People of the Whirlpool

It is a novel book. The People of the Whirlpool have come to the Bluffs, and the swirl and spray has, in a measure, followed them. I had well-nigh written, 'are settled at the Bluffs', but the Whirlpoolers are perpetual migrants, unlike the feathered birds of passage never absolutely settling anywhere even for the nesting season, sometimes even taking to the water by preference, at the time, of all others, when home is most loved and cherished by the 'comfortably poor'. The houses, nominally closed since the holidays, have been reopened, one by one, ever since the general return from the south in April, after which season, Mrs. Jenks-Smith assures me, it is bad form to be seen in New York on Sunday. This fiat, however, does not prevent members of almost every family from spending several days a week in the city, thus protecting themselves against the possible monotony of home living by lunching and dining, either singly or in informal groups, at the public restaurants. Father has always held the theory that ladies should dress inconspicuously in the public streets and hostelries, and for a woman to do otherwise, he considered, was to prove that she had no claim upon gentility. Evan used to go so far as to say that the only people who display their fine clothes in hotels are those who have no homes in which to wear them.