The dawn of the racing season alters the bucolic character of the roads leading to Morris Park and makes them gay and noisy thoroughfares--conglomerations of smart traps and rainbow frocks. The drive to and from the track is the jolliest feature of a programme that--as is not uncommonly the case where the mighty are involved--smacks not a little of sameness. The inevitable lunch at the club house is occasionally enlivened by a friendly tiff over the possession of a piazza table where is offered a view of the course combined with the comforts of repletion, and is, in consequence, considered a vantage point of desirability. We meet the same people, and we eat of the same dishes disguised in the same service, that daily play the routine of our fashion; for, as Thackeray says of his British, wherever we may go, we carry with us our pills and our prejudices. And there be times, too, when we almost echo those cravings of poor Becky Sharp who, having attained the summits of society, cries in the desperation of her ennui: "Oh, how much gayer it would be to dance in spangles in a booth!" * * * * * That enterprising bachelor, Mr. James Henry Smith, evinces a nice taste in matters feminine. His much-to-be-desired box seat is not infrequently embellished by the presence of Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, who this year shows a preference for the varying shades of Quaker gray, and was recently admired in a cloth of that color made with a plain skirt and a blousing coat with bishop sleeves. Mrs. Alfred likewise leans modestly towards the dove and is shown at her best in a soft pale frock trimmed with passementerie of the same shade and topped by a large hat of black chip tipped well towards the right side. Mrs. Alfred is young enough to ignore the ravages of a possible embonpoint, but there be other matrons who hang so uncertainly about that borderland of beauty that they somehow manage to convey the hint that only by an unwinking watchfulness do they succeed in foiling the onslaughts of his ogreship of avoirdupois. In their eye lurks terror and in their lines one spells their secret of rebellious hunger; of Delsarte, gymnastics and massage. Sometimes the matron is an improvement on the maid. But this is not always true. For those who turn coarse and harsh with years, we recommend Christian Science and a less flexible self-denial. * * * * *