BILTMORE AND THE NEW ERA 159 
and the many people of culture who within the last 
twenty years have come to the mountains to make 
their homes, that are the hope, one might almost say 
the prophecy, of the future. For as a consequence of 
the new prosperity of the South, throngs of people 
are pouring into the mountains. The bewildering 
rapidity with which cotton-mills have sprung up all 
through the cotton country has directly and indi- 
rectly put money into the pockets of thousands of 
people who never before had been able to spend a 
summer at the mountains; and it is these people 
who, but for the check and educating power of other 
influences, would put upon the new development of 
the mountains the hopeless stamp of mediocrity 
which it would take generations to efface. The old- 
time picturesque house of the mountaineer is bound 
to go. It cannot be modified to suit the demands of 
modern comfort. The ugly structure that, among 
the recently prosperous and ignorant classes, is so 
prone to succeed it, has already been anticipated 
by a style of architecture simple, pleasing, and in 
harmony with the scenery, showing every one that 
it is as easy to build an attractive house as an ugly 
one. 
It is the highest type of progress that one wishes 
to see at work in the mountains, the spirit that trans- 
forms by enhancing instead of diminishing beauty, 
the spirit that converts steep, rough, and dangerous 
roads into winding highways, and that banishes the 
unnecessary scourge of fever that each summer in- 
vades the farthest recesses of the mountains. And 
