Accordingly, during the late summer, attracted by the fame of the Virginia Springs and the salubrious region in which they lie, I deposited my frame (none of the smallest) in one of those republican vehicles called a mail coach, a true and happy invention by the way, for bringing discordant spirits into close communion with one another--an admirable machine for levelling all artificial distinctions--a kind of itinerant temple where Patrician and Plebeian, both masculine and feminine, where mountebank and statesman, puritan and profligate, and all the moods and genders of character may nestle together and worship at the same altar of democracy. But for certain drawbacks and inconveniences which will readily suggest themselves to the reader--such as the dangers of dislocation and fracture, and sundry annoyances too tedious to mention--a man of observation like myself would find it as agreeable to spend his summers in a stage coach as any where else. It is a kind of moral Kaleidescope, where at every turn some new combination or some curious variety in human character is presented to the eye. It above all imparts a refreshing hilarity to the spirits, which are too apt to stagnate when chained down to one solitary spot on the earth's surface. But this is a digression. Having deposited myself in the vehicle as before mentioned, I shall not entertain the reader as is the custom with some of the more learned fraternity of tourists, by long and elaborate details of the several points of arrival and departure--by curious and profound dissertations upon the philosophy of a coach wheel revolving upon its axis--nor by beautiful and extatic bursts about the blue skies and verdant meadows and lofty forests. Suffice it to say, that I found myself on the evening of an August day, on the summit of the Warm Spring Mountain which overlooks the first thermal fountain in the Pilgrim's path to Hygeia. Here I commence my adventures. This is the starting point of my story, and it is henceforth of course that I shall expect my gentle reader to sharpen his attentive faculty--and as Mark Anthony said to his countrymen at Cæsar's funeral, "lend me his ears." Gently and by slow degrees had we surmounted the ascent of this celebrated mountain, (celebrated at least in the Old Dominion and by all travellers to the Springs,) and now we were about to pass down into the valley of the warm waters. Kind reader, if your steps have never led you thither, I must inform you that the descent on the western side is most exceedingly and _unaccommodatingly_ abrupt. The pilot, however, _alias_ driver, who in this instance at least entertained some regard for his living freight, used the precaution of _locking_, to speak technically, or rather of _shoeing_ one of his hinder wheels--but no sooner had the yet untired steeds commenced their downward course, (the coach with its ton weight at least of flesh and bone rapidly following,) than spang went the lock chain