University of Virginia Library

THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL.

It was the last week of September, and the keeper
of “Congress hall” stood on his deserted colonnade.
The dusty street of Saratoga was asleep in the stillness
of village afternoon. The whittlings of the stage-runners
at the corners, and around the leaning posts,
were fading into dingy undistinguishableness. Stiff
and dry hung the slop-cloths at the door of the livery
stable, and drearily clean was doorway and stall.
“The season” was over.

“Well, Mr. B—!” said the Boniface of the
great caravansary, to a gentlemanly-looking invalid,
crossing over from the village tavern on his way to
Congress spring, “this looks like the end of it! A
slimmish season, though, Mr. B—! `Gad, things
isn't as they used to be in your time! Three months
we used to have of it, in them days, and the same
people coming and going all summer, and folks' own
horses, and all the ladies drinking champagne! And
every `hop' was as good as a ball, and a ball—when do
you ever see such balls now-a-days? Why, here's
all my best wines in the cellar; and as to beauty—
pooh!—they're done coming here, any how, are the
belles, such as belles was!”

“You may say that, mine host, you may say that!”
replied the damaged Corydon, leaning heavily on his
cane,—“what—they're all gone, now, eh—nobody at
the `United States?”'

“Not a soul—and here's weather like August!—
capital weather for young ladies to walk out evenings,
and, for a drive to Barheight's—nothing like it! It's
a sin, I say, to pass such weather in the city! Why
shouldn't they come to the springs in the Indian
summer, Mr. B—?”

Coming events seemed to have cast their shadows
before. As Boniface turned his eyes instinctively
toward the sand hill, whose cloud of dust was the
precursor of new pilgrims to the waters, and the sign
for the black boy to ring the bell of arrival, behold, on
its summit, gleaming through the nebulous pyramid,
like a lobster through the steam of the fisherman's
pot, one of the red coaches of “the People's Line.”

And another!

And another!

And another!

Down the sandy descent came the first, while the
driver's horn, intermittent with the crack of his whip,
set to bobbing every pine cone of the adjacent wilderness.

“Prrr—ru—te—too—toot—pash!—crack!—snap!
—prrrr—r—rut—rut—rrut!! G'lang!—Hip!”

Boniface laid his hand on the pull of the porter's
bell, but the thought flashed through his mind that
he might have been dreaming—was he awake?

And, marvel upon wonder!—a horn of arrival from
the other end of the village! And as he turned his
eyes in that direction, he saw the dingier turnouts
from Lake Sacrament—extras, wagons—every variety
of rattletrap conveyance—pouring in like an Irish
funeral on the return, and making (oh, climax more
satisfactory!) straight, all, for Congress Hall!

Events now grew precipitate—

Ladies were helped out with green veils—parasols
and baskets were handed after them—baggage was
chalked and distributed—(and parasols, baskets, and
baggage, be it noted, were all of the complexion that
innkeepers love, the indefinable look which betrays
the owner's addictedness to extras)—and now there
was ringing of bells; and there were orders for the
woodcocks to be dressed with pork chemises, and for
the champagne to be iced, the sherry not—and
through the arid corridors of Congress hall floated
a delicious toilet air of cold cream and lavender—and
ladies' maids came down to press out white dresses,
while the cook heated the curling irons—and up and
down the stairs flitted, with the blest confusion of
other days, boots and ieed sangarees, hot water, towels,
and mint-juleps—all delightful, but all incomprehensible!
Was the summer encored, or had the Jews
gone back to Jerusalem? To the keeper of Congress
hall the restoration of the millenium would have
been a rush-light to this second advent of fun-and-fashion-dom!

Thus far we have looked through the eyes of the
person (pocket-ually speaking) most interested in the
singular event we wished to describe. Let us now
(tea being over, and your astonishment having had
time to breathe) take the devil's place at the elbow of
the invalided dandy beforementioned, and follow him
over to Congress Hall. It was a mild night and, as I
said before (or meant to, if I did not), August, having
been prematurely cut off by his raining successor,
seemed up again, like Hamlet's governor, and bent on
walking out his time.

Rice (you remember Rice—famous for his lemonades
with a corrective)—Rice, having nearly ignited
his forefinger with charging wines at dinner, was out
to cool on the colonnade, and B—, not strong
enough to stand about, drew a chair near the drawing-room
window, and begged the rosy barkeeper to throw
what light he could upon this multitudinous apparition.
Rice could only feed the fire of his wonder
with the fuel of additional circumstances. Coaches
had been arriving from every direction till the house
was full. The departed black band had been stopped
at Albany, and sent back. There seemed no married
people in the party—at least, judging by dress and
flirtation. Here and there a belle, a little on the
wane, but all most juvenescent in gayety, and (Rice

thought) handsomer girls than had been at Congress
hall since the days of the Albany regency (the regency
of beauty), ten years ago! Indeed, it struck Rice
that he had seen the faces of these lovely girls before,
though they whom he thought they resembled had
long since gone off the stage—grandmothers, some of
them, now!

Rice had been told, also, that there was an extraordinary
and overwhelming arrival of children and
nurses at the Pavilion Hotel, but he thought the
report smelt rather like a jealous figment of the
Pavilioners. Odd, if true—that's all!

Mr. B—had taken his seat on the colonnade, as
Shakspere expresses it, “about cock-shut time”—
twilight—and in the darkness made visible of the
rooms within, he could only distinguish the outline of
some very exquisite, and exquisitely plump figures
gliding to and fro, winged, each one, with a pair of
rather stoutish, but most attentive admirers. As the
curfew hour stole away, however, the ladies stole away
with it, to dress; and at ten o'clock the sudden outbreak
of the full band in a mazurka, drew Mr.
B—'s attention to the dining-room frontage of the
colonnade, and, moving his chair to one of the windows,
the cockles of his heart warmed to see the
orchestra in its glory of old—thirteen black Orpheuses
perched on a throne of dining-tables, and the black
veins on their shining temples strained to the crack
of mortality with their zealous execution. The
waiters, meantime, were lighting the tin Briareus (that
spermaciti monster so destructive to broadcloth), and
the side-sconces and stand-lamps, and presently a
blaze of light flooded the dusty evergreens of the
façade, and nothing was wanting but some fashionable
Curtius to plunge first into the void—some adventurous
Benton, “to set the ball in motion.”

Wrapped carefully from the night-air in his cloak
and belcher, B— sat, looking earnestly into the
room, and to his excited senses there seemed, about
all this supplement to the summer's gayety, a weird
mysteriousness, an atmosphere of magic, which was
observable, he thought, even in the burning of the
candles! And as to Johnson, the sable leader of the
band—“God's-my-life,” as Bottom says, how like a
tormented fiend writhed the cremona betwixt his chin
and white waistcoat! Such music, from instruments
so vexed, had never split the ears of the Saratoga
groundlings since the rule of Saint Dominick (in
whose hands even wine sparkled to song)—no, not
since the golden age of the Springs, when that lord of
harmony and the nabobs of lower Broadway made, of
Congress hall, a paradise for the unmarried? Was
Johnson bewitched? Was Congress hall repossessed
by the spirits of the past? If ever Mr. B—, sitting
in other years on that resounding colonnade, had felt
the magnetic atmosphere of people he knew to be up
stairs, he felt it now! If ever he had been contented,
knowing that certain bright creatures would presently
glide into the visual radius of black Johnson, he felt
contented, inexplicably, from the same cause now—
expecting, as if such music could only be their herald,
the entrance of the same bright creatures, no older,
and as bright after years of matrimony. And now and
then B— pressed his hand to his head—for he was
not quite sure that he might not be a little wandering
in his mind.

But suddenly the band struck up a march! The
first bar was played through, and B— looked at
the door, sighing that this sweet hallucination—this
waking dream of other days—was now to be scattered
by reality He could have filliped that mercenary
Ethiopian on the nose for playing such music to such
falling off from the past as he now looked to see
enter.

A lady crossed the threshold on a gentleman's arm.

“Ha! ha!” said B—, trying with a wild effort to
laugh, and pinching his arm into a blood-blister,
“come—this is too good! Helen K—! oh, no!
Not quite crazy yet, I hope—not so far gone yet!
Yet it is! I swear it is! And not changed either!
Beautiful as ever, by all that is wonderful! Psha!
I'll not be mad! Rice!—are you there? Why, who
are these coming after her? Julia L—! Anna
K—, and my friend Fanny! The D—s! The
M—s! Nay, I'm dreaming, silly fool that I am!
I'll call for a light! Waiter!! Where the devil's
the bell?”

And as poor B— insisted on finding himself in
bed, reached out his hand to find the bell-pull, one of
the waiters of Congress hall came to his summons.
The gentleman wanted nothing, and the waiter
thought he had cried out in his nap; and rather
embarrassed to explain his wants, but still uncovinced
of his freedom from dream-land, B— drew his hat
over his eyes, and his cloak around him, and screwed
up his courage to look again into the enchanted ball-room.

The quadrilles were formed, and the lady at the
head of the first set was spreading her skirts for the
avant-deux. She was a tall woman, superbly handsome,
and moved with the grace of a frigate at sea
with a nine-knot breeze. Eyes capable of taking in
lodgers (hearts, that is to say) of any and every calibre
and quality, a bust for a Cornelia, a shape all love and
lightness, and a smile like a temptation of Eblis—
there she was—and there were fifty like her—not like
her, exactly, either, but of her constellation—belles,
every one of them, who will be remembered by old
men, and used for the disparagement of degenerated
younglings—splendid women of Mr. B—'s time,
and of the palmy time of Congress hall—

Out on your staring and unsheltered lantern of
brick—your “United States hotel,” stiff, modern, and
promiscuous! Who ever passed a comfortable hour
in its glaring cross-lights, or breathed a gentle sentiment
in its unsubdued air and townish open-to-dustiness!
What is it to the leafy dimness, the cool shadows,
the perpetual and pensive demi-jour—what to the
ten thousand associations—of Congress hall! Who
has not lost a heart (or two) on the boards of that
primitive wilderness of a colonnade! Whose first
adorations, whose sighs, hopes, strategies, and flirtations,
are not ground into that warped and slipper-polished
floor, like heartache and avarice into the
bricks of Wall street! Lord bless you, madam!
don't desert old Congress hall! We have done going
to the Springs—(we)—and wouldn't go there again
for anything, but a good price for a pang—(that is,
except to see such a sight as we are describing)—but
we can not bear, in our midsummer flit through the
Astor, to see charming girls bound for Saratoga, and
hear no talk of Congress hall! What! no lounge
on those proposal sofas—no pluck at the bright green
leaves of those luxuriant creepers while listening to
“the voice of the charmer”—no dawdle on the steps
to the spring (mamma gone on before)—no hunting
for that glow-worm in the shrubbery by the music-room—no
swing—no billiards—no morning gossips
with the few privileged beaux admitted to the upstairs
entry, ladies' wing?

than assist or mingle in such ungrateful forgetfulness
of pleasure-land! But what do we with a digression
in a ghost-story?

The ball went on. Champagne of the “exploded”
color (pink) was freely circulated between the dances—
(rosy wine suited to the bright days when all things
were tinted rose)—and wit, exploded, too, in these

leaden times, went round with the wine; and as a
glass of the bright vintage was handed up to old
Johnson, B— stretched his neck over the window-sill
in an agony of expectation, confident that the
black ghost, if ghost he were, would fail to recognise
the leaders of fashion, as he was wont of old, and to
bow respectfully to them before drinking in their presence.
Oh, murder! not he! Down went his black
poll to the music-stand, and up, and down again, and
at every dip, the white roller of that unctuous eye was
brought to bear upon some well-remembered star of
the ascendant! He saw them as B— did! He
was not playing to an unrecognised company of late-comers
to Saratoga—anybodies from any place! He,
the unimaginative African, believed evidently that
they were there in flesh—Helen, the glorious, and all
her fair troop of contemporaries!—and that with them
had come back their old lovers, the gay and gallant
Lotharios of the time of Johnson's first blushing
honors of renown! The big drops of agonized horror
and incredulity rolled off the forehead of Mr. B—!

But suddenly the waiters radiated to the side-doors,
and with the celestial felicity of star-rising and morning-breaking,
a waltz was found playing in the ears
of the revellers! Perfect, yet when it did begin!
Waltzed every brain and vein, waltzed every swimming
eye within the reach of its magic vibrations!
Gently away floated couple after couple, and as they
circled round to his point of observation, B— could
have called every waltzer by name—but his heart was
in his throat, but his eyeballs were hot with the stony
immovableness of his long gazing.

Another change in the music! Spirits of bedevilment!
could not that waltz have been spared! Boniface
stood waltzing his head from shoulder to shoulder
—Rice twirled the head-chambermaid in the entry—
the black and white boys spun round on the colonnade
—the wall-flowers in the ball-room crowded their
chairs to the wall—the candles flared embracingly—
ghosts or no ghosts, dream or hallucination, B—
could endure no more! He flung off his cloak and
hat, and jumped in at the window. The divine Emily
C— had that moment risen from tying her shoe.
With a nod to her partner, and a smile to herself,
B— encircled her round waist, and away he flew
like Ariel, light on the toe, but his face pallid and
wild, and his emaciated legs playing like sticks in his
unfilled trousers. Twice he made the circuit of the
room, exciting apparently less surprise than pleasure
by his sudden appearance; then, with a wavering halt,
and his hand laid tremulously to his forehead, he flew
at the hall-door at a tangent, and rushing through
servants and spectators, dashed across the portico, and
disappeared in the darkness! A fortnight's brain-fever
deprived him of the opportunity of repeating this remarkable
flourish, and his subsequent sanity was established
through some critical hazard.

There was some inquiry at supper about “old
B—,” but the lady who waltzed with him knew
as little of his coming and going as the managers;
and, by one belle, who had been at some trouble in
other days to quench his ardor, it was solemnly believed
to be his persevering apparition.

The next day there was a drive and dinner at Bar
height's, and back in time for ball and supper; and
the day after there was a most hilarious and memorable
fishing-party to Saratoga lake, and all back again
in high force for the ball and supper; and so like a
long gala-day, like a short summer carnival, all frolic,
sped the week away. Boniface, by the third day, had
rallied his recollections, and with many a scrape and
compliment, he renewed his acquaintance with the
belles and beaux of a brighter period of beauty and
gallantry. And if there was any mystery remaining
in the old functionary's mind as to the identity and
miracle of their presence and reunion, it was on the
one point of the ladies' unfaded loveliness—for, saving
a half inch aggregation in the waist, which was rather
an improvement than otherwise, and a little more fulness
in the bust, which was a most embellishing difference,
the ten years that had gone over them had
made no mark on the lady portion of his guests; and
as to the gentlemen—but that is neither here nor there.
They were “men of mark,” young or old, and their
wear and tear is, as Flute says, “a thing of naught.”

It was revealed by the keeper of the Pavilion, after
the departure of the late-come revellers of Congress
hall, that there had been constant and secret visitations
by the belles of the latter sojourn, to the numerous
infantine lodgers of the former. Such a troop
of babies and boys, and all so lovely, had seldom
gladdened even the eyes of angels, out of the cherubic
choir (let alone the Saratoga Pavilion), and though,
in their white dresses and rose-buds, the belles afore
spoken of looked like beautiful elder sisters to those
motherless younglings, yet when they came in, mothers
confessed, on the morning of departure, openly
to superintend the preparations for travel, they had so
put off the untroubled maiden look from their countenances,
and so put on the indescribable growing-old-iness
of married life in their dress, that, to the
eye of an observer, they might well have passed for
the mothers of the girls they had themselves seemed
to be, the day before, only.

Who devised, planned, and brought about, this practical
comment on the needlessness of the American
haste to be old, we are not at liberty to mention. The
reader will have surmised, however, that it was some
one who had observed the more enduring quality of
beauty in other lands, and on returning to his own,
looked in vain for those who, by every law of nature,
should be still embellishing the society of which he
had left them the budding flower and ornament. To
get them together again, only with their contemporaries,
in one of their familiar haunts of pleasure—to
suggest the exclusion of everything but youthfulness
in dress, amusement, and occupation—to bring to
meet them their old admirers, married like themselves,
but entering the field once more for their smiles against
their rejuvenescent husbands—to array them as belles
again, and see whether it was any falling off in beauty
or the power of pleasing which had driven them from
their prominent places in social life—this was the obvious
best way of doing his immediate circles of
friends the service his feelings exacted of him; the
only way, indeed, of convincing these bright creatures
that they had far anticipated the fading hour of bloom
and youthfulness. Pensez-y!