i6o THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 
this spirit may animate not only the man of millions 
who comes to build a stately pleasure-house in these 
enchanting mountains, or place a group of palatial 
hotels on some choice eminence, but it may equally 
animate every one who owns a piece of land, be it 
ever so small. 
Nothing can stay the march of progress that has 
now begun. The old order is passing. Let the new 
order be better than the old. If the charming hoyden 
we call Picturesqueness must go, let her nobler sister 
Beauty take her place. And whatever may be the 
future history of Biltmore, if the mountains con- 
tinue to develop in the direction of sanitation, safety, 
and ever-increasing beauty, the honor belongs to her 
of having been the guiding star in the difficult pass- 
age from the old order to the new. May the pro- 
phecy which she seems to hold be fulfilled in the 
new era which appears, to those looking on, to be 
approaching these mountains of beauty radiantly, 
like the rising sun. 
