Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/41

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
A NEWPORT AQUARELLE.
33

a winter in New York had passed a month at the old homestead as in other days. Having accepted Mrs. Fallow-Deer's invitation to pass the month of August with her at Newport, she was enjoying for the first time in several years the brilliant entertainments of our summer city. She found that things had changed much during her absence, and felt, as she had never done before, the great difficulty which people with moderate means find in maintaining their place in a society which has become vulgarized by the vast quantities of wealth brought into it by uncultivated people.

The tone of the society seemed also to have become in a certain sense Europeanized, and she did not find the great contrast she had expected; Newport manners and customs, unlike those of the Medes and Persians, having changed considerably.

"I find people here much broader than I remember them to have been," Gladys had said to her cousin.