Then, too, if the reputation happens to be somewhat soiled, stained, or tattered,--like an old opera cloak,--what woman wants it about.

It is difficult to sit on it, as on a wrap in a theatre; it is conspicuous to hold in the lap where every one may see its imperfections; perhaps the safest thing is to do as many a woman does, ask her escort to look out for it, thereby shifting the responsibility to him.

It may pass through strange vicissitudes in his careless hands,--he may drop it, damage it, lose it, even destroy it, but she is reasonably sure that when the time comes he will return her either the old in a tolerable state of preservation, or a new one of some kind in its place.
Narragansett possesses this decided advantage over Newport, the people do not know each other until it is too late.

For six weeks the gay little world moves on in blissful ignorance of antecedents and reputations; no questions are asked, no information volunteered save that disclosed by the hotel register,-- information frequently of apocryphal value.

The gay beau of the night may be the industrious clerk of the morrow; the baron of the summer may be the barber of the winter; but what difference does it make?
If the beau beaus and the baron barons, is not the feminine cup of happiness filled to overflowing?
the only requisite being that beau and baron shall preserve their incognito to the end; hence the season must be short in order that no one's identity may be discovered.
At Newport every one labors under the disadvantage of being known,--for the most part too well known.