 | Saratoga in 1901 |  |
SARATOGA GOSSIP.
Saratoga, July 27.
Paragraph writing is
a birth of the 19th century.
It took a page
for a writer to express
an idea a hundred years
ago. Dr. Johnson never
turned around on less
than twelve pages.
“Gulliver's Travels,”
the “Wandering Jew”
and “Don Quixote”
would have been told
in a column, in 1872,
for the daily press.
The daily press killed
off all these long winded
fellows like Dr.
Johnson.
You will yet live to
see our daily newspapers made up of epigrams and paragraphs
illustrated by Cartoons which, as you see in our Ginx-Baby
chapter, strike the heart of the reader as a streak of lightning
penetrates the heart of a hay-stack. Don't they?
SARATOGA.
The three hotels—the Union, Columbian, and Congress—
have about 2, 000 guests to-day. The White Mountain, Lake
George, and Richfield tourists are getting in to be present at the
culmination of the great social carnival, about the 1st of August.
The August races commence on the 16th, and last six days.
LEVITY AT THE CLARENDON.
Two giddy young people arose from their chairs at the
Clarendon last evening, and, to the amazement of everybody,
commenced waltzing around the room! They have been expelled
from the house. (see cartoon).
JOKE.
The Congress Hall guests were talking about patriotic music
this evening, when some one suggested that Bernstein be requested
to play the national airs. A lady in the house, whose
husband loves her more before people than elsewhere, said she
didn't want “Hail Columbia” with the rest, as her husband
frequently gave her hail Columbia up-stairs!
Every body was frightened
BY THUNDER!
yesterday. The Long Branch and Cape May storm arrived
here at three P. M. The sky darkened—the clouds hung over
Saratoga like a funeral pall, then broke in a flood of rain, driving
in the music. The gas was lighted and the Congress Hall dining-room
became an evening dress promenade.
GROESBECK ON THE WAR PATH.
Fernando Wood told the following anecdote of W. S. Groesbeck,
Mr. Dana's candidate for the Presidency, to a group of
New Yorkers, to-day: “It happened in Paris in '67. A daughter
of Mr. John F. Pennman became engaged to a Parisian Count.
A short time before the nuptials Mr. Pennman settled $10,000
annuity on the Count. Soon after, and before the wedding took
place, the young lady died, when the miserable Count commenced
a suit in the French Courts for the annuity.
“Do you know what I would do with that fellow, Mr. Wood,
asked the Chesterfieldian Groesbeck?
“No. What?” asked Fernando.
“I'd hang the d—d scoundrel up by the heels and cut his d—d
ears off!” This was considered a very live remark for the High
Church Groesbeck, who never got fully awake again till he made
a speech against the impeachment of Andy Johnson.
SELF-MADE MEN.
One of those rich no-account fellows, whose father is a stockholder
in the Academy of Music, and who himself is a social and
financial parasite, to-day abused a man because he was a self-made
man. We are much too prone to over-estimate self-made
men, but many gentle youths under-estimate them. We admire
self-made men, but not comparatively—as every body admires
little George who plays the piano and sings here so nicely for a
little boy.—They are such great men to make themselves—and
then, as we pass by the brown stone front to look at the Irishman's
house, so we forget the Spooners, Everetts, the Humboldts
and Keplers, to look at the disjointed frames of such really great
the shoemaker. Now Mr. Greeley is a great man, but how much
greater would he have been if in boyhood he had studied in the
school with Everett, demonstrating the XXXVI. of Euclid, or reading
the philosophy of Aristotle, in the ancient Greek, instead of
cultivating his mind with clumsy symbols of tenant-house misery?
Why Horace Greeley would have shook the globe! What is the
sense of always talking about blood in horses and despising it
in man? I don't mean sham blood which runs to heraldry, coats of
arms with silly hog-Latin mottoes, crests of hippogriffs and
libbards and heraldic monograms, small clothes generally—but I
mean the man whose father and grand-father were square up and
down men, and who looked after the son, watered him with pure
water, fed him with good intellectual moral and material food,
washed him, rubbed him down and trained his muscles as old
John Harper trained his blooded horse Longfellow!
Old John has got his woods full of blooded horses, and he
knows the sire and dam of every one, and I'll bet he'll get more
racers in his drove of colts to run off with the Mommouth stakes
than you will find among a promiscuous drove of self-raised colts
which struggle up to mature horse-hood.
MADE HIMSELF.
Henry Clews, our young bald-headed banker, boasts of being
a self-made man.
One day in conversation with Mr. Travers, Mr. C. remarked:
“Yes, sir, I am proud of being a self-made man—I am proud
of being the architect of my own fortune. I am—”
“W-what! y-you a self-m-made man, Mr. Clews? asked Mr. T.”
“Yes, sir, I made myself from almost nothing” replied the
banker standing promptly up to his full height.
“T-then while you were making yourself, Henry, why d-did'nt
you p-put a little m-m-more hair on the t-top of your head?”
Mr. Clews has since bought a wig.
“POKER”
Many distinguished men like Simeon Cameron, General
Schenck, General Nye and Senator Chandler, take a quiet game of
“poker” occasionally for amusement. It relaxes the tired brain
and is a relief from the fatigues of literary or forensic labor.
Even Webster and Clay and Calhoun played “poker.”
Judge Bixly tells this “poker” joke on Senator Robertson and
the Hon. Mr. W— to-day.
The two Honorables are in the habit of resorting to the Senator's
room daily to take a quiet social game of American “poker.”
and just across the corner was the room occupied by two witty
New York married ladies, who could see the Senator's hand.
William dealt good hands, and both commenced betting with a
good deal of vim. “One—two hundred better!” said Senator
Robinson. William was just about to call him, when “Three
queens!” shouted one of the ladies. The Hon. William saved
his $200, but the blinds have never been open since!
THE FIRST MASQUERADE.
The first masquerade at Congress Hall came off last evening.
The room committee wore rich and costly dresses, and names were
printed on the card as follows:—
Each gentleman carried out his character during the evening:
| The Bull Fighter | F. H. Lord. |
| Earl of Leicester | Dr. Fred. A. Anderson. |
| Fra Diavolo | C. Anderson. |
| Henry IV | R. H Southgate. |
| Charles II | W. B. Gage |
| Highland Gentleman | E. H. Stevens. |
| Francis I | Melville D. Landon. |
| Spanish Cavalier | W. B. Wilshire. |
| Louis XIV | Henry W. Raymond. |
| Prince Hal | E. H. Rogers, Jr. |
| His Satanic Majesty | James Aveille. |
| French Guard | James Prendergast. |
A gentleman from Philadelphia took the part of Satan at the
bal masqué. A High Church Quaker lady, at the Clarendon,
says “he did it devilish well!” While Mr. Saxe says he “looked
like the Devil!”
MASQUERADE GENERALLY.
The masquerade fever exhausted itself last evening; but the
gilded European exotic went out in a blaze of
glory. We of the North are too matter-of-fact—too
civilized to appreciate the bal masqué.
It is a relic of barbarism. The custom thrives
better at the White Sulphur or at other provincial
border watering-places, where the
people have for a long time run to tournaments
and other fantastic ceremonies. As the
tournament died among sensible people with
Don Quixote, the Knight of La Mancha, so
the bal masqué ought to die with the Venetian
carnival. We see grand masquerades in
Moscow and St. Petersburg, but the Russians
are only half civilized. It is there, in Moscow,
where the Tartar hordes have left the traces of Asiatic barbarism,
that French or German extravaganzas culminate into gaudy
Eastern pageants.
BROWN'S BOYS.
A gentleman to-day said Fejee Islanders were called Cannibals
because they live off of other people.
“Then I have three Cannibals at my house on Madison
Avenue,” said a rich old father-in-law, “for I have three Browns-Boy
sons-in-law, who live off of me.
THE PIRATES!
The custom of the
young gentlemen holding
the young ladies'
hands on the Clarendon
balcony during the
evening, instead of
dancing in
the parlor,
has been
interfered
with by the
old ladies,
who keep
a close
watch nightly from the second-story
windows. One good old
Quakerlady, from Philadelphia,
sits up all night. She says
she's bound to be aristocratic,
if it half kills her.
It is thus that ravenous
wolves in sheep's clothing are
ever on the alert for the innocent
and unwary.
And—he sighed—and she sighed:
Said she, “You are my darling Luke.”
And—he—look-ed—and—she—looked:
Said he, “My darling wilt thou?”
And—she wilted—and—he wilted.
| Saratoga in 1901 | |