The boarder, of course, looks down on this man, but when
both are on the road or on the piazza of the hotel how are they to
be distinguished? They are not, and cannot be.
The worst of it all is, however, that the boarder finds that the
cottager has enclosed some of his favorite walks. He can no longer
get to them without trespassing or intruding. He can only look
wistfully from the dusty high-road at the spots on which he probably
once "rocked" with the girl who is now his wife, or chopped logic
with professional or clerical friends, whom "the growth of the
place" has long ago driven to fresh fields and pastures new. There
is something very interesting and touching about these old Mount
Deserters of the first period, between 1860 and 1870, who fled even
before the enlargement of the hotels, and to whom cottages at Bar
Harbor are almost unthinkable. One finds them in undeveloped summer
resorts in out-of-the-way places along the American coast, often on
the Alps or in Norway, or on the Scotch lakes, still tender, and
simple, and unassuming, and cheery, older of course and generally
stouter, but with the memories of the mountains, and the rocks, and
the islands, of the poor food, "which made no difference, because
the air was fine," still as fresh as ever, but without a particle of
bitterness.
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