; it is not to be expected that people should know each other in
such a heterogeneous concern; you see how comparatively few greetings
there are on the piazzas and in the parlors. You notice, too, that the
types are not so distinctively American as at the Southern resort--full
faces, thick necks--more like Germans than Americans. And then the
everlasting white hats. And I suppose it is not certain that every man
in a tall white hat is a politician, or a railway magnate, or a sporting
man.

These big hotels are an epitome of expansive, gorgeous American life. At
the Grand Union, King was No. 1710, and it seemed to him that he walked
the length of the town to get to his room after ascending four stories.
He might as well, so far as exercise was concerned, have taken an
apartment outside. And the dining-room. Standing at the door, he had a
vista of an eighth of a mile of small tables, sparkling with brilliant
service of glass and porcelain, chandeliers and frescoed ceiling. What
perfect appointments! what well-trained waiters!--perhaps they were not
waiters, for he was passed from one "officer" to another "officer"
down to his place. At the tables silent couples and restrained family
parties, no hilarity, little talking; and what a contrast this was to
the happy-go-lucky service and jollity of the White Sulphur! Then the
interior parks of the United States and the Grand Union, with corridors
and cottages, close-clipped turf, banks of flowers, forest trees,
fountains, and at night, when the band filled all the air with seductive
strains, the electric and the colored lights, gleaming through the
foliage and dancing on fountains and greensward, made a scene of
enchantment. Each hotel was a village in itself, and the thousands of
guests had no more in common than the frequenters of New York hotels and
theatres. But what a paradise for lovers!

"It would be lonesome enough but for you, Irene," Stanhope said, as
they sat one night on the inner piazza of the Grand Union, surrendering
themselves to all the charms of the scene.

"I love it all," she said, in the full tide of her happiness.

On another evening they were at the illumination of the Congress Spring
Park. The scene seemed the creation of magic. By a skillful arrangement
of the colored globes an illusion of vastness was created, and the
little enclosure, with its glowing lights, was like the starry heavens
for extent. In the mass of white globes and colored lanterns o