We cannot hope to do away wholly with either the summer hotel or the fashionable watering-place by the assertion of parental authority. Such an endeavor, indeed, would on the whole be an unjust as well as fruitless piece of virtue. The delightful comradeship between young men and young women, which is one of our national products, is typified most saliently by the summer girl and her attendant swains. Naturally she wishes to go to some place where swains are apt to congregate; and the swain is always in search of her. Moreover, the summer hotel must continue to be the summer home of thousands who, for one reason or another, have no cottage or abandoned farm. My plea is still the same, however. Why, now that the negro slave is free, and the workingman is being legislated into peace and plenty, and the wrongs of other women are being righted, should not the American mother try to burst her bonds? It would be a much more simple matter than it seems, for, after all, she has her own blood in her veins, and she has only to remember what a dogmatic person she herself was in the days of her youth. If the code of fathers and mothers, instead of that of girls and boys, were in force at our summer hotels and watering-places, a very different state of affairs would soon exist; and that, too, without undue interference with that inherent, cherished, and unalienable right of the American daughter, the maiden’s choice. We must not forget that though our civilization boasts the free exercise of the maiden’s choice as one of the brightest jewels in the crown of republican liberties, the crowded condition of our divorce courts forbids us to be too demonstrative in our self-satisfaction.
It would be dire, indeed, to bore the young person, especially the summer girl. But does it necessarily follow that a summer home or a summer life indicated by the parent would induce such a disastrous result? I am advising neither a dungeon, a convent, nor some excruciatingly dull spot to which no fascinating youth is likely to penetrate. Verily, even the crowded bathing beach may not corrupt, provided that wise motherly control and companionship point out the dangers and protect the forming soul, mind, and manners, instead of allowing them to be distorted and poisoned by the ups and downs of promiscuous amatory summer guerilla warfare. But may it not happen, when the maternal foot is once firmly put down, that the summer girl will not be so easily bored as she or her mother fears, and will even be grateful for protection against her own ignorance and inexperience? Boating, sketching, riding, reading, bicycling, travel, sewing, and photography are pastimes which ought not to bore her, and would surely leave her more refreshed in the autumn than continuous gadding, dancing, and flirtation. To be a member of a small, pleasant colony, where the days are passed simply and lazily, yet interestingly; where the finer senses are constantly appealed to by the beauties of nature and the healthful character of one’s occupations, is a form of exile which many a summer girl would accommodate herself to gladly if she only understood what it was like, and understood, moreover, that the selection of a summer programme had ceased to be one of her prerogatives. A determined man who wishes to marry will discover the object of his affections on an abandoned farm or in the heart of the Maine woods, if he is worth his salt. In these days of many yachts and bicycles true love can travel rapidly, and there is no occasion for marriageable girls to select courting-grounds where their lovers can have close at hand a Casino and other conveniences, including the opportunity to flirt with their next best Dulcineas.