[Domestic Manners of the Americans by Fanny Trollope]@TWC D-Link bookDomestic Manners of the Americans CHAPTER 33 9/22
Many parties arrived in the morning, walked to the falls; returned to the hotel to dinner, and departed by the coach immediately after it. Many groups were indescribably whimsical, both in appearance and manner.
Now and then a first-rate dandy shot in among us, like a falling star. On one occasion, when we were in the beautiful gallery, at the back of the hotel, which overlooks the horse-shoe fall, we saw the booted leg of one of this graceful race protruded from the window which commands the view, while his person was thrown back in his chair, and his head enveloped in a cloud of tobacco smoke. I have repeatedly remarked, when it has happened to me to meet any ultra fine men among the wilder and more imposing scenes of our own land, that they throw off, in a great degree, their airs, and their "townliness," as some one cleverly calls these _simagrees_, as if ashamed to "play their fantastic tricks" before the god of nature, when so forcibly reminded of his presence; and more than once on these occasions I have been surprised to find how much intellect lurked behind the inane mask of fashion.
But in America the effect of fine scenery upon this class of persons is different, for it is exactly when amongst it, that the most strenuous efforts at elegant _nonchalance_ are perceptible among the young exquisites of the western world.
It is true that they have little leisure for the display of grace in the daily routine of commercial activity in which their lives are passed, and this certainly offers a satisfactory explanation of the fact above stated. Fortunately for our enjoyment, the solemn character of the scene was but little broken in upon by these gentry.
Every one who comes to Forsythe's Hotel (except Mrs.Bogle Corbet), walks to the shantee, writes their name in a book which is kept there, and, for the most part, descends by the spiral staircase which leads from the little platform before it, to the rocks below. Here they find another shantee, but a few yards from the entrance of that wondrous cavern which is formed by the falling flood on one side, and by the mighty rock over which it pours, on the other.
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