The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-09-14

person. And yet the restaurant loses money. Nothing but the choicest of meats and delicacies are served. Every thing is perfect. The chef. I am told, is paid five thousand dollars salary for three months service. The restaurant Is only open during July, August and sep- tember. Other servants are paid in like proportion. and I hear that the tins to the head waiter average from fifty to one hundred dollars a day during the racing meeting lasting throughout Au- gust.
 The club house at Saratoga differs from Monte Carlo in that ladies are not admitted to the room containing the gaming tables. The restaurant. however is the dinner resort of Saratoga for the fashionable people of society, and all people who desire the choicest of deliea- cies and are willing to pay well for them After dinner, husbands stroll Into the gaming rooms and as a rule, put the amount of the dinner check on the black or red of the double roulette table, The dinner then costs double price or noth- ing.
 cannot refrain from writing of the club house, because 1t is one of the feat ures of Saratoga-because there Is noth- ing else in America like it. The tax payers of Saratoga encourage it for the three summer months. It pays tremend- ous taxes and fees to the city, and no citizen of Saratoga is admitted within it's doors. It is entirely for visitors. Policemen are stationed outside and guards in dress suits at every door, If a citizen of Saratoga approaches, he is asked if he has a card; and is told that only members are admitted. In other words the club seems to be con. ducted for the wealthy who go to Sara toga for a few weeks of recreation re- gardless Of cost.
 
 The race meeting, of course. is the feature of Saratoga's summer. It is the prettiest race track in the country. Will liam c. Whitney, August Belmont and other millionaires have spent hints of money on it. The highest class of racing in the world is here. What we, in the south, term fortunes are won or lost in a single race. John W. Gates, the man who bought control of the Louisville & Nashville railroad iast spring and sold 1t to J. P. Morgan for several millions of profit, won fifty thousand dollars cn one race here last week. I saw westerner named Johnson, bet twenty thousand dol lars and lose 1t on one race the other day.
 Under the laws of New York, book making on races is not allowed. Yet more than an hundred boolz-malSers do business. You simply hand over your money and call out the horse you desire to bet upon, giving the bool1-maker the number of your admission ticket to the grounds. If you win, you call upon him later, present your admission ticket with the number on it, and he pays you. The racing association guarantees that all Of them will fulfill their verbal contracts.
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 The women, as well as tie men, bet Commissioners employed by the racing association are constantly walking through the grand stands with pro- grammes in their hands on which are marked the odds offered by the book makers. If a woman desires to bet she simply hands her money to one of these commissioners or pages, and tells him on which horse she desires to bet and he disappears after marking on her pro- lot nd 1,f I,a