st fashionable drive is the new Boulevard to the Lake. Until
recently there have been few attractions beside the gay and brilliant
procession of carriages with their fair occupants and superb horses.

The drive is four miles in length, with a row of trees on each side
and one in the middle. Carriages pass down on one side and return on
the other.

No sooner have we turned by the Congress Spring than we are in a long
level reach of plains, dotted here and there with trees of pine and
fir, with a few distant hills of the Green Mountains rolling along the
horizon. It is a city gala at the hotel, but the five minutes were
magical, and, among the trees and rural scenes upon the road, we
remember the city and its life as a winter's dream. The vivid and
sudden contrast of this little drive with the hotel is one of the
pleasantest points of Saratoga life. In the excitement of the day it
is like stepping out, on a summer's evening, from the glaring
ball-room upon the cool and still piazza.

Near the outlet of the lake, on a bluff fifty feet above the surface
of the water, is

Moon's Lake House,

One of the features of Saratoga. There is a row of carriages at the
sheds--a select party is dining upon those choice trout, black bass
and young woodcock. The game dinners are good, the prices are high,
and the fried potatoes are noted all over the world. They have never
been successfully imitated. Are done up in papers and sold like
confectionery. The gayly dressed ladies indulge in beatific
expressives as they feast upon them.

[Illustration: DINING ROOM GRAND UNION.]

A capital story is told of Moon, the proprietor--indeed, he tells it
"himself." A few months after one of his "seasons" had closed he
chanced to be in Boston, where he hired a horse and buggy to drive out
to Chelsea. When he returned and called for his bill, the livery
stable keeper charged him about six times the usual price; and when an
explanation of such an extraordinary charge was demanded, replied,
"Mr. Moon. I presume you do not recognize me, but _last summer I took
dinner at your Lake House_." "Say not another word about it, my good
fellow," responded Moon in his turn, "here is your money."

Mr. Moon always has something nice _expressly for you_. When his
liability to loss in so doing is considered, his prices will not
appear so exorbitant.

Those who with Prior,

"Charmed with rural beauty
Chase fleeting pleasure through the