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