he company, and the
dinners are wafted over, in Arabian Nights fashion, from the opulent
markets of Baltimore. To prepare a feast, in this desolation, fit for
the nuptials of kings and emperors, would be a very simple matter
of the telegraph. Altogether, the aspect of this ornate,
audacious-looking summer palace is the strangest thing, just where it
is, to be seen on the mountains. The supreme sweetness of the air, the
breath of pine and hemlock, the coolness of midsummer nights, make the
retreat a boon for July and August. In autumn, among the resplendent
and tinted mountain-scenery, with first-rate sport in following the
Alleghany deer, the charms are perhaps greater.

The other resting-place of which we spoke is at the Glades Hotel in
the town of Oakland--the same in which Mr. Willis quenched his poetic
thirst. Oakland, looking already old and quaint, though it is a
creation of the railroad, sits immediately under the sky in its
mountain, in a general dress and equipage of whitewashed wooden
houses. A fine stone church, however, of aspiring Gothic, forms a
contrast to the whole encampment, and seems to have been quickly
caught up out of a wealthy city: it is a monumental tribute by the
road-president, Mr. Garrett, to a deceased brother; the county, too,
in its name of Garrett, bears testimony to the same powerful and
intelligent family. As for the "Glades," it is kept by Mr. Dailey in
the grand old Southern style, and the visitor, very likely for the
first time in his life, feels that he is _at home_. It is a curious
thing that the sentiment of the English inn, the priceless and
matchless feeling of comfort, has now completely left the
mother-country to take refuge with some fine old Maryland or Virginia
landlord, whose ideas were formed before the war. We have at the
"Glades" a specimen. In Captain Potts of Berkeley we found another.
This kind of landlord, in fact, should be a captain, a general or a
major, in order to fill his role perfectly. He is the patron and
companion of his guests, looking to their amusement with all the
solicitude of a private householder. His manners are filled with a
beaming, sympathetic and exquisite courtesy. He is necessarily a
gentleman in his manners, having all his life lived that sporting,
playful, supervisory and white-handed existence proper at once to the
master of a plantation and the owner of a hotel. His society is
constantly sought, his table is pounced upon by ladies with b