No. XVI.—Thursday, October 15, 1807.

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STYLE, AT BALLSTON.

BY WILLIAM WIZARD, ESQ.

OTWITHSTANDING Evergreen has never been abroad, nor had his understanding enlightened, or his views enlarged by that marvelous sharpener of the wits, a salt water voyage, yet he is tolerably shrewd and correct, in the limited sphere of his observations; and now and then astounds me with a right pithy remark, which would do no discredit even to a man who had made the grand tour.

In several late conversations at Cockloft he has amused us exceedingly by detailsondry particulars concerning that notori

hter-house of time, Ballston Springs, e spent a considerable part of the last The following is a summary of his clous.

Pleasure has passed through a variety of significations at Ballston. It originally meant nothing more than a relief from pain and sickness; and the patient who had journeyed many a weary mile to the Springs, with a heavy heart and emaciated form, called it pleasure when he threw by his crutches, and danced away from them with renovated spirits, and limbs jocund with vigor. In process of time, pleasure underwent a refinement, and appeared in the likeness of a sober, unceremonious country dance, to the flute of an amateur or the three-stringed fiddle of an itinerant country musician. Still everything bespoke that happy holiday which the spirits ever enjoy, when emancipated from the shackles of formality, ceremony, and modern politeness; things went on cheerily, and Ballston was pronounced a charming, humdrum, careless place of resort, where everyone was at his ease, and might follow unmolested the bent of his humor-provided his wife was not there; when, lo! all on a sudden, Style made its baneful appearance in the semblance of a gig and tandem, a pair of leather breeches, a liveried footman, and a cockney! Since that fatal era pleasure has taken an entire new signification, and at present means nothing but STYLE.

The worthy, fashionable, dashing, good-fornothing people of every state, who had rather