Our ride to Vichy is uneventful and short, over the usual fine roads. Dropping Yama and the baggage at the very excellent Hôtel Internationale we run out twelve miles to visit the Château de Bourbon-Busset, standing on a high plateau with a fine view of the valley of the Allier. The Château has been restored, which destroys the interest to my thinking and as we are not allowed to enter I can give no descriptions nor shall I attempt any description of Vichy. It is evidently a very gay place during the summer season and one which would never interest me in the least. And yet one cannot but pause an instant to compare Vichy with the great American watering-place, Saratoga, and very decidedly to the disparagement of the latter. Nature has not endowed Vichy as she has Saratoga. The French Spa lies flat--very flat--the surrounding country is not of interest and is the least beautiful through which we have passed. Yet what do we find? The entire section of the springs has been parked and finely cultivated. It holds the most gorgeous and largest casino in Europe--a building comprising vast halls for promenades, concerts, and balls, great halls for card-playing, the whole being surrounded by beautiful terraces. Of its kind the place is a fairy-land,--where art has done all that can be done. This holds with all the other spas of Europe. [Illustration: THE HOME OF MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ AT VICHY By permission of Jules Hautecoeur] What do we find in Saratoga? Nature there has done her best, and it should be the greatest sanatorium of our country. Where Vichy is only tolerable in summer, Saratoga's climate is superb the year round; and especially is this the case in winter, when it is in all respects equal to that of the Adirondacks, and it is within four hours of New York. Its hotels are so superior to those in Vichy that no comparison is possible. Its surrounding scenery is beautiful,--I do not refer especially to that on the lake side, though that might be made a superb drive at no great expense,--but rather to the many charming roads to the north and west. That scene from Mt. McGregor is a gem even in America, and it is totally neglected and the road thereto abandoned. The scenery to the westward of the town is in its way equally fine, yet how many of the thousands who go to Saratoga know anything about it. As for the springs, where are they and how are they used? A very few are in the park, which at one period with its detached white pagodas, was lovely. Observe the gimcrackery which adorns it now. The other springs are spread through a valley upon which all the back-yards, stable and otherwise abut,--a disgrace to the place. The waters are swallowed by the mob utterly regardless of their medicinal qualities or their effects--and with dire results. As I stated above the place might be the great sanatorium of our country the year round if our physicians would take it in hand. That has been done at the Hot