Newport is still appropriately situated on Rowed Island. None but the select deserve Newport. However, they say Old Gin is the next best thing. You can rent a cottage by the sea and see what you can. (I may add that you can also rent a cottage by the year, though I believe the view is not any finer on that account.) Beware of the tow! This is not a warning against _blondes_, but against rolls.
The proper thing to do at Newport is thus: A scented youth, with a perfumed damsel resting on his arm, wanders at eventide down to the sea to hear the majestic waves roll upon the beach. Having selected a suitable spot, the pair sit down and then make night hideous with "What are the wild waves saying?"
Niagara is perched upon its Erie. To a man of a reflective mind this is an unpleasant place. As he gazes on the rushing flood he thinks of the waste of raw material. Water being thrown away and no tax being collected. As a rule in this place cheat your carriage-driver, for if you don't, he'll cheat you for your negligence.
Of course, as it is now June, no one will visit Cape May. The White Mountains, having received a new coat of paint, are ready for summer visitors. A few stock quotations, such as, "cloud-capped towers," "peak of Teneriffe," &c., are very useful here. Also a large supply of breath. Lake Mahopac may be packed, of course, but any one of a romantic turn of mind, who loves to float with fair women idly upon a summer sea, (in a boat, of course,) 'mid crocuses and lilies, while the air is filled with the melodious sounds from a bass-drum and that sort of thing, and is redolent with the perfume of a thousand flowers, will find solace here. (I flatter myself that period is well turned.)
All over the land you may find choice little spots, farm-houses, over which the woodbine and the honeysuckle clamber, while the surrounding wheat fields--(I have lost my volume of WHITMAN, and forget what the wheat fields do, poetically.) Perhaps it is my duty to here introduce some remarks about farming, but, as the Self-made Man is struggling with that subject, and as a certain innocent, who has been abroad, proposes to handle it, I refrain.
I very nearly forgot Coney Island. This is the favorite resort of clams and little jokers. Here you may daily fill your bread-basket with bivalves, and then observe the mysteries of that mystic game, now you see it, now you don't.