uld afford to do it for such a sum,
and they went away, as they said, well pleased.

It happened to be at the Kaaterskill House--it might have been at
the Grand, or the Overlook--that the young gentlemen in search of
information saw the Catskill season get under way. The phase of American
life is much the same at all these great caravansaries. It seems to the
writer, who has the greatest admiration for the military genius that can
feed and fight an army in the field, that not enough account is made
of the greater genius that can organize and carry on a great American
hotel, with a thousand or fifteen hundred guests, in a short, sharp,
and decisive campaign of two months, at the end of which the substantial
fruits of victory are in the hands of the landlord, and the guests are
allowed to depart with only their personal baggage and side-arms, but so
well pleased that they are inclined to renew the contest next year. This
is a triumph of mind over mind. It is not merely the organization and
the management of the army under the immediate command of the landlord,
the accumulation and distribution of supplies upon this mountain-top, in
the uncertainty whether the garrison on a given day will be one hundred
or one thousand, not merely the lodging, rationing and amusing of this
shifting host, but the satisfying of as many whims and prejudices
as there are people who leave home on purpose to grumble and enjoy
themselves in the exercise of a criticism they dare not indulge in their
own houses. Our friends had an opportunity of seeing the machinery set
in motion in one of these great establishments. Here was a vast balloon
structure, founded on a rock, but built in the air, and anchored with
cables, with towers and a high pillared veranda, capable, with its
annex, of lodging fifteen hundred people. The army of waiters and
chamber-maids, of bellboys, and scullions and porters and laundry-folk,
was arriving; the stalwart scrubbers were at work, the store-rooms were
filled, the big kitchen shone with its burnished coppers, and an array
of white-capped and aproned cooks stood in line under their chef; the
telegraph operator was waiting at her desk, the drug clerk was arranging
his bottles, the newspaper stand was furnished, the post-office was open
for letters. It needed but the arrival of a guest to set the machinery
in motion. And as soon as the guest came the band would be there to
launch him into the maddening gayety of the season.