in its patrician pride and family loyalty it possessed much of the essence
of the old Roman spirit.

My visit there was during the most fervid heat of the summer solstice,
when through the sultry days all living creatures are panting and
breathless, yet withal the stay of three weeks' duration passed away with
delightful rapidity, and time stole upon us and stole from us almost
imperceptibly.

Leaving Richmond for White Sulphur Springs, I stopped at all important
intervening points. At Staunton I devoted an entire day to the inspection
of the Institution for the Blind, and in pleasant acceptance of
hospitalities dispensed both by inmates and officials.

Arriving at White Sulphur after dark, we found the mountain air so cold
that we could almost imagine ourselves suddenly transported from the
Equator to the Pole, and were as thoroughly chilled as one unacclimated
would be from so great and sudden a transition.

The mammoth hotel of this watering place, comfortably seated in its
dining-hall twelve hundred guests, and all its appointments were in
equally grand proportion. We occupied, from choice, one of the cozy little
cottages, nestling like a dove-cot in some bowery shade, with its patch of
green-sward and flower-garden in front and purling brook behind, holding
the double charm of rural simplicity and home-like air. Hattie led me
through every path and grove, nook and glen of this sweet seclusion, this
valley embosomed in mountains, and my thoughts reverted to the days when
the belles and beaux of our American court sought these sylvan shades;
when Washington and the successive Chief Magistrates of the Great Republic
had gracefully glided through the stately minuet and invested this spot