Newspaper Page Text
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VOL II.
JOHN H. SEALS.[proprietor.
ATLANTA, GA., SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11. 1876.
TERMS, 1 $ IN P ADVANCE N 0.
[For The Sunny South.]
SABBATII.
BY CHARLES W. HUBNER.
Hail, holy day, thou crowned of Heaven I
Ha 1, best beloved of ah the peveu!
How fair, from out tlf empurpled sky,
LooIch forth thy glory-beaming eye!
Broad from the welkin’* crystal sphere
Thy blrs-lug falleth, far and near:
While Peace and Love, at either side,
Upon thy golden chariot ride. .
It may be but a pleading dream—
Yet fairest then the earth I deem.
Diviner, purer, when thine hours
illume her hills, and streams, and flowers ;
How sweet the morn and evening hell* !
How green the grove*, how bright the dells !
What blissful sound* are in the trees !
What tender music charms the breeze !
Even the rude Spirit of the Sea
Feel* thy angelic ministry.
And when thou contest to his breast,
Rock* all his wanton waves to rest.
Fair Nature owns, in tendercst praise,
Thy sovereign loveliness and grace;
And from her wreathed altars rise
Sweet incense, and soft harmonies.
Then, why should I refuse to bring
My spirit's grateful offering?
Or fail, with gladsome heart, to twine,
Dear day. a song-wreath round thy shrine?
What, pleasures blossom, and expand
To life and light, beneath thy hand !
How bright the hope* by thee that live !
How sweet ihe solace thou canst give !
So flowers, on which the storm hath burst,
By sunshine back to life are nursed;
So skies look more serenely fair
Because the rainbow sbineth there.
Oh. blissful day ! how cold and bleak
Life’s breath would blow", from week to week—
How sad. how dark the flood would be
That rolleth by eternally.
Didst thou not, on the tide of Time,
A golden Isle of Solace shine.—
An Eden, in whose radiant bowers
The weary soul revives its powers
With halm exhaled from angels 1 wings,
And draughts from Heaven's unfailing springs ;
And where the time-flood's endless sighs.
Change to celestial melodies!
IFor The Sunny South.]
DeSOTO;
TIIE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.
A STRANGE STORY OE
HOT SPRINGS.
BY VIRGINIA'S.
A short time ago—no matter how long—I came
to the Hot Springs in search of relief from an
excruciating attack of chronic rheumatism that
threatened life i*self. I reached here in a con
dition of despondency that he only knows who
has had his carpal and tarsal joints wrung with
pain and distorted into all sorts of fanciful
shapes, his lingers curved back with rigid stiff
ness, and his toes making a mighty effort to go
back to meet their metatarsal neighbors. Sick,
weary, racked with pain and jolted unmercifully
in the El Paso coaches, I reached this great san
itarium of modern times and yielded myself
promptly to treatment.
As is tLe routine with all invalids, I sought
and selected “my doctor ” and submitted meekly
and hopefully to his dicta. I asked no questions,
save the inevitable “how much?” after I had
received the advice and prescription.
I listened to the tales of wonderful cures, told
by fatuous convalescents; I listened to hints
and suggestions from porters, servants and pro
prietors of hotels. I drank hot water from the
Big Iron Spring in the morning and from the
Liver Spring in the evening, and between times
sipped the most insipid of waters from the Ar
senic and Magnesia springs, always carrying
the ral-can and ral-cup wherever I moved, in
doors and out of doors. There is magical effi
cacy in this ral-can and ral-cup; it is seen as well
as felt?; you dare not ignore it; you cannot rally
without your ral-can, and to be fully up to pre
scribed and popular regulations, you must em
blazon these insignia prominently in view and
equip yourself in full armor, a ral-can and cup
and a ral-cane. And then you must visit the
Ral-Hole and Ral-City, and see the varied and
multiplied forms of disease in these classic lo
calities. But don’t visit the Blue Goose and the
Black Gander—you can find the two latter in
other places.
1 bathed in these wonderful thermal waters,
and took the baths at the standard temperature
for new patients, 93 deg. F., then at blood-heat, |
and afterwards at 110 deg. F. Here I was or
dered to halt on pain ot instant death, if I should
dare to tamper with the marvelous properties of j
this hot lime water. But at 110 deg. F. I did |
not halt, and boldly crossed the Rubicon of J
“instant death” by plunging next day into 122 |
deg. F., and came out as red as a boiled lobster— I
and yet I was not happy. I lived through it all, I
cold, tepid and red-hot; and many a time I have
crept up the old black tufa cliff to the Ral-Hole,
at the dead hour of midnight, and wallowed in
its hot slime and mud with as much abandon as
a sick hippopotamus would roll in the slush and
grime of the seething Zembezi.
Day and night I swallowed that panacea of the
Hot Springs treatment, iodide of potassium,
until 1 was threatened with iodism, its palsy and
quavering voice, its coppery breath and fetid
exudations; daily and nightly I drank hot water
and bathed in it, reckless of reproof and patient
of contempt. I gradually surmounted many of
the difficulties of my case, and with cane in
hand could climb the tufa cliff, could scale the
Whetstone Mountain with its masses of novacu-
lite, could traverse the Sugar Loaf Range and
hunt the centipede and tarantula with compara
tive ease and comfort.
These marvelous waters and still more mar
velous doctors had put me upon my legs again.
I began to wander over the mountains and ex
plore the deep, dark valleys. I would sit for
hours on the tufa rocks and, with my cane, trace
their sinuosities and rifts, and wonder how it all
happened. Masses of calcareous tufa, black and
gray with age, piled up under the Hot Springs
and down to the edge of the little rivulet that
Jj>V^runs beneath, and you know and feel that what
rt* JQlyou stand and sit on, so black and gray, must
w
Summering at Sylvan Lake.
be older than any calculation of modern science,
and older than any myth of folk-lore now ex
tant.
Look at that stream of hot water, rushing
down that little plank trough, steaming hot and
heavy with carbonate of lime in solution. In
the bottom of that little trough, built two years
ago, you will find a filmy deposit, hard and
white, brittle and with the tenuity and fragility
of glass—only more opaque. This fragile in
crustation has been deposited there by these
trickling hot waters within the space of two
years. Now, look upon the great masses of
hoary tufa on which you stand, with its holes,
rifts and sinuosities, black and gray with age
and exposure to the destructive agencies of air
and water, heat and cold —I say, look upon that
delicate incrustation, and then upon this mass
of rock, and know that each was deposited by
these waters, that it required two years or more
to form that little crust, and you may calculate
at your leisure how many thousands and tens of
thousands were passed in shaping this huge
mass, with all the disintegrating effects of heat
and cold, air and water, storm and sunshine.
How old these hills are, how old these springs
are, and what meteorological changes occurred
thousands of years ago, I will tell you now, and j
how I learned it. Whether or not yon believe !
it, gentle reader, it matters not. The folk-lore I
I learned in the valley from old mountaineers !
and cove-dwellers, old men and old women, I j
will tell you in this story; and how my crippled
joints and desperate state of health led me to j
search for the Fountain of Youth. I will tell
you my story, because I cannot keep it. I can
not let such secrets die with me; for secrets of |
this kind, like secrets of blood and “murther,” |
will out.
In my many wanderings over these hills and I
through these valleys, I had seen enough of the ;
marvelous to excite my amazement and stimu- j
late my curiosity to see and learn more. Once, j
in a dark cove not far from the Hot Springs !
Valley, I had met an old negro, a centenarian. 1
He said he was horn in old Virginia, had seen
General Washington and General LaFayette, had
talked familiarly with them, face to face, as
friend talks to friend; had seen Tarleton’s troop
ers, and had served in the war of 1812 as body
servant to some Virginia gentleman, a captain
of a light horse company. The romances of the
old negro were interesting, if not founded on
fact. His looks did not belie the assertion that
he was one hundred and twenty-three years old.
He looked like a living mummy; his black skin
was dry as parchment and clung to his bones as
bark clings to a tree when the hot summer sun
has dried np the intercellular substance. To
use a common expression, he looked hide-bound.
His toothless gums, his lack-lustre eyes and
snow-white head, proclaimed his advanced age.
Whether a hundred or a hundred and fifty, you
could see that he was old—very old.
I encountered this ancient African in the deep,
secluded cove in which his little cabin stood;
and towering mountains, wooded to the summit j
with pine and oak, their sides ribbed with huge ,
masses of rock, stood sentinels over this relic of
ancient days. Here he lived a hermit's life and
professed to cure nearly all diseases to which
flesh is heir. He had specifics for dropsy, rheu- j
matism, chills, eczema, arthritis, neuralgia, sick
headaches and the like. He had only to breathe j
on your corns, and they would disappear like j
snow before the sun.
He told me that once he had met a beautiful
young woman on the mountain, who told him i
wonderful things; a&d had complained that she
could not die. She had told him that there was
in these mountains a spring of living waters,
and that whoever would drink of its waters
would never grow old, would forever be free
from sickness or pain, and would enjoy perpet
ual youth. I gave the old black dotard a dollar
and asked him to show me the place where he
had seen her. He pointed out a long range of
hills, which he said terminated in the Hot
Springs mountain, in which are located all the
thermal fountains yet discovered. Again and
again he asseverated the truth of liis story, and
said he had searched every cove and hollow in
all these mountains for this spring of perpetual
youth; he had tasted and drank of every spring
and rill, and had peered into every cove and
cavern, but all to no purpose. He had never
again seen the beautiful creature who had told ;
this marvelous story; and he was growing weary
of the search. He saw me smile incredulously, j
and lapsed into deep thought. All at once, he
thrust his hand into his bosom and drew out a
soiled package of paper, which he carefully un- i
folded.
“Look here,” said he, “see this! did you j
ever see anything like this before?”
Within the folds of this soiled, begrimed '
piece of paper, he slowly withdrew what seemed
to be a thread of pure, shining gold, so fine that '
it must have been the acme of the gold-spinners’
art. Holding fast to one end of the shining \
thread, he shook its rings and folds out in the \
breeze more than two yards in length; and there
he held it fluttering, waving, curling like a live
thing in his hand, and streaming in its golden
sheen, brighter than a spider’s thread in the
morning dew.
“ This here is a hair from that young woman’s I
head; and as sure as you live, I have seed her
and hearn her talk,” he said, as he slowly fold
ed and wound the golden thread in concentric
circles around his finger, and then replaced it
in its paper envelope.
I had never before seen anything like it. The
dead aspect of the old negro, the solemn, earn
est look of the mummy face, the long golden
thread which I had touched and knew to be the
hair of a woman’s head, longer, more golden,
more life-like, more beautiful than any I had
ever seen before; all these, with the wild, weird
surroundings, the dark pines and the moaning
winds sighing through their needle-like leaves,
all filled me with a strange, unearthly feeling,
and I shivered as with a severe malarial ague.
I offered him an additional dollar for this single
golden hair; he shook his head; I offered two
dollars and up to ten dollars, but all in vain.
“No, stranger,” said he, “I would not part
with this single hair for all the money you have.
It keeps the old man alive; I feel no pain when
this little hair is in my bosom. She lost it by
its hanging in a bush while she was talking to
me, and I found it arter she had vanished, and I
have kept it ever since, and I believe, ’fore God
that I will never die so long as I keep it in my
bosom. You are the fust white man I ever told all
this to, and you shall be the last. White folks
are so scornful of what they don't know deyselves;
and I have been afeared somebody would steal
the blessing from the old nigger, for it’s worth
more than a hundred millions of dollars to any
man what ain’t tired of living.”
In vain I pleaded with him to part from this
little souvenir of the wonderful and long-lived
maiden. There was a rushing sound of wind in
the old pine trees and the rolling of distant
thunder, and I entreated the old man to part
from the golden hair. He refused stoutly, and
remained firm as the sandstone on which he
stood. A vivid flash of lightning now blinded
me, and when I looked around in the blackness
of night, the African was gone, and I was alone
on the rock in the cove, where we both had
stood a few moments before. I called and shout
ed until I grew hoarse; the wind roared and
raved, the lightning flashed, and the only an
swer to my frantic calls were the hootings of
owls and the howlings of wolves.
I turned my face towards the valley; and long
before I had reached the comfortable rooms and
friendly lights of the Grand Central Hotel, the
rain descended in torrents and drenched me to
the skin. Amid all this storm, its hideous night
horrors and wild surroundings, the tale of the
old negro had driven me almost to madness,
unreal, fantastic and extravagant as it might ap
pear. I strode along in the pelting rain; and
like another “Lear,” I hared my head, now
glowing hot, to its pitiless peltings, and cried
aloud. I ran, I leaped, shouted, laughed and
screamed like a demon at the idea of having
touched and fondled a hair, a single hair, from
the head of Perpetual Youth. I had never before
dreamed of such a thing. I, who had been on the
threshold of death so long; I, who had longed and
groaned for restoration to health, thus suddenly
to be brought into contact with something that
told of eternal youth and perfect health, was too
much for me. It seemed I could confront the grim
monster, Death, and laugh in his face; and in
my imagination I saw him shorn of his power;
and in the darkness I shook my fist at him and
shouted defiance. I leaped from rock to rock,
dashed through the mountain torrents, and sped
home like one demented, and felt no tightening
of ligament or tendon, no stiffening of joint or
contraction of muscle, as I sped along in the
darkness.
“ I will find this maid of perpetual youth,and
I will drink of that marvelous spring, if I be
forced to hunt every nook and corner of these
mountains, their glens and coves; I will search
under every rock and leaf until I find her.”
The princely possession of that single thread
of hair by that old negro filled me with ugly
feelings; even that little waif was worth a world
to me; and I felt that it would enrich and make
me ever blessed, while it could do but little
good to the mummified old African, who was
nothing more than a breathing icorpse. Oh ! |
the long years of health and glory, love and
happiness, that were in my grasp while I talked
to the old man. How easily I could have
snatched it from his palsied fingers and fled
away in the darkness ! What a fool! But I de
termined to hunt up the old man again, and if
possible to possess myself of his treasure.
That night, when I laid down to sleep, I saw
only the old negro and the thread of hair; I
dreamed of them; and when I awoke the next
morning, the charm had vanished. I was limp
and weak, sore in every muscle, and utterly
prostrated. I was a mortal man again, and alone
with my human mortality. The old negro’s
story was still vivid in my memory, hut its won
derful fascination was a little faded, and I felt
cheap, very cheap.
A week after this I was in a distant valley and
mounted on a splendid horse. Suddenly, I
came upon a sharp curve in the narrow road,
and looking up I saw, seated on a jutting rock
far overhead, the form of the old negro, dozing
in the sunshine. I shouted to him and attract
ed his attention; he leaned forward as if to |
listen, and when I called to him to come down, ;
he slowly and painfully descended to within a
few feet above my head, still clinging to the
rocks and lichens. I reminded him of our
meeting dnring the storm, and tossed him a half
dollar, which he caught and pocketed with the
agility of his ancestor—the monkey. I told him
in soft and smooth words how I had pondered
his wonderful story, and how I longed for an
other sight of that golden thread of hair. He
listened with apparent curiosity, and with much
the grimace of a hoary baboon, when you throw
him nuts and gingerbread in his cage. I invited
him to come down into the road and once more
exhibit his treasure to me.
Here, a look of blank amazement crept over
his wrinkled face, and a smile of haboonish
cuteness rewarded my invitation to come down.
I repeated the invitation and tossed another
half dollar, which he dexterously caught and
pocketed. Then turning his old shriveled vis
age full towards me, his nostrils dilated and a
look of amazement in his eyes, he said, in
purely African tones:
“ Look—look here, what dat you say ? I never
seed you before in all my life, ’fore God I didn’t;
I ain’t got no piece of har, nor nothin’ else.
You fool, white man, talkin’ dat way ’bout har!
I ain’t seed no har—no white ’oman, eider. If
you’s got the trantrums you’d better go to Doctor
Garnett and git ’em failed out. If you’s drunk
right now, I sgwine away from here, I is.”
Astounded at the old negro’s duplicity and
angry at his African cunning and assured igno
rance, and more, than angry at his cool, direct
cut, I watched him ascend the rocky cliff, and
when he paused out of my reach, he looked
back at me and gave a peculiar shake of the
head which none but a negro can give. I here
lost my temper, and taking out a small pocket
derringer pointed it at him. He grinned deris
ively at me, feeling as secure from his pursuer
as the monkey does in the summit of the tallest
cocoa trees.
“ Shoot, if you want to !” he screamed from
his place of security—and I did shoot, the ball
falling spent and harmless many feet below
him.
“I never seed you before, in all my life, and
I ain’t got no har, white man,”he screamed, and
then disappeared from my sight and I nave
never seen him since.
I went to his cabin a few weeks after this ren
counter, but it was deserted. The doors swung
wide open and clanked and slapped with every
wind. The dirt floor was wet and the ashes in
the fire-place were soaked with rain. The old
negro had been frightened and had fled from
his home. I searched the house, and under a
large flag-stone that formed the corner of the
rude hearth, I found a few of his medicines and
conjurers’ implements. Poor old negro—but
he had beaten me with his native talent; he had
in his possession a priceless gem that kings and
queens would give their crowns to possess.
Once it was in my hands, and I could—but how
do I know that his story is not one of the thou
sands of similar stories that haunt the negro
mind—a wild, fetish story, conjured up to ex
tort a dollar now and then from a gaping vic
tim ? The cool impudence of disowning any
knowledge of meeting me before, and his utter
and reckless disregard of truth in saying that
he had “no har,” was all purely African du
plicity; and after a few weeks of intense excite
ment on the subject I lapsed into the dull rou
tine of the springs, nursingmy improving joints
and occasionally joining in the hops and revels
at the Grand Central and amusing myself the
best I could.
Autumn had come on apace, and the wild astor
had begun to show its pure blue eyes on the
mountain-sides, and to nod and wink from be
hind the gray old rocks. The scarlet cardinal’s
flower was all aglow on the brooksides, and the
feathery ferns hung fantastically to the rocks
and streamed out from their crannies and min
iature caverns in wild prolusion. Then came a
few cold nights, and the forests put on their
richest robes. The maple draped herself like
Messalina, in scarlet and gold; the tupelo and
sweet-gum, the sumach and hickory, the oak
and the willow, all vied in varied hues to drape
the mountain-sides in unrivaled splendor; and
when distance lent enchantment to the view,
the rugged cliffs and hills seemed clad in the
most gorgeous tapestry. And when the autumn
evening sun shone upon these gorgeous colors,
the glamour of gold and amber hung about and
above all these rare colors and seemed a part of
fairy-land.
The monotonous life of an invalid at the Hot
Springs hangs heavy at times, and I became
harassed once more with the yearning wish to
ramble about the hills and valleys. The story
of the old negro came back to me; the story of
the Fountain of Youth; the wonderful story of
the maiden who had tasted these waters and
thereby gained perpetual youth; the possession
by this old negro of a single strand of her hair,
which he believed exercised a sort of talismanic
charm of preserving his life, forever, maybe—all
these came back with renewed strength and filled
me with hot enthusiasm.
What? Shall I dawdle about these marvelous
springs and nurse my stiff joints, bathe torever
and swallow potash ad nauseam, and not make a
bold effort to get at the fountain-head of all thiB
wonderful story ? One drop of that magic water
would cure all my stiffened joints and repro
duce me fairer than Antinous, stronger than
Hercules and longer-lived than Saturn or Zens.
Even one thread of that hair from the head of
perpetual youth, laid upon my bare bosom,
would give me a new lease on life, and I might
continue my search for years to find the verita
ble fountain itself. A yearning madness now
possessed me; day after day I wanderad over the
mountains and spent days and nights under the
shadow of their great rocks. I missed my cus
tomary food and wonted sleep; I lived on the
water that trickled down the mountain-sides
from a thousand different springs. But what
cared I for the food of men or the sleep of mor
tals ? I was searching for immortality and per
petual youth. This absorbing idea engulphed
all the rest, and I actually believed the negro’s
story.
The calcareous tufa, the novaculite ledges and
masses, gneiss, dolomite and serpentine, agate,
crystal quartz, smoked topaz, chatoyant opal,
and the thousand other rare things of this valley
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