It happened to be at the Kaaterskill House—­it might have been at the Grand, or the Overlook—­that the young gentlemen in search of information saw the Catskill season get under way.  The phase of American life is much the same at all these great caravansaries.  It seems to the writer, who has the greatest admiration for the military genius that can feed and fight an army in the field, that not enough account is made of the greater genius that can organize and carry on a great American hotel, with a thousand or fifteen hundred guests, in a short, sharp, and decisive campaign of two months, at the end of which the substantial fruits of victory are in the hands of the landlord, and the guests are allowed to depart with only their personal baggage and side-arms, but so well pleased that they are inclined to renew the contest next year.  This is a triumph of mind over mind.  It is not merely the organization and the management of the army under the immediate command of the landlord, the accumulation and distribution of supplies upon this mountain-top, in the uncertainty whether the garrison on a given day will be one hundred or one thousand, not merely the lodging, rationing and amusing of this shifting host, but the satisfying of as many whims and prejudices as there are people who leave home on purpose to grumble and enjoy themselves in the exercise of a criticism they dare not indulge in their own houses.  Our friends had an opportunity of seeing the machinery set in motion in one of these great establishments.  Here was a vast balloon structure, founded on a rock, but built in the air, and anchored with cables, with towers and a high pillared veranda, capable, with its annex, of lodging fifteen hundred people.  The army of waiters and chamber-maids, of bellboys, and scullions and porters and laundry-folk, was arriving; the stalwart scrubbers were at work, the store-rooms were filled, the big kitchen shone with its burnished coppers, and an array of white-capped and aproned cooks stood in line under their chef; the telegraph operator was waiting at her desk, the drug clerk was arranging his bottles, the newspaper stand was furnished, the post-office was open for letters.  It needed but the arrival of a guest to set the machinery in motion.  And as soon as the guest came the band would be there to launch him into the maddening gayety of the season.  It would welcome his arrival in triumphant strains; it would pursue him at dinner, and drown his conversation; it will fill his siesta with martial dreams, and it would seize his legs in the evening, and entreat him to caper in the parlor.  Everything was ready.  And this was what happened.  It was the evening of the opening day.  The train wagons might be expected any moment.  The electric lights were blazing.  All the clerks stood expectant, the porters were by the door, the trim, uniformed bell-boys were all in waiting line, the register clerk stood fingering the leaves of the register with a gracious