We emerged into the glistening thoroughfare in front of the vast
hotels, and I was struck, as I never fail to be, with its futile and
unmeaning splendour. I think there is nothing in our dun-coloured
civilisation prettier than that habit the ladies have in Saratoga of
going out on the street after dark in their bare heads. When I
first saw them wandering about so in the glitter of the shop-windows
and the fitful glare of the electrics everywhere, I thought they
must be some of those Spanish-Americans mistaking the warm, dry air
of the Northern night for that of their own latitudes; but when I
came up with them I could hear, if I could not see, that they were
of our own race. Those flat and shapeless tones could come through
the noses of no other. The beauty and the elegance were also ours,
and the fearless trust of circumstance. They sauntered up and down
before the gaunt, high porticoes of the hotels, as much at home as
they could have been in their own houses, and in much the same dress
as if they had been receiving there. The effect is one of
incomparable cheer, and is a promise of social brilliancy which
Saratoga no more keeps than she does that of her other
characteristic aspects; say the forenoon effect of the same
thoroughfare, with the piazzas banked with the hotel guests, and the
street full of the light equipages which seem peculiar to the place
passing and repassing, in the joyous sunlight and out of it, on the
leaf-flecked street. Even the public carriages of Saratoga have a
fresh, unjaded air; and to issue from the railway station in the
midst of those buoyant top-phaetons and surreys, with their light-
limbed horses, is to be thrilled by some such insensate expectation
of pleasure as fills the heart of a boy at his first sally into the
world. I always expect to find my lost youth waiting for me around
the corner of the United States Hotel, and I accuse myself of some