Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[215] their English cousins staying in the country till Christmas, and then in London till July. But in our Northern States the distinction of seasons is so very marked as to be destined to mould the permanent habit of our people, and a marked change has begun within forty years. Before that time almost every one lived either in city or country, and few had a home in each. Now, with the more well-to-do classes, the alternation is becoming universal; the sea — side, from Campobello to Chesapeake Bay, is becoming one long line of summer cottages or hotels; and in the wildest mountain regions the traveller comes suddenly upon vast lighted corridors with city luxuries and prices, billiards and lawn-tennis. The summer vacation itself is in its present form a recent evolution; schools that formerly gave but three or four weeks now give eight, and Harvard University, which in 1846 had but six weeks of such interval, has now fourteen.

All this extraordinary change is a tribute to summer, and to the summer habits of the people. We flee from the country in October or November, but only to return to it in May or June. In other words, we are adapting our social life to the characteristics of the American climate. That the final arrangement has been reached it is impossible to say, and the present fancy in our Northern Atlantic States for tobogganing and other Canadian winter