Page:A hairdresser's experience in high life.djvu/63

Rh if they do, they don't know how to behave themslevesthemselves [sic] as they ought; they are generally a very quarrelsome set of people, whose domestic fights are proverbial. But the foreign ladies are mostly well educated and accomplished; while their husbands are jealous and eat garlic. The ladies appreciate the true nobility of our American gentlemen, who do not eat garlic, and hence there are occasionally very audible fusses, when these delectable counts and countesses retire for the night to the solitude of their private apartments.

But very queer domestic scenes take place, even among Americans, at Saratoga. Many remember the circumstance of the married lady who roused the whole hotel by her screams of murder and fire, upon a midnight occasion, and threw a loaded pistol over the door into the hall, declaring that her husband had threatened her life with it; they remember also how the door was burst open, and the husband found quietly in bed, both of them declaring that nothing but civilities of the most proper character had passed between them; and also how, to the great astonishment of everybody, the pair had left the hotel by sunrise the next morning, and were found quietly breakfasting at Congress Hall, as though nothing had happened.

This was a queer private incident, but one night an awful general panic occurred in the hotel, occasioned by the cry of fire. Ladies in every variety of dishabille rushed into the halls like so many scared ghosts and witches; and I was then particularly struck with the transformation made by dress in the fair habitues of Saratoga. One of the most beautiful,