CHAPTER XXII.

    “I lay upon the headland heights, and listened
    To the incessant moaning of the sea
    In caverns under me,
    And watched the waves that tossed,
    And fled, and glistened;
    Until the rolling meadows of amethyst
    Melted away in mist.”

My visit to Charleston combined little of eventful note, and this city is to well known as a seaport to require a detailed description.  There, as in all places in close proximity to the ocean, I was spell-bound amid the ceaseless ebb and flow, the endless melody of the waves glowing and scintillating with myriad gem-like hues from the amethyst, the emerald and the diamond, to the many-hued opal, its varied and changing beauty bearing all the brilliant glory of the fabled dolphin, born in its depths.

In this sea-girt city I found the home of Mrs. Glover, and above all her hallowed presence there.  She is an accomplished lady, and once wrote an attractive novel, more for pastime than from any literary aspirations.

Vernon, the hero of her story of Vernon Grove, was blind, and as this depiction of character was so much more true to nature than the pen-pictures of other gifted delineators, even that of the shrewd searcher of the human heart, Wilkie Collins, that she had won the sympathy and interest of all at the Baltimore Institution, at which, in former years, she had been so cheerfully greeted.

Vernon possessed none of the melancholy, inanimate, suspicious characteristics supposed by many to belong of necessity to the blind, but was a brilliant, cheerful, high-minded person, who filled every position in life with dignity, accepted every sorrow and disappointment with resignation, in every struggle was a lion-hearted hero, and in every contest a conqueror.

This gifted lady was a sister of Mrs. Bowen, of Baltimore, who, as well as her husband, was a warm, true friend to the blind, and ever joyously hailed as a guest in the institution.

After traveling through the Carolinas I went to Richmond, Virginia, the Rome of America, and like that ancient city built upon seven hills, while 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.