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that universal delusion among the summer visitors, that we spend all winter in active preparations for next season.
Not so; we all devote it solely to meditations on the season past.
I observe that nobody in Oldport ever believes in any coming summer.
Perhaps the tide is turned, we think, and people will go somewhere else.
You do not find us altering our houses in December, or building out new piazzas even in March.
We wait till the people have actually come to occupy them.
The preparation for visitors is made after the visitors have arrived.
This may not be the way in which things are done in what are called “smart business places.”
But it is our way in Oldport.
It is another delusion to suppose that we are bored by this long epoch of inactivity.
Not at all; we enjoy it. If you enter a shop in winter, you will find everybody rejoiced to see you — as a friend; but if it turns out that you have come as a customer, people will look a little disappointed.
It is rather inconsiderate of you to make such demands out of season.
Winter is not exactly the time for that sort of thing.
It seems rather to
James R. Osgood and Co. 1873.
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