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An International Episode by Henry James
page 22 of 114 (19%)
and flecked now and then with scintillating patches of foam.
A strong, fresh breeze came in through the curtainless casements
and prompted our young men to observe, generally, that it didn't
seem half a bad climate. They made other observations after they
had emerged from their rooms in pursuit of breakfast--a meal
of which they partook in a huge bare hall, where a hundred Negroes,
in white jackets, were shuffling about upon an uncarpeted floor;
where the flies were superabundant, and the tables and dishes covered
over with a strange, voluminous integument of coarse blue gauze;
and where several little boys and girls, who had risen late,
were seated in fastidious solitude at the morning repast.
These young persons had not the morning paper before them,
but they were engaged in languid perusal of the bill of fare.

This latter document was a great puzzle to our friends, who, on reflecting
that its bewildering categories had relation to breakfast alone,
had an uneasy prevision of an encyclopedic dinner list.
They found a great deal of entertainment at the hotel, an enormous
wooden structure, for the erection of which it seemed to them that
the virgin forests of the West must have been terribly deflowered.
It was perforated from end to end with immense bare corridors,
through which a strong draught was blowing--bearing along
wonderful figures of ladies in white morning dresses and clouds
of Valenciennes lace, who seemed to float down the long vistas
with expanded furbelows, like angels spreading their wings.
In front was a gigantic veranda, upon which an army might have encamped--
a vast wooden terrace, with a roof as lofty as the nave of a cathedral.
Here our young Englishmen enjoyed, as they supposed, a glimpse
of American society, which was distributed over the measureless
expanse in a variety of sedentary attitudes, and appeared to consist
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