of it? Did they not also once prefer the dance
to hobbling to the spring, and the taste of ginger to sulphur?

Of course the raison d'etre of being here is the sulphur spring. There
is no doubt of its efficacy. I suppose it is as unpleasant as any in the
country. Everybody smells it, and a great many drink it. The artist said
that after using it a week the blind walk, the lame see, and the dumb
swear. It renews youth, and although the analyzer does not say that it
is a "love philter," the statistics kept by the colored autocrat who
ladles out the fluid show that there are made as many engagements at
Richfield as at any other summer fair in the country.

There is not much to chronicle in the peaceful flow of domestic life,
and, truth to say, the charm of Richfield is largely in its restfulness.
Those who go there year after year converse a great deal about their
liking for it, and think the time well spent in persuading new arrivals
to take certain walks and drives. It was impressed upon King that he
must upon no account omit a visit to Rum Hill, from the summit of which
is had a noble prospect, including the Adirondack Mountains. He tried
this with a walking party, was driven back when near the summit by a
thunder, storm, which offered a series of grand pictures in the sky and
on the hills, and took refuge in a farmhouse which was occupied by a
band of hop-pickers. These adventurers are mostly young girls and young
men from the cities and factory villages, to whom this is the only
holiday of the year. Many of the pickers, however, are veterans. At this
season one meets them on all the roads, driving from farm to farm
in lumber wagons, carrying into the dull rural life their slang, and
"Captain Jinks" songs, and shocking free manners. At the great hop
fields they lodge all together in big barracks, and they make lively
for the time whatever farmhouse they occupy. They are a "rough lot," and
need very much the attention of the poet and the novelist, who might (if
they shut their eyes) make this season as romantic as vintage-time on
the Rhine, or "moonshining" on the Southern mountains. The hop field
itself, with its tall poles draped in graceful vines which reach from
pole to pole, and hang their yellowing fruit in pretty festoons and
arbors, is much more picturesque than the vine-clad hills.

Mrs. Bartlett Glow found many acquaintances here from New York and
Philadelphia and Newport, and, to do her justice, she introdu