The daily citizen. [volume] (Asheville, N.C.) 1889-1890, 1889-09-06
THE CHIEF CHARMS
OF ASHEYILLE IN THE LAND
OF THE Sky.
The Pleasant Impressions the
queen City of the West Made
Upon the Mind of a Journalist
Pleasantly Expressed.

extracts from a closely printed letter
. four and a-half columns in the News m
e Courier Selection is difficult where all
r good. The first paragraph explain
very closely that uncertainty and COZ
trariety ofimpression made upon differ
l. ent observers, or at different towns:
c AsHEvILLE, N. C., September 2-Te
J. thousand artists within the past hal
century have, with distant approache
to success, endeavored with pen or pen
y cll or brush to reproduce the Cloudland
), and especially AsheviIe and its vicinity
c 1t would therefore be to pile Pelion upor
!. OSSa, or rather Beaucatchcr on Pisgah
{ to add anything to the volumes of rhap
, sodles that have already been written, oi
5 to the piles of pictures that have alread,
= been painted on this single, fascinating
5 subject. 1t is the land of which the illus
trlOuS Chateaubrand said on his return
to France that it could boast of noun.
tain scenery which it would repay Euro.
peans to cross the Atlantic to see. The
: obstacle in the way of success, once for
all, has been that the Asheville of to-day
is not the Ashcvlle of tomorrow; the
picturesquenCss of the environment as an
ever varying quantity; the special at
traction of this hour will be gone before
the artist has time to study it for repro
duCtiOn; i'll truth, the faith of nature
there changes more rapidly and abso.
lutcly than the positions of the hands on
the face OF the clock on the city square.
This is why the person who goes to
AShevlile tor the first time, ,nOtwithStand-
ing all the circulars, and novels, and
sketches. and newspaper screedS, finds
himself in a land Ofimagination. Even
the person who goes to Ashcyillc for the
second or third or fourth time is no bet
ter equipped than the pioneer as to what
he knows about the city and vicinage.
The impossibility, or rather the imprac-
ticabIity, of the conditions is, therefore,
the reason i'll chief why it is not now at
tempted to send the sunsets and sunrises
of the Blue Ridge by mail or to telegraph
the elusive pictures in the sky, or the
equally evanescent lights and shades in
the valleys or along the encircling hills
and mountains.
CHIEF CHARM.
The chief charm of Asheville for the
public is to be found in a consideration
which lies at the surface, though perhaps
but few have given it thought. Fully
nine-tenthS of those who frequent the
place in summer are from the larger
cities of the Union. Both men and wo-
men go there primarily for the fine
climate and with the hope of finding it a
place of personal and social interest.
Whether in the finest of the hotels or
boarding houses, life within doors no
matter how pleasant cannot be so
eternally. The country is sought as a
set off to the surfeit of domestic amuse-
mcnt which must pail on the taste of the
most confirmed society folks, and there is
no place in the world where it iseasier to
step from the city to the country than in
Ashcville. The rural places in the imme-
diate vicinity are pretty, and short trips
on the Western North Carolina Railroad
in either direction from Asheville, take
the tourist through the grandest of
mountain scenery. But apart from the
railway travel there are excursion parties
almost every day in the season to the
beauty spots in the neighborhood. A
short jaunt i'll wagon, a carriage, or a
cart, takes one from the city to the
widest of natural and primeval forest
and the same jaunt transports one back
into the heart of the city. In the city,
with the club and the other ways known
to men, the day never drags, as it might
do at a resort which is in name and in
fact only summer resort. The male
half of the fashionable world is not con-
tent to live where there are only fine
climate and cool temperature. The re-
sort must have sufficient interest in the
way of city life to make it at all endur-
able, and the more metropolitan are the
ways and means, the more likely will
that sort be to attract the moths and
butterflies of fashion. AshevilIe, as has
already been noted, is well equipped to
be the home of men, both of fashion and
wealth, and women, too. 1t has been
found that its climate ranks high as the
winter climate for Northern people, and
of recent years the Battery Park Hotel
has been crowded in that season. This
fact being established to the satisfaction
of the public, it is said that a great
many private individuals from the North
are prospecting for places whereon to
build. Many have already built houses
of their own. just as the wealthy have
done at Thomasville, Georgia.
NO TRICKS ON TRAVELLERS.
The cost of living at Asheville in the
summer is a very variable quantity, |
$50 per week The season has no effect |
on prices of anything. Hack fares,
carriage hire, etc, are the same all the
year around. There is no attempt to |
charge extraordinary prices because of
the visit of extraordinary people with
pockets. Extortion is not |
known. Competition protects every
body, and if it did not there is very ex-
cellcnt police force in the city. As a
general rule the traveller is rather taken
care of than otherwise.
THE HOTELS.
To speak about Asheville society and
omit the Battery Park hotel would be to |
shut ones eyes to the light on the hill"
The Hon. Georges. Bryan, who is spend
ing the summer here, summed up the
Battery Park hotels history when he |
said: This place is all of creation,
with Colonel Coke as the creator, and
our friend, ]. B. Steele, as the practical
force" The creation, however, has been
so frequently described that anything
said about it nowadays is totally un.
necessary.
Down at the Swannanoa, that other
fine hotel of Asheville, there has also been
a fine season. The Rawls Bros. were
known to Charlestonians long before
there was a Battery Park hotel, and they
keep up their reputation, notwithstand-
ing the powerful rival on the crest of
Battery Porter. Their hotel has been
full, and society there is just as gay as
sociable folks, and big lot of them, can
make it. At the Grand Central hotel
there is also a crowd, and of course, the
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