Litchfield enquirer., 1866-08-23
SARATOGA.

IE.-Lz-a {.t A+.i.t 'SAhAIOGA.
 The following description by correspon dent of the New York Tribune, of the state oi society at Saratoga. shows the superior wis dom of those city people who seek ont quiet country places for summer resort. .=s'.' ''
 And for the people, if the world has not grown honest it must have grown wise, for there are not thousand boarders in this great caravanserv which receives l,500. The year. fly visitors who came with the June roses to Congress Hall and the United States, aud only fitted when the long warm days days of An gust and the remembered music of the sea called them to Newport, come no longer. or if they come. they stay in quiet places and make no part of the stupid and showy pageant which every day repeats. The extortionate charges of the landlords. or the vulgarity of the crowds, have dismissed tn em to the study of the respectable but antediluvian science of geography, and they have fouEd sweet, un- known valleys in the country, quiet farm houses on lovely river banks, wild. cool haunts among the hills, cottages on the sea shore,- Our American fever of desire for our Ameri- can hotel-life seems little to have burned away. Perhaps, at a cost of many dollars and much discomfort, we are finding ont what a summer in the country ought to be and setting our faces % seek it.
 It is happy change, for the moral atmos- phere of these places is mephitic. From o'clock till II there streams into the dining room constant procession Of overdressed women, of fippant and loud-tongued men.- Indeed there is DO time when the men are not loud of tongue or the women over,dressed. They breakfast in robes fitted, by right of val ue, to the ball room, and by right of tasteful ness to the rag bag, Their heads look like the models of the London Hair dresser's conven- ton. They sweep down to the Spring in robes whose delicate borders bring back a fringe of mud or dust. They lounge in the parIors, or on the piazzas in costly and untidy array They disappear little while, and come down to dinner in raiment which dazzles, and, for the brief hours of dancing in the evening DO tongue shall describe their ruffles and founces and furbelows. Dress is not a capital offense certainly, and good dressing is cardinal virtue. But if Mrs Madion said that she could never forgive any young woman for not knowing that she looked as pretty as she could, nor for seeming to know it, she would have stored up such a burden of impla' cability as would have hudsred her entrance tc the kingdom. For there is no moment of the day when these damsels loose their conscious ness that they are looking as pretty as they can They are clothed upon with vanity aud self They smile and giggle and smirk in the full belief that all eyes are riveted upon them They bowl in the alleys, and are loud wher they mean to be gay. They play croquet on they mean to be sportive and arch. The. promenade in the psrlors, and wriggl' and twist when they mean to glide and swim They dance in the ballroom and mistake i'm pudence for bandinage, and noise for joYons ness, and seIfassertlon for selfpossession (There are girls here sweet as rose-buds an' modest as violets, but they are out of place il the mob of others, and one longs to gathe them up and set them down elsewhere befor these artificial airs can shrivel them. Thes fashionable young ladies audibly comment Q, the costumes of their neighbors, audibly snick er-I beg pardon of polite word, but it is ex actly what they do-at 8 toilet little less fashionable, at 8 complection little less fair at manners little more rustic than their own They paint and powder to degree whicl arouses in one desperate longing to get eac' and all of them under pump, and merciless ly force them to confess their honest skin, ant never more hide it. And worse than all, the, lace, till ones two haAds could span their tor tured waists. There is hardly 8 woman her under 40 who confesses to girdle "A inches long. If all the rest is folly, this is crime. What vitality can there be in frame so cruel ly maltreated and deformed? What wive and mothers can these silly, pitiable. mistak en creatures become? 4. .t- The mothers of these showy girls are plain quiet, sitting in corners, feeling themselve at loss. and silent in self defence. Thei daughters override them without mercy, goin
 where they choose, dining and flirting b.
 themselves, indebted to the parental purse flo money, but not to the parental presence flo protection, nor the parental wisdom for guie ance. s .......