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Nice Points of Seasonable Etiquette—City Relatives Whose Friendship Grows Warm with the Summer, but Who Regard a Chalk Meerschaum Pipe at Christmas as an Offset for a Season's Board.

I hold that I violate no particular amount of confidence when I lay the following private letter before the heated public:

Shirley-on-the-Piscataquis River,

State of Maine, June 20, 1887.

Mr. William Nye, World Office, New York.

Sir: I have been a reader of The World for some time and have frequently noticed the alacrity with which you have come forward and explained things through its columns. You must be indeed a kind-hearted man, or you would not try to throw light on things just to oblige other people, when you do not, as a matter of fact, know what you are talking about. Few men would so far forget their own comfort as to do this in order to please others. Most men are selfish and hang back when asked a difficult question, preferring to wait till they know how to answer it; but you, sir, you seem to be so free always to come forward and explain things, and yet are so buoyant and hopeful that you will escape the authorities, that I have ventured to write you in regard to a matter that I feel somewhat of an interest in. It is now getting along into the shank of the summer and people from the great cities of our land are beginning to care less and less for the allurements of sewer gas, and to sigh for a home in the country and to hanker for the "spare room" in a quiet neighborhood at $2 a week with board.

I have seen a great many rules of etiquette for the guidance of country people who go to the city, but I have never run up against a large, blue-book telling city people how to conduct themselves as to avoid adverse criticism while in the country. Every little while some person writes a piece regarding the queer pranks of a countryman in town and acts it out on the stage and makes a whole pile of money on it, but we do not seem to get the other side of this matter at all. What I desire is that you will give us a few hints in regard to the conduct of city people who visit in the rural districts during the heated term. I am not a professional summer-resort tender or anything of that kind, but I am a plain man, that works and slaves in the lumber woods all winter and then blows it in, if you will allow the term, on some New York friends of my wife's who come down, as they state, for the purpose of relaxation, but really to spread themselves out over our new white coverlids with their clothes on, and murmur in a dreamy voice: "Oh, how restful!"

They also kick because we have no elevated trains that will take them down to the depot, whereas I am not able and cannot get enough ahead or forehanded sufficiently to do so, as heaven is my judge.