are military officers), an old moustache of the Mexican war, broods over the large establishment like the father of a great family.  With the men he is wise on a point of horseflesh or the quality of the brandy; with the matrons he is courtly, gallant, anecdotic:  the young women appear to idolize him, and lean their pretty elbows on his desk half the day, for he is their protector, chevalier, entertainer, bonbon-holder, adviser and elder brother, all in one.  Such is the landlord, as that rare expert is understood in the South.  As for the regimen, it is the rarest kind of Pleasure made Medicinal, and that must be the reason of its efficacy.  There is a superb pool of tepid water for the gentlemen to bathe in:  a similar one, extremely discreet, for the ladies.  Besides these, of which the larger is sixty feet long, there are individual baths, drinking fountains in arbors, sulphur and iron springs, all close to the hotel.  The water, emerging all the year round at a temperature of about seventy-five degrees, remains unfrozen in winter to the distance of a mile or more along the rivulet by which it escapes.  The flavor is so little nauseous that the pure issue of the spring is iced for ordinary table use; and this, coupled with the fact that we could not detect the slightest unusual taste, gave us the gravest doubts about the trustworthiness of this mineral fountain’s old and unblemished reputation:  another indication is, that they have never had the liquid analyzed.  But the gouty, the rheumatic, the paralyzed, the dyspeptic, who draw themselves through the current, and let the current draw itself through them, are content with no such negative virtues for it, and assign

  To Berkeley every virtue under heaven.

The mountain-village known to Washington as “Bath” is still a scene of fashionable revel:  the over-dressed children romp, the old maids flirt, the youthful romancers spin in each other’s arms to music from the band, and dowagers carefully drink at the well from the old-fashioned mug decorated with Poor Richard’s maxims; but the festivities have a decorous and domestic look that would meet the pity of one of the regular ante-rebellion bloods.  After the good people have retired at an early hour, we fancy the ghost of a lofty Virginia swell standing in the moonlight upon the piazza, which he decorates with gleams of phantom saliva.  Attended by his teams of elegant horses, and surrounded by a general halo of gambling, racing, tourneying and cock-fighting, he seems to shake his lank hair sadly over the poor modern carnival, and say, “Their tameness is shocking to me.”