Speaking of Vance, if you loitered in Sky Land, in midsummer, you might make your way to Gombroon, his highland roost, and be sure of an old-fashioned welcome. No man has a heartier nature and no man is more of an adorer, so to speak, of Western North Carolina. He would tell you characteristic anecdotes of his wonderful career and hold you, as the ancient mariner did the wedding guests, with wit and wisdom, such as Master Coleridge never “dreamt of in his philosophy.” So you would understand from him what potent possibilities this clime possesses, and how from the very elements there is distilled a subtle essence that holds in solution the formation of noble men and beautiful women. If, for instance, you had an agreeable, harmonious company of friends and acquaintances at Battery Park Hotel, and longed for an ideal trip, not too long, and which would entertainingly add to your stock of enchantment, I doubt not that Mr. McKissick, who is young and genial and intelligent, as becomes a cavalier South Carolinian and manager of a great caravanserai, would suggest a trip to the Hot Springs, which, by rail, is not many miles away. If you could prevail upon McKissick to join your party, it would be an accentuated treat, for he has been an ardent, expert, accomplished newspaper man, and is bubbling over with high health and fresh humor. This maroon is altogether delicious. From the car window you get rapid but incessantly changing views of the French Broad, which, crossed and recrossed and paralleled, is never out of sight. It is mild and clear flowing; it is turbulent, swift and vocal; it is free from impediment; it is vexed with rapids and frustrated with boulders as if a battle of Titans had been contested to stormy demolition; it is always charming. The time consumed in the passage has never for an instant tormented you, and even the most voluble talker is content to let his tongue “keep Sunday”--as an old darkey said--in the presence of this water course which descends in glory through the mountain defiles. These mountains enclose you, but they are not like their Swiss family bare and bleak and tawny, but lush with emerald foliage or cultivated to their very brows. The Mountain Park Hotel at Hot Springs, like all first-class establishments hereabout, is equipped sumptuously. It has miles of piazzas. It nestles in a happy valley. The river runs hard by, and, at this point, is narrow but energetic. It is a cold stream, but here, a few feet from the surface, hot fountains are latent, and any positive disturbance of the earth-crust is followed by vaporous exhalations. The baths are seductive, the more so, perhaps, because you are immersed in dazzling marble tanks and the liquid purrs you like velvet in motion. You can drink vast quantities of this fluid for it has amazing lightness and makes a delicate stomach feel “like a gentleman.” Wondrous tales are told of its curative faculties, and I take for granted that a rheumatic