At Afton in the Blue Ridge Mountains. There now, sit still, I am not going to commence about "lifting their eternal heads;" indeed I am not. Did it ever strike you, though, how different a man talks when he gets a pen in his hand; how impossible it is for a man to keep his feet on the ground and use a reasonably plain English without absurd adjectives, when he is writing descriptions of scenery. It is a miserable piece of affectation, you know; and they know you know, but they do it all the same. It comes, I presume, from a desire to assert the possession of imagination. The vulgar name for it is "flowery" and I am not certain that it is not a good name, for the chief business of flowers is to please the senses. You will find it popular with three classes of orators—commencement orators, political orators, and pulpit orators. The first use it because they know no better; the second, from the belief that it will catch those who know no better; and third because they find that a bright coat of paint to a religious sign post is particularly attractive to the female members of the congregation. With the first class, it is ignorance; with the second, business, and with the third, a mild, but well defined form of insincerity. You will find, too, that, with few exceptions, flowery ministers are—little else. I do not mean a forcibly drawn picture; that is a wholly different thing; I mean gaudy, flowery word painting. I remember at Trinity church in Staunton once, a description by a minister named Tucker, of a sacrifice made by the Jews at Jerusalem. Do you know, though that was years ago, I can see to-day the scene the man drew standing out in memory. It was powerful, but there was not a particle of prismatic coloring about it. It was a bas-relief cut on granite—full of power, enduring, and with a touch of eternity about it. Such picture-drawing is not flowery and does not wither.

I know that the popular subjects of interest in the mountains are sunrise and sunset, but for something really worth writing about, and much more rare, give me a fog spread out at the feet like a white carpet. Ah! that is something worth seeing. The valley, a mile below, is hidden in the gauzy sea, and the tops of mountain spurs here and there peep out like little islands. The white, silent sea is spread for miles and miles. Underneath it is life, an invisible wagon rumbles, a horse neighs, a man calls to his neighbor, but the surface is calm, still, level. You would not be surprised to see a steamer come puffing from behind one of the islands. The wind presses the sea into billows which shift to and fro as water would. Away down on a wagon road you hear the tinkling of bells and a Hock of sheep emerge from a rift in the mist and turning disappear in another cloud of it. The fog parts again and a white top wagon, with four horses, is seen toiling slowly along. The driver cracks his whip and the sea of mist slowly rolls over him again. Another shifting, and a little farmhouse appears, with a man riding from under the trees. He rides into the mist and the farmhouse disappears. A railroad train rushes out of a bank of white wool and into another, in complete silence. The white sea gets uneasy under the wind, and the sun begins to brighten up the clouds above. Then the woolen surface begins to move. A mountain spur makes its appearance clear against the sky; the farm houses silently glide from under the sea; a flock of sheep, whose shepherd dog's bark you have heard from under the mist, is revealed. The sea is fast being blown away. The sun comes out. The whole landscape is changed and the great billows of mist that have covered it are now thin strips of white cloud driven across the blue sky. Once more you see spread out at your feet the valley, checkered with farms and orchards, and dotted with farmhouses shining in the sun. The miracle of nature is over. Let the enthusiasts have their sunrise and sunset; lovers their moonlight; but as for me, give me a mountain fog.

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I suppose you don't know Maria? You ought to. She was a great comfort to me while I was at Hampton. Did I love her? Ah, most truly! I have sat on the hotel porch and watched Maria in her front yard by the hour. I suppose if I were to meet her to-day she would hardly recollect my name, so inconsistent is her sex, but I left my heart with her. It is true that she was not conventional, that her skirts hardly came to her knees; that she could not write, and that her general air was not that of a society woman, but to a sick man she was an inexpressible comfort. I have written her name Maria, but she was also called Mar-i-a, Mari-a-a-a, Mari-uh, and oh-h-h, M-a-r-i-a. These names she was called from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. I don't think I have ever known a more versatile genius than Maria. At times she was a steamboat, with loud blowing of the whistle; at other times she was a bear and devoured other children with grunts and growls of great ferocity; at other times, she was a horse of such high mettle and spirit as could only find vent in chewing up the front gate and pawing her mother's geraniums into the earth. But it was in her great and realistic combat with dogs that I admired Maria most. Every day about noon two setter dogs would come lounging about the yard with the most innocent air in the world. It was Maria's lunch time and the little thing would toddle in and bring out her lunch. No sooner would she appear than the dogs would rush on her and roll her in the dirt. There was a brief scuffle, an agonizing scream, the dirt flew, the dogs rushed off, and Maria sat up in tears, dirt and hunger. The lunch was gone. By the time quiet was restored, the dogs would come to see if they had left any in their hurry, and the forgiving little one would start in to play with them as if nothing had happened. I was there two months, and if Maria got a whole lunch in that time, I didn't see it. Sometimes the dogs had forgotten to look at their watches and would be a couple of minutes behind time, but all the same they rushed on her and took what there was. Often the screams would bring her mother out, and Maria would go into a little explanation which, as she couldn't talk, didn't make things very clear, consisting chiefly of "a-h-s" and "o-h-s." Little as she was, she had a spice of shrewdness which unfortunately didn't work well. She would commence her scream directly she brought her lunch out, but as soon as she found it only served to make the dogs more promptly on time, she gave it up. I have had a good deal of amusement, one way or another, but Maria stands at the head of the list in my memory.

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I made the acquaintance of a married couple at Afton. I do not often hold up the private life of my acquaintances to illustrate moral reason, but I must make this an exception. I believe the gentleman was brought to Afton for the protection of sheep, and to test the statement that a goat with a flock of sheep would keep off the dogs. When I saw him he was a moral wreck. He had become a professional lounger around the depot where he chewed up old paper, straw, and such odd crumbs of lunch as the passengers would throw out of the car windows. His hair was full of burrs and he had gotten one of his legs broken by the cars. His occupation was to wrestle with all the trifling fellows, white and black, around the depot, butt them when he could, and be ridden by them when he couldn't. He had long since lost his situation at the sheep fold, having proved rather an attraction to dogs, who are fond of low company, than a protection to sheep. Untidy, thriftless, a loafer, kicked and cuffed about by the public and half starved, he presented a pitiable contrast to his wife, neat little lady, who, after her husband had lost his situation, left him and joined a respectable circle of cows and spent her time with them, fat, sleek, eminently respectable, and as regular as clockwork in taking them out to pasture and bringing them home. The moral point that I wish to make is this—if you give a woman half a chance she will be a lady; if you give a man half a chance he will go to the dogs. It is in the sex of the animal.

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I often hear it said of a man that he has "the manners of the old school," by which is meant courteous, deferential manners. I don't know that any particular "school," old or new, will give a man good manners, but it is certainly true that age does ripen and mellow those of both men and women. As we grow older we become aware that there are a great many other people besides ourselves in the world, and that if we want to go through it smoothly we must keep to the right and not insist on keeping our elbows akimbo in a crowd. A rude young man may reform, but a rude old man may be regarded as having been illy bred early in life, and hopeless. Good manners are very like the catechism lessons our mothers teach us when children. They don't count for a great deal at the time, but the result comes up in life a long, long time afterwards. I think I can tell you of the "old school" where really good manners originated. The Teacher has long since gone, and sometimes I have fear the old school itself has changed, but He left the rule with us when He departed, and here it is: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." After the Teacher left, many new doctrines were brought about, and much chop-logic was put into the text-books by those who succeeded Him, but with all their human invention they have never approached the perfection of the motto that He left behind for the corner-stone of good manners. It is that, I think, that makes old men have better manners; they have learned that there is a good deal more in the people of the world to appeal to their affection and kindly toleration than they thought for at the beginning of their lives; that there is a great deal of good in every man and woman, and that it won't do to pick out their faults to the exclusion of their virtues; that a touch of kindly courtesy will often reveal to you a wholly different man from the surly one who stood before you a minute before; in short, our old man has learned more and more the lesson to love his neighbor as himself. That is the true "old school" founded eighteen hundred years ago.