His neighbors, startled
by his success, follow his example, it may be only _longo
intervallo_, and soon the place becomes a regular "resort," with
girls and boys in white flannel, lawn-tennis (which succeeds
croquet), a livery-stable, stages, an ice-cream store with a
soda-water fountain, a new church, and with strange names taken out
of books for the neighboring hills and lanes and brooks.
This stage may last for years--in some places it has been known to
last thirty or forty without any change, beyond the opening of new
hotels--and it becomes marked by crowds of people, who go back every
year in the character of old boarders, get the best rooms, and are
on familiar terms of friendship with the proprietor and the older
waiter-girls.
But it may be brought to a close, and is now being brought to a
close in scores of American watering-places, by the appearance of
the cottager, who has become to the boarder what the red squirrel is
to the gray, a ruthless invader and exterminator. The first cottager
is almost always a boarder, so that there is no means of discovering
his approach and resisting his advances.
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