A NOOK IN THE ALLEGHANIES 151 



mean by its unlikeness to other places ; 

 neither did it seem to have grown up after 

 the old-fashioned method, a " slow result of 

 time," first a hamlet, then a village, then 

 a town, and last of all a city. On the con- 

 trary, it bore all the marks of something 

 built to order ; in the strictest sense, a city 

 made with hands. And so, in fact, it is ; 

 one of the more fortunate survivals of what 

 the people of southwestern Virginia are ac- 

 customed to speak of significantly as "the 

 boom," a grand attempt, now a thing of 

 the past, but still bitterly remembered, to 

 make everybody rich by a concerted and 

 enthusiastic multiplication of nothing by no- 

 thing. 



Such a community, I repeat, would have 

 been an interesting and very " proper 

 study ; " but I had not come southward in 

 a studious mood. I meant to be idle, hav- 

 ing a gift in that direction which I am sel- 

 dom able to cultivate as it deserves. It is 

 one of the best of gifts. I could never fall 

 in with what the poet Gray says of it in one 

 of his letters. " Take my word and experi- 

 ence upon it," he writes, " doing nothing is 

 a most amusing business, and yet neither 



