_cork_ inkstand, of the most primitive
formation, placed on a rough wooden table about a foot square, which is
not large enough to hold my paper (so my knees are my desk), and is
covered with a coarse piece of rag carpeting;--the whole, a sort of
prison-cell furnishing. Before me stretches as far as it can about a
quarter of an acre of degraded uneven ground, enclosed in a dilapidated
whitewashed wooden paling, and clothed, except in several mangy bare
patches, with rank weedy grass, untended unwholesome shrubs, and untidy
neglected trees.... Behind me is a whitewashed room about fifteen feet
by twelve, containing a rickety, black horse-hair sofa, all worn and
torn into prickly ridges; six rheumatic wooden chairs; a lame table
covered with a plaid shawl of my own, being otherwise without cloth to
hide its nakedness or the indefinite variety of dirt-spots and stains
which defile its dirty skin. In this room Miss Hall and S---- are busily
engaged at "lessons." Briefly, I am sitting on the piazza (so-called) of
one of a group of tumble-down lodging-houses and hotels, which,
embosomed in a beautiful valley in Pennsylvania, and having in the midst
of them an exquisite spring of mineral water, rejoice in the title of
the "Yellow Springs."

Some years ago this place was a fashionable resort for the
Philadelphians, but other watering-places have carried off its fashion,
and it has been almost deserted for some time past; and except invalids
unable to go far from the city (which is within a three hours' drive
from here), and people who wish to get fresh air for their children
without being at a distance from their business, very few visitors come
here, and those of an entirely different sort from the usual summer
haunters of watering-places in the country.

The heat in the city has been perfectly frightful.... On Sunday last a
thermometer, rested on the ground, rose to 130 deg., that being the heat of
the earth; and when it was hung up in the shade the mercury fell, but
remained at 119 deg.. Imagine what an air to breathe!... Late in the
afternoon last Sunday, a storm came on like a West Indian tornado; the
sky came down almost to the earth, the dust was suddenly blown up into
the air in red-hot clouds that rushed in at the open windows like thick
volumes of smoke, and then the rain poured from the clouds, steadily,
heavily, and continuously, for several hours.

In the night the whole atmosphere changed, and as I sat in my
ch