William Dean Howells (1837 – 1920) was a playwright, essayist, novelist, and American literary critic with a preeminent interest in defending realist fiction. During his time Howells was known widely as “The Dean of American Letters.” He enjoyed a lengthy tenure as editor of The Atlantic Monthly, with his most famous novels being A Traveler from Altruria (1894), about a utopian world, along with The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) in addition to the story “Christmas Every Day,” which was adapted for film in 1996.
There is really an infinite variety of pleasant resorts of all kinds now, and one could quite safely leave it to the man in the ticket-office where one should go, and check one’s baggage accordingly. I think the chances of an agreeable summer would be as good in that way as in making a hard-and-fast choice of a certain place and sticking to it. My own experience is that in these things chance makes a very good choice for one, as it does in most non-moral things.