undering and lightning, its wind and torrent, I was in
such a state of nervous excitement, that when the last lurid light faded,
the last crash was echoed by a low reverberating moan and died away, I
gave one deep sigh of intense relief and sank exhausted from the reaction.

CHAPTER XXII.

"I lay upon the headland heights, and listened
To the incessant moaning of the sea
In caverns under me,
And watched the waves that tossed,
And fled, and glistened;
Until the rolling meadows of amethyst
Melted away in mist."

My visit to Charleston combined little of eventful note, and this city is
to well known as a seaport to require a detailed description. There, as in
all places in close proximity to the ocean, I was spell-bound amid the
ceaseless ebb and flow, the endless melody of the waves glowing and
scintillating with myriad gem-like hues from the amethyst, the emerald and
the diamond, to the many-hued opal, its varied and changing beauty bearing
all the brilliant glory of the fabled dolphin, born in its depths.

In this sea-girt city I found the home of Mrs. Glover, and above all her
hallowed presence there. She is an accomplished lady, and once wrote an
attractive novel, more for pastime than from any literary aspirations.

Vernon, the hero of her story of Vernon Grove, was blind, and as this
depiction of character was so much more true to nature than the
pen-pictures of other gifted delineators, even that of the shrewd searcher
of the human heart, Wilkie Collins, that she had won the sympathy and
interest of all at the Baltimore Institution, at which, in former years,
she had been so cheerfully greeted.

Vernon possessed none of the melancholy, inanimate, suspicious
characteristics supposed by many to belong of necessity to the blind, but
was a brilliant, cheerful, high-minded person, who filled every position
in life with dignity, accepted every sorrow and disappointment with
resignation, in every struggle was a lion-hearted hero, and in every
contest a conqueror.

This gifted lady was a sister of Mrs. Bowen, of Baltimore, who, as well as
her husband, was a warm, true friend to the blind, and ever joyously
hailed as a guest in the institution.

After traveling through the Carolinas I went to Richmond, Virginia, the
Rome of America, and like that ancient city built upon seven hills, while
in its patrician pride and family loyalty it possessed much of the essence
of the old Roma