[The summer heats may be]
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The summer heats may be said to be pretty well over with. Lately, we have been startled, every few days, with a “sere and yellow” leaf from September’s book interpolated into the middle of August’s flowery volume, and Autumn is coming on apace, with a matronly flush upon her cheeks, and laden with plentiful and generous gifts.
Soon, the city will begin to fill up, and the fashionables, who are even now beginning to find their sea side and watering place resorts decidedly cool, will make a bee-line for their comfortable houses. Carriages that have been laid up for a month will onceone more roll along Broadway; the splendid stores that have begun to languish for want of fashionable custom will once more rejoice in the presence of Fifth Avenue beauty and fashion; the streets will blush and bloom with belles in gorgeous array, bearing with them the unmistakableunmistakeable air of ton, and, in fine, the people will have no more cause to complain that New York and Brooklyn are “deserted.”
Meantime the poor souls who are left are like deserted lambs of the flock. The reverend clergy are off, some of them to Europe, some to the White Mountains, the lakes and other places of summer resort, and some, who are lucky enough to possess them, are rusticating on their own farms and country seats. Well, clergymen are but mortals, and need their relaxation and recreation as much as any other portion of the community. Doubtless, when they return it will be to labor with renewed strength and zeal, in their onerous vocation. The summer rambles of a Beecher,1 and the piscatory excursions of a Bethune,2 in the end redomed to the benefit of their congregations, in the increased flow of their pulpit eloquence and in the assiduity with which their pastoral duties are discharged. Without doubt, the summer vacation exerts a similar effect upon the lesser lights of the sacred desk.
This annual trip of our people—all those who can afford it, fashionable, clerical and professional, we look upon as a capital thing for all parties. It gives one a breathing time and respite from mental toil and anxiety. In England it is a matter of course among the middle classes far more than here, where the principal places of summer resort are chiefly intended for the “upper crust,” and where the tariff of prices is graduated accordingly. Fresh air, green fields, sea bathing, etc., are made, at present, altogether too inaccessible to the great bulk of our population.