[Homer_J_Simpson]

I’ve decided that George T. Strong was something of a New York hipster lawyer. The current issue of Harper’s magazine mentions the water cure hotels of Brattleboro in the lead article (see page 9 of the post above), and now here is our man, making the scene. We will see further evidence supporting my assessment.

The introduction to this diary entry mentions Ellie, who is Ellen Ruggles Strong, wife of the diarist. Mr. Ruggles is Samuel B. Ruggles, Strong’s father-in-law and a prominent New Yorker. I don’t know who Miss Rosalie is yet. G.T. Strong was born in 1820, so he is now 36. The couple had a child that died in 1849, when Ellie Strong nearly died herself from some illness. A son was born in 1851 and another boy came along just last May, so the Strongs had a 5-year-old and a 4-month-old baby on their vacation in Vermont - HJS.

Continued from August 5 (reply #27).

The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, Abridged by Thomas J. Pressly

[Tax-chick]

P.J. O’Rourke lived in Brattleboro, VT, at one point. It is fascinating how much *nothing* there still is in New England. Some of my higher-up-the-social-ladder relatives live in great semi-rural comfort in New York and Maine, retiring to somewhere less affected by snow during the relevant months.

[Tax-chick]

Mr. Strong has a very fine turn of phrase in his descriptions. Reminds me of Anoreth’s foreign travel reports.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Continued from August 13 (reply #35) .

August 14. Nothing new today but my own virtuous simplicity of manners. Yellow fever stock is falling like Nicaragua or Lucifer, son of the morning. None of it in town, and fewer cases at Quarantine. Per contra, the most astounding and terrific legends of its prevalence at Bath, New Utrecht, and Fort Hamilton; how everybody is running away, and no one lives there any more but people in the black vomit stage who are too much prostrated to run; how you can nose the poisoned air of those villages a mile before you reach them; how all the dogs and cats are saffron colored, and so forth. But men are very susceptible of panic when the word epidemic is whispered to them. On the Battery tonight, the sudden recollection that the cool sea-breeze I was enjoying came from somewhere near the Quarantine over nine miles of moonlit saltwater, quickened my walk for a moment.

The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, Abridged by Thomas J. Pressly