The presence of the colored brother in force distinguished this from provincial resorts at the North, even those that employ this color as servants.  The flavor of Old Virginia is unmistakable, and life drops into an easy-going pace under this influence.  What fine manners, to be sure!  The 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 twelve, get to your quarters at one, and have your baggage delivered to you at two o’clock in the morning?” The friends were lodged in “Paradise Row”—­a whimsical name given to one of the quarters assigned