Complete Project Gutenberg William Dean Howells Works

after tea, as we walked down the side-street that descended from our place to Br

s account," I retorted. "He has b

h at home as they could have been in their own houses, and in much the same dress as if they had been receiving there. The effect is one of incomparable cheer, and is a promise of social brilliancy which Saratoga no more keeps than she does that of her other characteristic aspects; say the forenoon effect of the same thoroughfare, with the piazzas banked with the hotel guests, and the street full of the light equipages which seem peculiar to the place passing and repassing, in the joyous sunlight and out of it, on the leaf-flecked street. Even the public carriages of Saratoga have a fresh, unjaded air; and to issue from the railway station in the midst of those buoyant top-phaetons and surreys, with their light- limbed horses, is to be thrilled by some such insensate expectation of pleasure as fills the heart of a boy at his first sally into the world. I always expect to find my lost youth waiting for me arou

while Deering joyously unfolded to me his plan of going home the next morning and leaving his wife and Miss Gage behind him. "They will stay in this hotel-they might as well-and I guess they can get along. My wife feels more acquainted s

that when a woman had spent all her own money on dress, it did her quite as much good to see other women spending theirs; and Deering said he guessed tha

an. Not that she seemed disposed to trifle with my grey hairs; I quickly saw that this would not be in character with her; but some sort of illusion was essential to her youth, and she could not help rejuvenating me. This was quite like the goddess she looked, I reflected, but otherwise she was not formida

s. These, I must say, are of the newest and prettiest; the dressing of the women always strikes me there. My companion was eager to recognise the splendours which she had heard of, and I pointed out an old lady by the door, who sat there displaying upon her vast person an assortment of gems and jewels which she seemed as personally indifferent to as if she were a show- window, and I was glad to have the girl shrink from the spectacle in a kind of mute alarm. I tried to make her share my pleasure in a group of Cubans-fat father, fat mother, fat daughter-who came down the walk toward us in the halo of tropical tradition; but she had not the taste for olives, and I saw that I failed to persuade her of the aesthetic value of this alien element among us. She apparently could do almost as little with som

thing, both for the satisfaction of my own curiosity and for the gratification of the autobiographical passion we all feel, than to lead her on to speak of herself. But she had little or nothing to say of her

the free spirit of rustic love-making. No doubt she knew that she was beautiful, and I began to think that it was not so much disappointment at finding Saratoga as indifferent as De Witt Point which gave her the effect of disgust I had first noted in her the night before. That might rather have come from the sense of feeling herself a helpless burden on her friends, and fro

not been to the lake, or the races, or the House of Pansa, or Mount M'Gregor, or Hilton Park, or even the outlying springs. It was the first time they had been inside of the Grand Union. "Then you have never seen the parlour?" I asked; and after the concert I boldly led the way into the parlour, and lavished its magnificence upon them as if I had been the host, or one of the hotel guests at the very least. I enjoyed the breathlessness of the Deerings so much, as we walked up and down the vast drawing-rooms accompanied by our images in the mirrors, that I insisted upon sitting down with them all upon some of the richest pieces of furniture; and

Mr. Deering, when he bade us goodbye as well as

emotion that suited her thanks, and Miss Gage with a tou