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1Author:  Landon Melville D. (Melville De Lancey) 1839-1910Add
 Title:  Saratoga in 1901  
 Published:  2003 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: OFF FOR SARATOGA 628EAF. Page 001. In-line Illustration. Images of a steamship, a train, and a couple on horses. “My dear Mr. Perkins, Congress Hall— Many of my aristocratic guests are grieved at the reports which have gained credence relative to the young gentlemen holding the young ladies' hands, evenings, on the hotel balconies. They also say that it is a very common thing for them to be seen smiling, and that dancing is not an unknown amusement among them. I now invite you to come and investigate for yourself. I assign for the use of yourself and wife a suite of cheerful front rooms overlooking the Catholic church and the graveyard, from the windows of which you will be able to see everything going on in our hotel. “I notice the paragraph in the Commercial. It is to be hoped you will not use names. I am an old, gray-haired man. I have lived a life of usefulness, and have been long honored as a member of the open Board of Brokers in New York. If I have been indiscreet in a thoughtless moment, I beg of you not to ruin everything by using my name in connection with any developments which you propose to make. Come and see me. I will remain in my room all day. “As God is my witness, you have been wrongly informed if you have heard anything detrimental to my character. I have been a vestryman of Grace Church for fifteen years. I am incapable of any such actions; besides, I have a devoted wife, and we are very fond of each other. I gave $25,000 to the Dudley Observatory and $50,000 to Cornell University, and have been a subscriber to the Commercial for seventeen years. I am incapable of such indiscretion. Whatever other church-members do, I am as pure as a new-born babe. Come and see me or give us your company at dinner. I am almost always at church or on the balcony with my wife. I saw one paragraphe en ze journal, ze Commourshal, about ze grande scandale of which you have accuse me. I write this as a friend of yours. You have been deceived. Some of our people came down to Congress Hall, and told these scandalous things out of spite. Baron Flourins has been a little exclusive. We have kept him entirely in our clique. The rest are mad because we have not introduced him. He is a dear duck of a man, as harmless as he is handsome. My dear Son Eli:—Your St. Alban's High Church letter was read with a great deal of interest here in our home church, but it made us all feel very bad. We are sorry that you have gone to the wicked city, where you so soon forget the simple teaching of the old Church of your childhood, and go headlong into these false, new-fangled notions about Ritualism. You ask us to board up the windows of the old church, bar out the sunlight, and burn flickering tallow candles. You ask us to tear out the old galleries of the church, to dismiss the girls from the choir, and dress the farm boys up in night-gowns, as you do in the city. You ask us to do away with good old Dr. Watts and sing opera songs selected by the organist of St. Alban's and arranged for the boy singers by the middle fiddler of a German band. You ask me to tear up our charts and maps, and decorate the church with blue and gold “hallelujahs” and gilded crosses. O my son, we cannot do it! We prefer to go on in the good old way. If God will not save us because we do not burn candles—if He will not forgive our sins because we look straight up to Heaven, and confess them directly to Him, then I fear we must perish. My dear boy, does not the Bible say: `I said I would confess my sins unto the Lord, and so THOU forgavest the wickedness of my sin?' Then do not, I pray you, my son, depend upon any forgiveness of sin which men may grant. Eli, if you are bad, do not expect any man to forgive you, but go right straight to your Maker, the way your mother taught you in your childhood. Suppose you confess your sins to a priest? My dear Mother:—Your letter has caused me much anxiety. After sleeping with it under my pillow, I went up yesterday, as you requested, to the Church of “St. Mary the Virgin,” on West Forty-fifth street, near Seventh avenue. Since my conversion to the High Church Ritualistic faith, my dear mother, I have usually attended Dr. Ewer's church. I love Dr. Ewer. “This is our new idea. All the girls have agreed to it. We call it the honorable dodge, and we are bound to put through every flirting fellow in New York on it. The idea is—but I'll tell you how I practiced it last night and you'll understand it better. But you know it is a secret, and of course you are to be trusted. I wish to ask your sympathy and advice on a subject that has long been weighing on my mind, and that is—flirting.
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