he might as well take lodgings in the
water-wheel of a saw-mill. The uniformity and variety will be much the
same. It is all a noiseless kind of din, narrow and intense. There is
nothing in Saratoga nor of Saratoga to see or to hear or to feel. They
tell you of a lake. You jam into an omnibus and ride four miles. Then
you step into a cockle-shell and circumnavigate a pond, so small that
it almost makes you dizzy to sail around it. This is the lake,--a very
nice thing as far as it goes; but when it has to be constantly on duty
as the natural scenery of the whole surrounding country, it is putting
altogether too fine a point on it. The picturesque people will inform
you of an Indian encampment. You go to see it, thinking of the forest
primeval, and expecting to be transported back to tomahawks, scalps,
and forefathers but you return without them, and that is all. I never
heard of anybody's going anywhere. In fact there did not seem to be
anywhere to go. Any suggestion of mine to strike out into the
champaign was frowned down in the severest manner. As far as I could
see, nobody ever did anything. There never was any plan on foot.
Nothing was ever stirring. People sat on the piazza and sewed. They
went to the springs, and the springs are dreadful. They bubble up
salts and senna. I never knew anything that pretended to be water that
was half as bad. It has no one redeeming quality. It is bitter. It is
greasy. Every spring is worse than the last, whichever end you begin
at. They told apocryphal stories of people's drinking sixteen glasses
before breakfast; and yet it may have been true; for, if one could
bring himself to the point of drinking one glass of it, I should
suppose it would have taken such a force to enable him to do it that he
might go on drinking indefinitely, from the mere action of the original
impulse. I should think one dose of it would render a person
permanently indifferent to savors, and make him, like Mithridates,
poison-proof. Nevertheless, people go to the springs and drink. Then
they go to the bowling-alleys and bowl. In the evening, if you are
hilariously inclined, you can make the tour of the hotels. In one you
see a large and brilliantly lighted parlor, along the four sides of
which are women sitting, solemn and stately, in rows three deep, a man
dropped in here and there, about as thick as periods on a page, very
young or very old or in white cravats. A piano or a band or