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 of paper the eye was deceived as to distances.  The allies stretched away interminably, the pines seemed enormous, and the green hillsides mountainous.  Nor were charming single effects wanting.  Down the winding walk from the hill, touched by a distant electric light, the loitering people, in couples and in groups, seemed no more in real life than the supernumeraries in a scene at the opera.  Above, in the illuminated foliage, were doubtless a castle and a broad terrace, with a row of statues, and these gay promenaders were ladies and cavaliers in an old-time masquerade.  The gilded kiosk on the island in the centre of the miniature lake and the fairy bridge that leads to it were outlined by colored globes; and the lake, itself set about with brilliants, reflected kiosk and bridge and lights, repeating a hundredfold the fantastic scene, while from their island retreat the band sent out through the illumined night strains of sentiment and gayety and sadness.  In the intervals of the music there was silence, as if the great throng were too deeply enjoying this feast of the senses to speak.  Perhaps a foreigner would have been impressed with the decorous respectability of the assembly; he would have remarked that there were no little tables scattered about the ground, no boys running about with foaming mugs of beer, no noise, no loud talking; and how restful to all the senses!