e a relief.

LXXV.

SARATOGA TRUNKS.

Dear sisters:--Do you know where Long Branch is? I reckon not, owing to
its being a sandy slip, cut off from the edge of New Jersey, and not
much of a place over two months in the year; it hasn't got into the
geography books as a school item of importance, though, if a President
or two more should settle in there, it might lift it a notch higher.

But in duty bound, I am here in pursuit of my great social mission, and
can tell you, confidently, that Long Branch is a great watering-place,
brim full, and running over with fashion once a year, when the hot sun
drives all the upper-crust people out of New York, and everybody that is
anybody feels the want of extra washing.

When I speak of watering-places, do not understand that I mean a tavern
corner with some brook emptying itself into a huge wooden trough for
horses to drink out of. Of course, that is our Vermont idea; with a
willow-tree shading the trough. That, no doubt, gave the name here. But
the two things are no more alike than trout streams are like the broad
ocean.

I ask no questions, always finding it best to wait and watch, and learn
for myself; but when Dempster asked me if I would like to go down to a
watering-place in New Jersey, I asked him if there wasn't Croton Water
enough in the pipes for all the horses they kept.

Dempster laughed, and said it was salt water he was thinking of, and
asked, right on that, if I had got a bathing-dress?

"A bathing-dress," says I. "Goodness, gracious, no. When I bathe, as a
general thing, I--that is--I take off--"

Here I broke off, and felt myself turning red. I declare, Cousin
Dempster has a way of putting things upon you for explanation, which I,
as a single lady, with expectations, of course, find embarrassing.

Just then, E. E. came in, all of a flurry about her trunks; she wanted
more and must have 'em, she said. Seventeen Saratoga trunks, and a
basket or two, were just nothing to what she needed. Dempster must go
out and get half a dozen more. Why, her fluted skirts alone filled three
trunks.

Dempster went. To own the truth, he is an obedient creature as ever wore
coat and--well pocket-handkerchiefs. It wasn't long before a lot of
trunks--big enough for country school-houses--were piled into the hall,
and then Cousin E. E. began to revel. Her bed was crowded and loaded
down with skirts, dresses, shawls, bonnets, round hats, broad flats,
peaked caps. You n