cks and go a-fishing; but Saratoga never "lets up,"--if I
may be pardoned the phrase. Consequently you see much of crinoline and
little of character. You have to get at the human nature just as Thoreau
used to get at bird-nature and fish-nature and turtle-nature, by sitting
perfectly still in one place and waiting patiently till it comes out. You
see more of the reality of people in a single day's tramp than in twenty
days of guarded monotone. Now I cannot conceive of any reason why people
should go to Saratoga, except to see people. True, as a general thing,
they are the last objects you desire to see, when you are summering. But
if one has been cooped up in the house or blocked up in the country during
the nine months of our Northern winter, he may have a mighty hunger and
thirst, when he is thawed out, to see human faces and hear human voices;
but even then Saratoga is not the place to go to, on account of this very
artificialness. By artificial I do not mean deceitful. I saw nobody but
nice people there, smooth, kind, and polite. By artificial I mean wrought
up. You don't get at the heart of things. Artificialness spreads and spans
all with a crystal barrier,--invisible, but palpable. Nothing was left to
grow and go at its own sweet will. The very springs were paved and
pavilioned. For green fields and welling fountains and a possibility of
brooks, which one expects from the name, you found a Greek temple, and a
pleasure-ground, graded and graced and pathed like a cemetery, wherein
nymphs trod daintily in elaborate morning-costume. Everything took pattern
and was elaborate. Nothing was left to the imagination, the taste, the
curiosity. A bland, smooth, smiling surface baffled and blinded you, and
threatened profanity. Now profanity is wicked and vulgar; but if you
listen to the reeds next summer, I am not sure that you will not hear them
whispering, "Thunder!"

For the restorative qualities of Saratoga I have nothing to say. I was
well when I went there; nor did my experience ever furnish me with any
disease that I should consider worse than an intermittent attack of her
spring waters. But whatever it may do for the body, I do not believe it is
good for the soul. I do not believe that such places, such scenes, such a
fashion of life ever nourishes a vigorous womanhood or manhood. Taken
homoeopathically, it may be harmless; but if it become a habit, a
necessity, it must vitiate, enervate, destroy. Men can stand it, for