waiters in the diningroom, in white ties and dress-coats, move
on springs, starting even to walk with a complicated use of all the
muscles of the body, as if in response to the twang of a banjo; they do
nothing without excessive motion and flourish. The gestures and
good-humored vitality expended in changing plates would become the leader
of an orchestra. Many of them, besides, have the expression of
class-leaders--of a worldly sort. There were the aristocratic
chambermaid and porter, who had the air of never having waited on any but
the first families. And what clever flatterers and readers of human
nature! They can tell in a moment whether a man will be complimented by
the remark, "I tuk you for a Richmond gemman, never shod have know'd you
was from de Norf," or whether it is best to say, "We depen's on de gemmen
frum de Norf; folks down hyer never gives noflin; is too pore." But to a
Richmond man it is always, "The Yankee is mighty keerful of his money; we
depen's on the old sort, marse." A fine specimen of the "Richmond
darkey" of the old school-polite, flattering, with a venerable head of
gray wool, was the bartender, who mixed his juleps with a flourish as if
keeping time to music. "Haven't I waited on you befo', sah? At Capon
Springs? Sorry, sah, but tho't I knowed you when you come in. Sorry,
but glad to know you now, sah. If that julep don't suit you, sah, throw
it in my face."

A friendly, restful, family sort of place, with music, a little mild
dancing, mostly performed by children, in the pavilion, driving and
riding-in short, peace in the midst of noble scenery. No display of
fashion, the artist soon discovered, and he said he longed to give the
pretty girls some instruction in the art of dress. Forbes was a
missionary of "style." It hurt his sense of the fitness of things to see
women without it. He used to say that an ill-dressed woman would spoil
the finest landscape. For such a man, with an artistic feeling so
sensitive, the White Sulphur Springs is a natural goal. And he and his
friend hastened thither with as much speed as the Virginia railways,
whose time-tables are carefully adjusted to miss all connections, permit.

"What do you think of a place," he wrote Miss Lamont--the girl read me a
portion of his lively letter that summer at Saratoga--"into which you
come by a belated train at half-past eleven at night, find friends
waiting up for you in evening costume, are taken to a champagne supper at
t