Adjacent to Mr. Vanderbilt’s principality are the grounds of the Kenilworth Inn, which would have delighted Amy Robsart and disarmed her enemies. Never did British beauty of any country preceding this command, even at the hands of royalty, so many comforts as the Kenilworth lavishly displays for the delectation of the most exacting creature. When this is said, what need of multiplying words or measuring with yard-sticks the magnificence of the various compartments of the house or its broad baronial park? Unless you are impervious to all enticement, you will be impelled to see these marvels through your own eyes and then compare your impressions with mine. Perhaps you who visit Western North Carolina find instinct within you some of the fiery blood of Orion or Nimrod or Buffalo Bill, and wish to exercise it in the slaughter of beasts and birds. Well, with your improved weapon, with all modern lethal devices, in dear old clothes that are already creased in the seams and baggy at the knees, you may, with the rugged father of Esmeralda, or one of her tough, nimble brothers, follow the black bear to his cave or track partridges, grouse or squirrels to their leafy haunts, and make them acquainted with death or anguish. You may, even without having conned the pages of Isaak Walton, be impassioned for snaring diplomatic and pugnacious trout, with an insect engendered by the artificer or with the native minnow; and, if so, your selection of streams will be easy and your game-bag should be bulging with trophies when you homeward wend your way, with appetite of a ploughman for the fare of a French chef who has been beguiled by Col. Coxe as the presiding genius of his kitchen and larder. And the Colonel will, after supper, make merry with you, as becomes an elegant gentleman, who has carried his accomplishments all over the world, and who laughingly declares that he is “the only man extant who was killed on both sides during the war.” He had possessions at the North and South, and his respective substitutes were among the unreturning brave. So, by proxy, he was slain twice, and yet is still alive to the gratification of a host of friends and admirers. You will be sure to get an invitation from him to drive, with a jocund company of both sexes, in his tally-ho-coach, which is as well appointed as any in the land, and it is a memorable thing to see him handle the ribbons over four thoroughbreds that were nurtured on bluest and most succulent of Kentucky grass. A drive with Colonel Coxe and such ladies and gentlemen as he groups around him is an experience that you will fondle, some day, when business or a kindred commonplace tie fetters you to a dull or smoky town. You will then comprehend that poor girl, a rustic heroine and living martyr, when she could forgive the miserable man who had repaid her with ingratitude and desertion, but could not divine how, though he left her, he could leave “The Mountings.”