philosophizing of Mr. Snodgrass —­you can spoil almost anything by turning it wrong side out.  They thought Newport the most beautiful and finished watering-place in America.  Nature was in the loveliest mood when it was created, and art has generally followed her suggestions of beauty and refinement.  They did not agree with the cynic who said that Newport ought to be walled in, and have a gate with an inscription, “None but Millionaires allowed here.”  It is very easy to get out of the artificial Newport and to come into scenery that Nature has made after artistic designs which artists are satisfied with.  A favorite drive of our friends was to the Second Beach and the Purgatory Rocks overlooking it.  The photographers and the water-color artists have exaggerated the Purgatory chasm into a Colorado canon, but anybody can find it by help of a guide.  The rock of this locality is a curious study.  It is an agglomerate made of pebbles and cement, the pebbles being elongated as if by pressure.  The rock is sometimes found in detached fragments having the form of tree trunks.  Whenever it is fractured, the fracture is a clean cut, as if made by a saw, and through both pebbles and cement, and the ends present the appearance of a composite cake filled with almonds and cut with a knife.  The landscape is beautiful.