is always, no matter what his subject. At last,
however, the grandfather's clock in the hall below his study sends up a
stern message which is not to be mistaken, whereupon you arise
reluctantly from your comfortable chair, spill the cigar ashes out of
your lap onto the rug, dust off your clothing, and take your leave. Nor
is your regret at departing lessened by the fact that you must go to
your bilious-colored bedroom in the New Gleason, and that you will not
see the university, or Professor C. Alphonso Smith, or Mrs. Smith again,
because you are leaving upon the morrow.

So it must always be with the itinerant illustrator and writer. They are
forever finding new and lovely scenes only to leave them; forever making
new and charming friends only to part with them, faring forth again into
the unknown.

CHAPTER XVI

FOX-HUNTING IN VIRGINIA

Better to hunt in fields for health unbought
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.
The wise for cure on exercise depend;
God never made his work for man to mend.

--DRYDEN.

It is my impression that the dining-car conductor on the Chesapeake &
Ohio train by which we left Charlottesville was puzzled when I asked his
name; but if he sees this and remembers the incident he will now know
that I did so because I wished here to mention him as a humane citizen.
His name is C.G. Mitchell, and he was so accommodating as to serve a
light meal, after hours, when he did not have to, to two hungry men who
needed it. If travel has taught my companion and me anything, it has
taught us that not all dining-car conductors are like that. Nor, I
judge, can all dining-car conductors play the violin, pleasantly, in off
hours, as does Mr. Mitchell. Better one merciful dining-car conductor
than twenty who wear white carnations at their left lapels, but wear no
hearts below them!

The road by which we drove from the railroad into the fastnesses of
Loudon County, where, near the little settlement of Upperville, the race
meet of the Piedmont Hunt was to be held, suggested other times and
other manners, for though we rode in a motor car, and though we passed
another now and then, machines were far outnumbered by the horses which,
under saddle, or hitched to buggies, surreys, and carts of all
descriptions, were heading toward the meeting place.

On these roads, one felt, the motor was an outsider; this was the
kingdom of the horse that we were visiting; soft dirt roads