26 THE FOGY DAYS AND NOW ; 



find the roots, dig and pack them home, for no physician is 

 needed here ; if an invalid, let him hie to the Highlands, for 

 every spring here is a Ponce DeLeon and filled with life ; if a 

 lover, let him bring hither his charmer, seek some sequested 

 dell, and whilst reclining on some mossy couch, with finger 

 tips rippling in the gurgling rill, and though the heart speaks 

 most when the lips move not, the tale would soon be told ; if 

 a Nimrod, here is the hunter's dreamland, the paradisical 

 hunting grounds; if he has a soul for delightful chords, here 

 he may bend his ear and catch the cadences as they fall from 

 the musical echoes of the many-tongued pack, as it swells in 

 song, publishing where the fleeting stag has sped ; if he be an 

 emigrant, here he can come and buy a home, rich and cheap, 

 here is the place to feather a nest, sing " Home, sweet home," and 

 compose new luUabys for generations yet unborn, who shall 

 surely flourish under these Italian skies. 



In this delightful region your scribbler was delighted to 

 spend many of the summer days of his early manhood ; here 

 first read the beautiful poems of Walter Scott ; here first 

 brought down the antlered buck, and flirted from their crystal 

 beds the golden spangled trout ; here quaffed from the glassy 

 brooks delicious draughts that ice would spoil, and breathed 

 an atmosphere so pure and bracing that physical exercise 

 seemed attended with no fatigue, and often since, when burn- 

 ing with miasmatic fevers in Southern Georgia, in fitful 

 dreams have wandered here again, almost tasting the precious 

 boon, when some tantalizing fate would snatch it away. 



The inhabitants of these mountains are rude and illiterate, 

 but warm-hearted and generous to their friends; they have 

 no idea of caste, and are jirofoundly impressed with the idea 



