This Is Writing

The following excerpt is from a short article titled "Beautiful Summer Resorts Near New York Not Yet Invaded by the Tourist". It is from the June 28, 1880 edition of the New York Times, and describes the summer influx of "city folk" to the unspoiled beauty of Somerset and Hunterdon counties.

Trees are well nigh as plentiful as in the proverbial "picnic woods," and it is by no means remarkable that so many of the farmers have opportunities to take boarders afforded them during the warm months. Driving along these roads these hot days one will pass farm-house after farm-house, under the ample shade of whose trees recline the city bonhomme, and in hammock or easy-chair loiters one of fashions protegees.

 

Following the road in this direction one strikes the north and south branches of the Raritan River. He who first strikes the scenes presented along their banks stands amazed to think of the neglected beauties and the unfrequented charms offered. The cool, impudent way in which the natives have grown up, accumulated a comfortable sum of money, built large, commodious homes and settled in the midst of these delights, exasperates the impetuous cosmopolitan, because he thinks all these things should have been revealed to the larger outside world long ago.

The farmer is, after all, the shrewder, for he perceives the advantages accruing to himself and his fortune by keeping the scenery in reserve for himself, as well as the fresh beauty of the rustic maidens. The well-to-do citizen of Hunterdon and Somerset sits in his shirt-sleeves smoking his pipe, and in his heart deprecating the innovations presaged in the yearly increase of visitors.

He does not mention his disappointment to the younger portion of his family, however, for they are "just crazy" to have the city folks come, but he pours the results of his thinking into his wife's ears as she comes in from the churning.