Undeniably Barbara offered the best solution of this question in her remark, that those who can afford it spend the spring and autumn in the country and come to town for the winter months. Certainly, if I were one of the persons who are said to have too much for their own good, I should do something of the kind. I might not buy a suburban villa; indeed, I would rather go to the real country, where there are lowing kine, and rich cream and genuine barn-yard smells, instead of electric cars and soldiers’ monuments. There would I remain until it was time to kill the Thanksgiving turkey, and then I would hie me to town in order to refresh my mental faculties with city sights and sounds during the winter-spring solstice, when the lowing kine are all in the barn, and even one who owns a suburban villa has to fight his way from his front door through snow-drifts, and listen to the whistling wind instead of the robin red-breast or tinkling brook.
Patterson, the banker, is surely to be envied in his enjoyment of two establishments, notwithstanding that the double ownership suggests again the effete civilizations of Europe, and was once considered undemocratic. Patterson, though his son has been through the Keeley cure, and his daughter lives apart from her husband, has a charming place thirty-five miles from town, where he has many acres and many horses, cows, and sheep, an expanse of woods, a running stream, delicious vegetables and fruit; golf links, and a fine country house with all the modern improvements, including a cosy, spacious library. Then he has another house--almost a palace--in town which he opens in the late autumn and occupies until the middle of May, for Patterson, in spite of some foibles, is no tax dodger.
Yes, to have two houses and live half of the year in town and the other half in the country, with six to eight weeks at the sea-side or mountains, so as to give the children salt air and bathing, or a thorough change, is what most of us would choose in case we were blessed with too much for our own good. But, unfortunately or fortunately, most of us with even comfortable incomes cannot have two houses, and consequently must choose between town and country or semi-country, especially as the six or eight weeks at the sea-side or mountains is apt to seem imperative when midsummer comes. According, therefore, as we select to live in one or the other, it behooves us to practise eternal vigilance, so that we may not lose our love of nature and wreck our nerves in the worldly bustle of city life, or become inert, rusty, and narrow among the lowing kine or in semi-suburban seclusion. In order to live wisely, we who dwell in the cities should in our spare hours seek fresh air, sunlight, and intercourse with nature, and we whose homes are out of town should in our turn rehabilitate our social instincts and rub up our manners.