Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1884-08-03
LIFE ATloAe BRANCH.
Interesting Scenes at ths New
Jerusalem.
The Summer Resort Of the Jewel-Bedeeked
lSaeIits, the Fashionable Women
and the New York Broker Who
Seeks a new Excitement.

Long BRANCH N.i d. august NC
wbirl, the show, the glitter, the excitement,
the old-time splendors are all here, and
Long Branch again. lifts its head as the
most dazzling seaside resort on the planet,
Cape May is..dead, Newport is exclusive-and
reserved for cottagers from New York and
Boston, but Long Branch is cosmopolitan.
The whole wide world is welcomed here.
1t has cottage life and hotel life, and the
great races at Monmouth park and the
finest avenue for the display Of turnoutS
and everything is gigantic, and there isper-
petual noise and gayety all day and all night
long, too. Eech year more money is spent
at Long Branch, every season the prices
get higher, but the crowd gets bigger. On
Saturday nights all gay and rich New York
overAows into Long Branch, and the great
hotels are
Buzzing like Bee-hives.
1t is pre- eminently the resort of the rich
and from the champagne at 81 quart to
the carriage-driviug at 50 an hour, every
thing is calculated on a scale Of expense
suited to New York. And there is an i'm
mense deal of fun, too. The men who find
sitting around on hotel piazzas a tiresome
amusement at So day and extras don't
get tired of Long Branch, because they can
skip over to Monmouth beach at any hour OF
the day and see the finest racing Of the
season and get back to the West End or the
Rowland in time for the green turtle soup
served at dinner. Then, in the morning,
they can run up to New York and take q
look at the stock board and come down to
Long Branch again-or, if they want to
know what is doing at the stock exchange
there are regular brokers offices at Long
Branch where they can tell over the wires
exactly how things are going in New York.
So it will be seen that people don't come to
Long Branch for rest-they come tor eX-
citing pleasures, for kind Of mental dram
drinking, for the races, and for the green
turtle soup.
And
The Women,
bless their innocent hearts-think that
heaven itself will be nothing more than
kiEd of glori6ed and etherislized Long
Branch. There is no pretense OF drinking
water or bathing. as at other watering
places The hotels are so arranged that
the children and nurses are kent out Of
sight during the day, and the wives and
mothers and daughters have nothing on
earth to do except to dress and drive and
dine. Now, of course, this only brings
certain class Of women to Long Branch. A
woman of quiet tastes, or of active mind,
would 90 melancholy mad here in a mont.
But most women have neither quiet tastes
nor active minds, and the splendor and dis
play of great seaside resort suits them ex-
actly. They can wear half dozen differ
ent costumes day if they want to; they
can kill the odd moments when they are
not promenading up and down the piazzas
corridors, BY interviewing the manicure and
the hair-dresser; when afternoon comes
they can enter an open carriage and roll
leisurely up and down Ocean avenue-the
Longchamps of America; they can come
back to dine, and put on the yet most
gorgeous costume.of all, and parade slowly
up and down before the crowds of stock
brokers, men with nothing to do and
plenty of money to do it on, and all the mob
of merry-makers and pleasure-seekers the
late trains have brought down from New
York.
Dancing and Bathing
are both out of vogue. The grand costumes
of the period have sounded the death-knell
of dancing, A woman with one Of those
gorgeous creations on can no more dance
than she can turn a somersault. She can
not sit; she can hardly walk The story
goes of dazzling creature in contectiOn
of Worth's or Felix's, to whom her escort
saws: Won't you sit down. mo,
thanks The fact is, would ike to, but
my dressmaker forbids my sitting down in
this gown A bathing means a vast
amount of trouble and the making Of ones
toilet in dry goods box on the sand; so
only the children and the young men and
the old women battle The men are as
much disinclined to any pleasure which
costs them an effort as the women are. A
spin behind fast roadster, a good cigar,
and watching the women as they file past is
enough for them. And the Jews abound.
The name of Long Branch ought to be
changed to the New Jerusalem. They come
from New York and Boston-north, south,
east and west-but chiefly from the west.
The woods are full of them-at every turn
one meets the handsome, dark-browed
women, the hook-nosed, 6ejeweled men, and
the dark-skinned, ugly, wellbehaved chill
dren swarm like the seventeen year locusts.
The Jews are oftener than not handsome in
their prime, but who can express the ugli-
ness Of young Jew or an old Jew? And
Jew bahy-great Caesar! The most stun
ming toilets are worn By these lsraehtish
Re6accas, of course. The most magnif-
Gently dressed woman at the West End ho-
tel is tall, graceful, yellow-haired Jewess
from St. Louis, whose clothes are simply
astounding. The time and thought spent
on that woman's wardrobe make the mere
money it cost appear trife. As for
The Diamonds
these hook-nosed miilionaires wear it al
most puts ones eyes out to look at them.
The women wear them strung all along
the front of their gowns-their ears are
blazing with them-and as for their hands,
if one could chop one of them off at the
wrist, there would be loot enough in it to
stock flst-clasS hotel, crockery and all.
Every afternoon, about o'clock, one may
see big, handsome barouche with pair
of high-bred horses bowling along Ocean
avenue In it sits Gen. Grant, and lady
is usually with him-either Mrs. Grant or
his daughter, Mrs. Sartoris, or some visitor
at the Grant cottage. Gen. Grant looks
ten years older than this time last year.
His crutches, in corner of the carriage,
tell the story Of his lameness, and he yet
hobbies painfully-even with the assistance
of his erutches-when he walks. His stolid
and somewhat coarse face looks haggard
and hvid. Gen. Grant looks ike a man
who had seen good deal of trouble lately.
Mrs. Grant-as ugly, as croSs-eyed, and as
unpretending as ever-looks, too, as if she
had met with some crushing disaster-her
gay young blades of sons have brought the
hand of old Father timo down pretty hard
on their mother as well as their father. Yet
the Grants can ride in the carriage and
and have their splendid villa at Long
Branch, and James d. Fish can go to the
Casino in New York every night with q
party of ladies and drink chateau yquem
and chateau msrgsux at anything bottle,
while Ferdinand Ward, though in prison,
fares sumptuously every dsy-while the
Grant oradiforS walk haeause they have no