a green rolling interval, planted
with noble trees and flanked by moderate hills, stands the vast white
caravansary, having wide galleries and big pillars running round three
sides. The front and two sides are elevated, the galleries being
reached by flights of steps, and affording room underneath for the large
billiard and bar-rooms. From the hotel the ground slopes down to the
spring, which is surmounted by a round canopy on white columns, and
below is an opening across the stream to the race-track, the servants'
quarters, and a fine view of receding hills. Three sides of this
charming park are enclosed by the cottages and cabins, which back
against the hills, and are more or less embowered in trees. Most of
these cottages are built in blocks and rows, some single rooms, others
large enough to accommodate a family, but all reached by flights of
steps, all with verandas, and most of them connected by galleries.
Occasionally the forest trees have been left, and the galleries
built around them. Included in the premises are two churches, a
gambling-house, a couple of country stores, and a post-office. There
are none of the shops common at watering-places for the sale of
fancy articles, and, strange to say, flowers are not systematically
cultivated, and very few are ever to be had. The hotel has a vast
dining-room, besides the minor eating-rooms for children and nurses,
a large ballroom, and a drawing-room of imposing dimensions. Hotel and
cottages together, it is said, can lodge fifteen hundred guests.

The natural beauty of the place is very great, and fortunately there is
not much smart and fantastic architecture to interfere with it. I cannot
say whether the knowledge that Irene was in one of the cottages affected
King's judgment, but that morning, when he strolled to the upper part of
the grounds before breakfast, he thought he had never beheld a scene of
more beauty and dignity, as he looked over the mass of hotel buildings,
upon the park set with a wonderful variety of dark green foliage, upon
the elevated rows of galleried cottages marked by colonial simplicity,
and the soft contour of the hills, which satisfy the eye in their
delicate blending of every shade of green and brown. And after an
acquaintance of a couple of weeks the place seemed to him ravishingly
beautiful.

King was always raving about the White Sulphur after he came North, and
one never could tell how much his judgment was colored by his peculiar