Life — June 17, 1897 — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

the audience that knows how to appreciate them. The author was a practical sailor, and is a trained writer, Moreover, he bas imagination, which shows itself finely in the title story—which is a gorgeous fancy of the haven to which all good ships go when they die. For realism at sea Mr. Spears gives us the ‘Story of a Second Mate,” which shows how a good education does not necessarily spoil a sailorman—either for love or war. The profanity is salty and picturesque. a Drock. FROM OTHER FELLOWS. HE'S the star of his existence, Is the girl of whom he sings; And he thinks she must be Saturn, For she has so many rings. LIFE’S PERSONALLY ‘CONDUCTED TOURS. SARATOGA, ARATOGA is a bandit’s haunt, concealed in the re- cesses of northern New York. While scientific data has —Strange to say— never been furnished by the Bureau of Ethnology at Washing- ton concerning them, we know from the travelers who have reached SES there that the inhabi- tants are a predatory tribe, descended from a colony of Niagara hackmen, ban- ished during an epidemic of reform for attempting to carry away the Falls. Saratoga to-day consists of a number of hotels and outhouses, a race track, numerous springs of decayed flavor and eccentric odor, a quantity of poker chips, Judge Hilton's park, and a lake remark- able for its mosquitoes and its facilities for suicide. The Hilton park is kept green throughout the year by means of rain, snow and other inexpensive meteor- ological devices, as a tender tribute to the memory of that amiable philanthropist, A. T. Stewart, whose dry goods shop the good Judge looked after until Wana- maker was ready to place it on his bar- gain counter. Saratoga first came into prominence as a watering place during the Revolution, when a number of dis- tinguished English officers and noblemen were warmly entertained there by Amer- ican hosts and induced to take water in several varieties. Many of these English gentry settled down at Saratoga perma- nently, and have clung to the soil ever since; yet Saratoga cannot be called English in its tone or manners. Later it developed into a fashionable resort, at an era when it was esteemed good form to sit on the hotel piazza with one's feet on the rail; but as the nation grew in ears and years it dropped behind, lagged, limped, languished, and be- came a bureau for mildewed livers and roulette. * . O-DAY from a social point of view Saratoga is mixed, though Judge Hihon heroically labored to raise the social standard by introducing colonies of refined and bacteriologically - free Russian Hebrews. Its haditués now are mostly the raw materials from which aristocrats are made: wealthy politicians, who make but do not keep books; gro- cers and plumbers in the first throes of affluence; mellow-voiced gentlemen with aggressive noses and dark ringlets, who speak the Zion language with their hands; persons with purple necks, who wear blue and red linen and talkshorse; and abnormally wide-awake men, who give tips in husky voices and take them in open hands. These, and the females of the genera, really have no social as- perities or aspirations—speaking in the Lenox sense; it is their children who develop the disease, and respect the Patriarchs more deeply than their sires did Abraham and Moses, The Sara- togaese go in for strong drink, strong food and highly-flavored persiflage, and affect an adornment of person rich in color and profligate in display. Only the haughty chieftains of the Congo region can equal the American lady in her refined passion for jewelry; but the hotel lady of Saratoga gleams with the splendor of a Chicago barroom, a splen- comicbooks.com