Atlantic Coast (U.S.) -- Description and travel -- Fiction
The band was playing this morning--not rink music--when Mrs. Glow and
King entered and took chairs on the ombre. It was a very pretty scene;
more people were present than usual of a morning. Groups of half a
dozen had drawn chairs together here and there, and were chatting and
laughing; two or three exceedingly well-preserved old bachelors, in the
smart rough morning suits of the period, were entertaining their lady
friends with club and horse talk; several old gentlemen were reading
newspapers; and there were some dowager-looking mammas, and seated by
them their cold, beautiful, high-bred daughters, who wore their visible
exclusiveness like a garment, and contrasted with some other young
ladies who were promenading with English-looking young men in flannel
suits, who might be described as lawn-tennis young ladies conscious
of being in the mode, but wanting the indescribable atmosphere of
high-breeding. Doubtless the most interesting persons to the student
of human life were the young fellows in lawn-tennis suits. They had the
languid air which is so attractive at their age, of having found out
life, and decided that it is a bore. Nothing is worth making an exertion
about, not even pleasure. They had come, one could see, to a just
appreciation of their value in life, and understood quite well
the social manners of the mammas and girls in whose company they
condescended to dawdle and make, languidly, cynical observations. They
had, in truth, the manner of playing at fashion and elegance as in
a stage comedy. King could not help thinking there was something
theatrical about them altogether, and he fancied that when he saw them
in their “traps” on the Avenue they were going through the motions for
show and not for enjoyment. Probably King was mistaken in all this,
having been abroad so long that he did not understand the evolution of
the American gilded youth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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