The mammoth hotel of this watering place, comfortably seated in its dining-hall twelve hundred guests, and all its appointments were in equally grand proportion.  We occupied, from choice, one of the cozy little cottages, nestling like a dove-cot in some bowery shade, with its patch of green-sward and flower-garden in front and purling brook behind, holding the double charm of rural simplicity and home-like air.  Hattie led me through every path and grove, nook and glen of this sweet seclusion, this valley embosomed in mountains, and my thoughts reverted to the days when the belles and beaux of our American court sought these sylvan shades; when Washington and the successive Chief Magistrates of the Great Republic had gracefully glided through the stately minuet and invested this spot with a now classic interest.

Prominent among the visitors was the leonine General Lee, a Colossus in person and in mind.  In spirit brave as a true hero, but in manner gentle as a woman.  In the sweet solace of sympathy his heart went out to the blind girl, and assumed the tangible form of solid favors, for by his personal efforts under the magic influence and royal mandate of his imperial power many a little volume was appropriated that would have been otherwise unnoticed.

George Peabody was also a guest, but in this, his last visit to his native country, he was too ill and prostrate to receive friends.  I felt for him a strong personal sympathy for his beneficence to my native city, to which he ever acknowledged himself indebted for his first business success; and in which the pure, white marble structure, with its magnificent library and other appointments, so well known as “The Peabody Institute,” stands as a monument of his munificence.

Returning to Richmond, we took the James River route to Baltimore, a trip fraught with varied interest.

At Yorktown, that city of eld, we landed to take in a cargo of freight, not neglecting the usual store of oysters, of which we had at supper a sumptuous feast and it was from no fickle epicurean fancy that all pronounced these delicious bivalves the finest in the world, for, certainly, never before or since have we partaken of them with such rare relish and absolute gusto.

CHAPTER XXIII.

    “Sweet is the hour that brings us home,
      Where all will spring to meet us;
    Where hands are striving as we come,
      To be the first to greet us. 
    When the world has spent its frowns and wrath,
      And care been sorely pressing;
    ’Tis sweet to turn from our roving path,
      And find a fireside blessing;
    Ah, joyfully dear is the homeward track,
    If we are but sure of a welcome back!”

Home again in dear old Baltimore, where over my cradle was sung my mother’s first lullaby, and where so many localities were invested with the charm of loved association.  I of course visited the Institution for the Blind, which would not, in its many changes, have seemed at all like home but for the music of a familiar voice and the presence of dear Miss Bond, who still with loving dignity presided as matron, throned in the majesty of noble humanity, and crowned with purity and goodness.