


Produced by David Widger





DR. BREEN'S PRACTICE.

By William Dean Howells

1881




I.

Near the verge of a bold promontory stands the hotel, and looks
southeastward over a sweep of sea unbroken to the horizon. Behind it
stretches the vast forest, which after two hundred years has resumed the
sterile coast wrested from it by the first Pilgrims, and has begun to
efface the evidences of the inroad made in recent years by the bold
speculator for whom Jocelyn's is named. The young birches and spruces
are breast high in the drives and avenues at Jocelyn's; the low
blackberry vines and the sweet fern cover the carefully-graded
sidewalks, and obscure the divisions of the lots; the children of the
boarders have found squawberries in the public square on the spot where
the band-stand was to have been. The notion of a sea-side resort at
this point was courageously conceived, and to a certain extent it was
generously realized. Except for its remoteness from the railroad, a
drawback which future enterprise might be expected to remedy in some
way, the place has many natural advantages. The broad plateau is cooled
by a breeze from the vast forests behind it, which comes laden with
health and freshness from the young pines; the sea at its feet is warmed
by the Gulf Stream to a temperature delicious for bathing. There
are certainly mosquitoes from the woods; but there are mosquitoes
everywhere, and the report that people have been driven away by them is
manifestly untrue, for whoever comes to Jocelyn's remains. The beach at
the foot of the bluff is almost a mile at its curve, and it is so smooth
and hard that it glistens like polished marble when newly washed by the
tide. It is true that you reach it from the top by