When Professor Smith talks about the Kaiser, you say to yourself:  “I know that it is growing late, but I cannot bear to leave until I have heard the rest of this”; when he drifts presently to O. Henry, you say the same; and so it is always, no matter what his subject.  At last, however, the grandfather’s clock in the hall below his study sends up a stern message which is not to be mistaken, whereupon you arise reluctantly from your comfortable chair, spill the cigar ashes out of your lap onto the rug, dust off your clothing, and take your leave.  Nor is your regret at departing lessened by the fact that you must go to your bilious-colored bedroom in the New Gleason, and that you will not see the university, or Professor C. Alphonso Smith, or Mrs. Smith again, because you are leaving upon the morrow.

So it must always be with the itinerant illustrator and writer.  They are forever finding new and lovely scenes only to leave them; forever making new and charming friends only to part with them, faring forth again into the unknown.

CHAPTER XVI

FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA

    Better to hunt in fields for health unbought
    Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. 
    The wise for cure on exercise depend;
    God never made his work for man to mend.

    —­DRYDEN.

It is my impression that the dining-car conductor on the Chesapeake & Ohio train by which we left Charlottesville was puzzled when I asked his name; but if he sees this and remembers the incident he will now know that I did so because I wished here to mention him as a humane citizen.  His name is C.G.  Mitchell, and he was so accommodating as to serve a light meal, after hours, when he did not have to, to two hungry men who needed it.  If travel has taught my companion and me anything, it has taught us that not all dining-car conductors are like that.  Nor, I judge, can all dining-car conductors play the violin, pleasantly, in off hours, as does Mr. Mitchell.  Better one merciful dining-car conductor than twenty who wear white carnations at their left lapels, but wear no hearts below them!

The road by which we drove from the railroad into the fastnesses of Loudon County, where, near the little settlement of Upperville, the race meet of the Piedmont Hunt was to be held, suggested other times and other manners, for though we rode in a motor car, and though we passed another now and then, machines were far outnumbered by the horses which, under saddle, or hitched to buggies, surreys, and carts of all descriptions, were heading toward the meeting place.

On these roads, one felt, the motor was an outsider; this was the kingdom of the horse that we were visiting; soft dirt roads were there for him to trot and gallop on, and fences of wood or stone, free from barbed wire, were everywhere, for him to jump.