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Bill BrysonA Walk in the Woodsp. 292 |
Fashion was moving on...
Fashion was moving on. American holiday makers were discovering the seaside. The White Mountain hotels were a little too dull, a little too remote and expensive, for modern tastes. Worse, they had begun to attract the wrong sort of people - parvenus from Boston and New York. Finally, and above all, there was the automobile. The hotels were built on the assumption that visitors would come for a fortnight at least, but the motor care gave tourists a fickle mobility. In the 1924 edition of New England Highways and Byways from a Motor Car, the author gushed about the unrivalled splendour of the White Mountains - the tumbling cataracts of Franconia, the alabaster might of Washington, the secret charm of the little towns like Lincoln and Bethlehem - and encouraged visitors to give the mountains a full day and night. America was entering the age not just of the automobile but of the retarded attention span.