Short stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
These gentlemen seemed to have imagined that they were about visiting
some backwoods wilderness, some savage tract of country, "remote,
unfriended, melancholy, slow," for they brought almost everything with
them that men of elegant leisure could require, as if the hotel were but
four walls and a roof, which they must furnish with their own chattels.
I am sure it took Thomas, the man-servant, a whole day to unpack the
awnings, the bootjacks, the game-bags, the cigar-boxes, the guns, the
camp-stools, the liquor-cases, the bathing-suits, and other
paraphernalia that these pleasure-seekers brought. It must be owned,
however, that their room, a large one in the Bachelors' Quarter, facing
the sea, wore a very comfortable, sportsmanlike look when all was
arranged.
Thus surrounded, the young men betook themselves to the deliberate
pursuit of idle pleasures. They arose at nine and went down the shore,
invariably returning at ten with one unfortunate snipe, which was
preserved on ice, with much ceremony, till wanted. At this rate it took
them a week to shoot a breakfast; but to see them sally forth, splendid
in velveteen and corduroy, with top-boots and a complete harness of
green cord and patent-leather straps, you would have imagined that all
game-birds were about to become extinct in that region. Their dogs,
even, recognized this great-cry-little-wool condition of things, and
bounded off joyously at the start, but came home crestfallen, with an
air of canine humiliation that would have aroused Mr. Mayhew's tenderest
sympathies.
After breakfasting, usually in their room, the friends enjoyed a long
and contemplative smoke upon the wide piazza in front of their windows,
listlessly regarding the ever-varied marine view that lay before them in
flashing breadth and beauty. Their next labor was to array themselves in
wonderful morning-costumes of very shaggy English cloth, shiny flasks
and field-glasses about their shoulders, and loiter down the beach, to
the point and back, making much unnecessary effort over the walk--a
brief mile--which they spoke of, with importance, as their
"constitutional." This killed time till bathing-hour, and then another
toilet for dinner. After dinner a siesta: in the room, when the weather
was fresh; when otherwise, in hammocks hung from the rafters of the
piazza. When they had been domiciled a few days, they found it expedient
to send home for what they were pleased to term their "crabs" and
"traps," and excited the envy of less fortunate guests by driving up and
down the beach at a racing gait to dissipate the languor of the
after-dinner sleep.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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