The home journal. (Winchester, Tenn.) 1858-188?, 1873-08-07
JOHN PAUL AT SARATOGA
Saratoga letter to New York Tribune.l
SARATOGA, July, %.

| saratoga letter TO New YORK Tribune.
SARATOGA, July, %.
81 wonder why people don't come to
Saratoga in June, when the hotels are
less crowded, and the thermometer and
prices are lowor?'
We were sitting on the broad piazza,
Mr.. Spriggins and l, with our heels
comfortably elevated above our heads.
It was ] that spoke.
"Reasons enough why not" replied
Mr.. Spriggins. In the first place, no.
body wants to come when there's no.
body here everybody comes for the
sake of seeing everybody. They don't
come to drink the waters, and if they
did they wouldn't come in June this
filling one's-self with salt water is bad
enough with the mercury at 80, but
who wants to pickle and repeat with it
down in the sixties? Man isn't mack
erel. The De Mulligans and Van
Murphys don't come in June because
La Rourkes and Van O'ToOles are not
coming till July, and the La Rourkes
and Van O'Tooles don't come in June
because it is understood that the De
Mulligans and Van Murphys won't be
here till July. The fact is, no man
with a family could get here earlier if
he wished to. There's Mrs. Spriggins,
for instance; she's been getting ready
ever since lent, and says she isn't fit to
be seen, now. And I don't think she
is, myself n woman of her age with all
those gewgaws on IA red thingumbob
over a yellow what-d'ye-call-it and the
rear struck out, made 'buffanty,' she
calls it, with steel spring ing-amy.
We've been married nigh on 80 year,
and I'm bald as q cobble-stone, bald as
an asphalt pavement, for that matter,
and YOU don't think she's bald or moth
ing? o no, guess not. Why, she's
been fixing for Saratoga these three
months past, and I've Clipped out
enough to set up grocery store, and
when we started, yesterday morning,
she said she wasn't half ready yet, and
that I was always hurrying her, and that
she had nothing to wear that would take
people down. 1 told her just to wear
it, then, and | guessed they'd be took
down considerably. Come here in June
A man with n wife at his back couldn't
get here in June, unless he started
to get ready in January, and then, with
six months at it, the chances are she'd
burst him so he couldn't come at ALL.
And, biting his cigar viciously, Mr..
Spriggins disappeared in the vicinity of
the Hathorn spring, stopping to kick at
a small boy who intercepted him with
'Saratoga-and- How-to-see-it,' for so
cents"
"The idea of seeing Saratoga for so
cents |" heard him mutter, low down
in his beard
Mr.. Spriggins has had several serious
conversations with me regarding his
wife's extravaganza indeed, married
men arevery apt to come to me for ad-
vice in that particular, knowing that
I've tanned several female "cruisers.
I tell him to decline to pony, refuse to
ante, object to pungle in short, to put
his foot down. He says he has on sew
eral occasions, but it has only end d in
his being obliged to put his hand down
deeper. You see Spriggins dabbles in
stocks, and the spring " stringency"
troubled him.
The hotels are not very full as yet,
though the proprietors say they have
quite as many guests as at cores
ponding period, last year. L could
scarcely have believed this had I not
looked over the statistics and found it
to be true not that 1 doubt the veraci-
ty of landlords generally; as a race,
they are veracious, and may be relied
on, though occasionally, at rare inter-
vals, you run across one who will lie.
For instance, have known some of the
fraternity to charge only half as much
as they agreed to, and give only twice
what they promised to; but, as before
remarked, these instances are rare, and
may be considered as the exceptions,
proving the rule to the contrary. II is
we'll, however, to take the statements of
hotel men with some grains Of allow
ance, for they are the most hopeful of
mortals, always seeing the future in