d 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."

There is a good deal of honest sport still to be had in the adjacent
hills: the streams yield trout, and various larger prey, for which the
favorite bait is a small ugly fish called helgamite. The woods contain
turkeys, pheasants, quail and woodcock. The region has a valuable
interpreter in the person of General David H. Strother, so agreeably
known to the public as "Porte Crayon," whose father was lessee of the
Springs, and who at one period himself conducted the hotel. He
addicts himself now to pen and pencil solely. In the village, where
he presides over a pretty cottage home, he has quite a circle of
idolaters: the neighbors' houses display on their walls his sketches
of the village eccentrics, attended by those accessories of dog or gun
or nag which always stamp the likeness, and make the rustic critic cry
out, "Them's his very features!" A large, boisterous painting in the
hotel represents his impressions of the village arena in his youth;
and ancient gamesters, gray-headed now, like to stroll in and
contemplate their own portraits grouped around the cock-pit in all
the hot blood of betting days and in the green dress-coats of 1840.
Strother (now an active graybeard) was profoundly stirred by
the outbreak of t