Then Austin built Silverside out of a much simpler, grand-paternal bungalow; then came Sanxon Orchil and erected Hitherwood House on the foundations of his maternal great-grandfather's cabin; and then the others came; the Minsters built gorgeous Brookminster--you can just make out their big summer palace--that white spot beyond Surf Point!--and then the Lawns came and built Southlawn; and, beyond, the Siowitha people arrived on scout, land-hungry and rich; and the tiny hamlet of Wyossett grew rapidly into the town it now is.

Truly this island with its hundred miles of length has become but a formal garden of the wealthy.

Alas! I knew it as a stretch of woods, dunes, and old-time villages where life had slumbered for two hundred years!" He fell silent, but she nodded him to go on.
"Brooklyn was a quiet tree-shaded town," he continued thoughtfully, "unvexed by dreams of traffic; Flatbush an old Dutch village buried in the scented bloom of lilac, locust, and syringa, asleep under its ancient gables, hip-roofs, and spreading trees.

Bath, Utrecht, Canarsie, Gravesend were little more than cross-road taverns dreaming in the sun; and that vile and noise-cursed island beyond the Narrows was a stretch of unpolluted beauty in an untainted sea--nothing but whitest sand and dunes and fragrant bayberry and a blaze of wild flowers.

Why"-- and he turned impatiently to the girl beside him--"why, I have seen the wild geese settle in Sheepshead Bay, and the wild duck circling over it; and I am not very aged.