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"THE TIME WAS SPEFDING MERRILY, THE GAME WAS AT ITS HEIGHT”

THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW Y、RK

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MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY NUMBER

THE CENTURY MAGAZINE

VOL. LXXXII

AUGUST, 1911

No. 4

TH

UNIQUE MOUNT DESERT

BY ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

HREE things make the island of Mount Desert unique-its beauty, its altruism, and its variety.

"This is the most beautiful place in the world," a well-known artist assured me last summer. "I've been all round, -Italy, Greece, Syria,-but I've never found anything to equal it."

This beauty impresses the stranger from afar. As he coasts eastward along the Maine shore, thirteen mountains that seem to rise directly out of the sea compose themselves into three main masses, standing out in noble relief in the clear atmosphere. The morning I first saw them the westernmost mass was heavy, black, and solemn. The others, divided by those delightful little twins, the Bubbles, were more friendly, with fleecy clouds stooping over them and letting through a few splashes of sunlight here and there to gild their peaks and sides.

day of sunshine when the atmosphere is softened by a little haze, one sails into view of a fairy-land bubbling up from the water in a heap of misty, delicate, softly rounded domes. Presently appear smooth, bright lawns sloping back from the red crags of the shore-line to tree-embowered villas. And from the heights peep out the towers and gables of Bar Harbor's foliageveiled cottages, many of which are so in love with the trees that one often has a better view of them from the water than ashore.

By some happy chance one of my first experiences after landing was of a concert by the Kneisel Quartet in one of the most charming spots ever dedicated in any land to the spirit of beauty, and certainly the fittest conceivable setting for chamber-music. Here, in the Building of Arts, the American has made the Greek temple his own. and set it in natural, wild scenery as fair as that of an Ægean isle. In fact, this building, seen from the summit of Newport Mountain, is strongly reminiscent of the temple of Theseus as it shows from the Acropolis, only that, with its lovely background, the modern temple stands out more strikingly than the ancient one, Copyright, 1911, by THE CENTURY CO. All rights reserved.

By the opposite approach, through Frenchman's Bay, the effect, though wholly different, is no less striking; for Mount Desert is the one spot in the whole sweep of the Atlantic coast from Labrador to Mexico where the mountains go down to the sea. Coming from this side on a

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seen against the ugliness of modern Athens.

The Building of Arts stood open, so that we might look out upon sward and wood and the changing lights and shadows on the mountains while hearing an ideal organization interpret Beethoven under ideal conditions. The audience seemed as far removed in spirit from the light mood of the usual watering-place as was the building itself. The musicians responded at once to that almost telepathic sympathy of their hearers which is so essential a factor of a successful performance anywhere. And when one of the cottagers came forward, playing with them his own splendidly conceived quintet, players and audience seemed one in their enthusiasm.

After the concert, while tea was being served on the lawn, it was a memorable thing to watch from the slopes of the grassy amphitheater about the building the groups of charming costumes and the faces flushed with music and the spirit of the moment, outlined against the tender, creamy tones of that home of loveliness, framed in its turn by the strength of the hills.

It seemed too good to be true that such a thing should come to pass in an American summer resort. The experience was a strange introduction indeed to a spot which I had vaguely expected to find a center of fashion and summer gaiety, and little more. But it was soon evident that this concert was nothing sporadic, that it actually stood for a love of beauty almost Greek in its sincerity, and one in harmony with the constant tradition of the place. For Mount Desert, the summer resort, was discovered about the middle of the last century by that famous group of American artists headed by Church and Cole, who thus proved themselves pioneers in more than landscape-painting. So the public first came to learn the spell of this Northern landscape through the eyes of artists before they sought the Maine coast to enjoy it with their own eyes.

Many another watering-place has been discovered by the appreciative, only to be completely spoiled by the sudden inrush of popularity and wealth. Through the boarding-house period, through the time of enormous wooden hotels, and into the present day, when, in Bar Harbor, at least, the transient guest has given way to

the home-making cottager, the beautyloving spirit of its painter-pioneers has never ceased to dominate the island.

As the desire for artistic expression grew in Bar Harbor, and a series of chamberconcerts in private cottages developed musical taste, the question arose: If Germany might have its Bayreuth for such a hybrid thing as music-drama, why should not America find at least as fit a setting for the simpler, purer art of chambermusic? Half a dozen years ago this idea was taken up by five enthusiastic and devoted summer residents, and grew in scope until out of it there came not a building for music only, but the Building of Arts. For, besides concerts, dramatic performances are given both there and in the adjoining open amphitheater, modeled on old Greek lines. And every summer the building glows with a pageant of flowers which, according to competent critics, is of unique wealth and rarity.

This horticultural exhibition is the direct outcome of Bar Harbor's well-known development of the art of gardening. Due, first of all, to the esthetic spirit of the place, this art has had other stimuli as well. For because the island is a meetingground for the vegetation of the arctic and the temperate zones, and because the hardy herbaceous plants grow here as luxuriantly as in Switzerland, it is a paradise for the gardener. Nowhere else in the land does the procession of the flowers move from month to month with such legato grace, with such abundant, unbroken consistency. Another boon to gardeners is the rapid recuperative power of nature. A certain gravel-pit near Newport Mountain, for example, has been almost completely reclothed in green since it was excavated twelve years ago. And this quality of youthful vitality keeps the wild land fresh and interesting.

The chief impression one receives among the gardens of Mount Desert is that their owners have a strong feeling for wild nature. Thirty years ago, when President Eliot built at Northeast, he said to his guest Frederick Law Olmsted, “Olmsted, you 've been here a week now and have n't told me what to do to my place.”

"Do to it?" cried the landscape-architect, "For Heaven's sake, leave it alone!"

Since that day "Leave it alone!" has become a sort of watchword, and has

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