FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   2096   2097   2098   2099   2100   2101   2102   2103   2104   2105   2106   2107   2108   2109   2110   2111   2112   2113   2114   2115   2116   2117   2118   2119   2120  
2121   2122   2123   2124   2125   2126   2127   2128   2129   2130   2131   2132   2133   2134   2135   2136   2137   2138   2139   2140   2141   2142   2143   2144   2145   >>   >|  
elected to be pleased with unconventionality, finding a great zest in freedom, and making a joke of every inconvenience. Society will make its own rules, and although there are several other large hotels, and good houses as watering-place hotels go, and cottage-life here as elsewhere is drawing away its skirts from hotel life, society understood why a person might elect to stay at Rodick's. Bar Harbor has one of the most dainty and refined little hotels in the world-the Malvern. Any one can stay there who is worth two millions of dollars, or can produce a certificate from the Recorder of New York that he is a direct descendant of Hendrick Hudson or Diedrich Knickerbocker. It is needless to say that it was built by a Philadelphian--that is to say one born with a genius for hotel-keeping. But though a guest at the Malvern might not eat with a friend at Rodick's, he will meet him as a man of the world on friendly terms. Bar Harbor was indeed an interesting society study. Except in some of the cottages, it might be said that society was on a lark. With all the manners of the world and the freemasonry of fashionable life, it had elected to be unconventional. The young ladies liked to appear in nautical and lawn-tennis toilet, carried so far that one might refer to the "cut of their jib," and their minds were not much given to any elaborate dressing for evening. As to the young gentlemen, if there were any dress-coats on the island, they took pains not to display them, but delighted in appearing in the evening promenade, and even in the ballroom, in the nondescript suits that made them so conspicuous in the morning, the favorite being a dress of stripes, with striped jockey cap to match, that did not suggest the penitentiary uniform, because in state-prisons the stripes run round. This neglige costume was adhered to even in the ballroom. To be sure, the ballroom was little frequented, only an adventurous couple now and then gliding over the floor, and affording scant amusement to the throng gathered on the piazza and about the open windows. Mrs. Montrose, a stately dame of the old school, whose standard was the court in the days of Calhoun, Clay, and Webster, disapproved of this laxity, and when a couple of young fellows in striped array one evening whirled round the room together, with brier-wood pipes in their mouths, she was scandalized. If the young ladies shared her sentiments they made no resolute protests, remembering
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   2096   2097   2098   2099   2100   2101   2102   2103   2104   2105   2106   2107   2108   2109   2110   2111   2112   2113   2114   2115   2116   2117   2118   2119   2120  
2121   2122   2123   2124   2125   2126   2127   2128   2129   2130   2131   2132   2133   2134   2135   2136   2137   2138   2139   2140   2141   2142   2143   2144   2145   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
hotels
 

society

 
ballroom
 

evening

 

Rodick

 
Harbor
 
elected
 

Malvern

 
striped
 

stripes


ladies
 
couple
 

prisons

 

costume

 

neglige

 

uniform

 

penitentiary

 

suggest

 
conspicuous
 

island


gentlemen
 

elaborate

 

dressing

 

display

 

morning

 

favorite

 

jockey

 

nondescript

 

delighted

 

appearing


promenade

 
throng
 
fellows
 

whirled

 

laxity

 

Calhoun

 

Webster

 

disapproved

 

sentiments

 

resolute


protests

 

remembering

 

shared

 
mouths
 
scandalized
 
standard
 

gliding

 

affording

 

frequented

 

adventurous