No sooner was the invitation received than the Doctor eased his conscience and delighted his patients by the regular professional subterfuge of sending such of them as had money to the sea-shore, and telling those who had not that they needed no medicine at present; the Professor turned his classes over to an assistant on pretext of a sudden bronchial attack, for which a dose of mountain-air was the prescribed remedy.  And so the two were whirled away on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad across the renowned valley of Virginia and the eastern valley steps of the Alleghany summits, past the gigantic basins where boil and bubble springs curative of all human ills, down the wild boulder-tossed waters and magnificent canons of New River, around mountain-bases, through tunnels, and out into the broad, beautiful fertility of the Kanawha Valley, until the spires of Charleston revealed the last stage of their railroad journey.  When their train stopped, stalwart porters relieved them of their baggage and deafened them with self-introductions in stentorian tones:  “Yere’s your Hale House porter!” “I’s de man fer St. Albert’s!”

“It’s no wonder,” said the Doctor, as he followed the sable guide from the station to the river ferry, and looked across the Kanawha’s busy flow, covered with coal-barges, steamboats, and lumber-crafts, to Charleston’s long stretch of high-bank river front, “that Western rivers get mad and rise against the deliberate insult of all the towns and cities turning their backs to them.  There is a mile of open front, showing the cheerful faces of fine residences through handsome shade-trees and over well-kept lawns; but here, where our ferry lands, and where we see the city proper, stoops and kitchens, stove-pipes and stairways, ash-piles and garbage-shoots, are stuck out in contempt of the river’s charms and the city’s comeliness.”

“Stove-pipes and stairways have to be put somewhere,” said the matter-of-fact Professor.  “And the best way to turn dirty things is toward the water.”

The ferry-boat wheezed and coughed and sidled across the river to a floating wharf, covered, as usual, with that portion of the population, white and black, which has no interest in the arrival of trains, or anything else, excepting meals at the time for them, but which manages to live somehow by looking at other people working.

“Give me,” said the Professor, “the value of the time which men spend in gazing at what does not concern them, and, according to my estimate, I could build a submarine railroad from New York to Liverpool in two years and three months.  What are those fellows doing with their huge barrels on wheels backed into the river?”

“Dat is de Charleston water-works, boss,” answered the grinning porter.  “Widout dem mules an’ niggahs an’ bar’ls dah wouldn’t be ’nough water in dis town to wet a chaw tobacky.”