fact that there is no fashion in Saratoga now but the fashion of the
ladies' dresses. These, I must say, are of the newest and
prettiest; the dressing of the women always strikes me there. My
companion was eager to recognise the splendours which she had heard
of, and I pointed out an old lady by the door, who sat there
displaying upon her vast person an assortment of gems and jewels
which she seemed as personally indifferent to as if she were a show-
window, and I was glad to have the girl shrink from the spectacle in
a kind of mute alarm. I tried to make her share my pleasure in a
group of Cubans--fat father, fat mother, fat daughter--who came down
the walk toward us in the halo of tropical tradition; but she had
not the taste for olives, and I saw that I failed to persuade her of
the aesthetic value of this alien element among us. She apparently
could do almost as little with some old figures of bygone beaus
spectrally revisiting the hotel haunts of their youth; but she was
charmed with the sylvan loveliness of that incomparable court. It
is, in fact, a park of the tall, slim Saratoga trees enclosed by the
quadrangle of the hotel, exquisitely kept, and with its acres of
greensward now showing their colour vividly in the light of the
electrics, which shone from all sides on the fountain flashing and
plashing in the midst. I said that here was that union of the
sylvan and the urban which was always the dream of art, and which
formed the delicate charm of pastoral poetry; and although I do not
think she quite grasped the notion, I saw that she had a pleasure in
the visible fact, and that was much better. Besides, she listened
very respectfully, and with no signs of being bored.

In the wait between the two parts of the concert I invited her to
walk around the court with me, and under the approving eye of Mrs.
March we made this expedition. It seemed to me that I could not do