DEAR PUNCHINELLO: I see you have been at the White Sulphur Springs; but
you forgot to tell us what we were all dying to hear about the waters.
Several friends had suggested that I should go to some watering place
where I could get nothing else but water to drink, or to some spring
where I couldn't get "sprung." I tried the White Sulphur, and while
there learned some facts that may be useful to others who seek them for
a similar purpose.
These springs differ from the European springs in that they were not
discovered by the Romans. The Latin conquerors never roamed so far, and
it was perhaps a good thing for them that they didn't, Sulphur water
could not have agreed with Romans any more than it agrees with Yankees
who take whiskey with it. I was asked if I would like to analyse the
water, (as everything here is done by analysis under the eye of the
resident physician.) _My_ analysis was done entirely under the nose.
I raised a glass of the enchanted fluid to my lips: but my nose said
very positively, "Don't do it," and I didn't. I told my conductor I had
analyzed it, and he seemed not a little astonished at the rapidity and
simplicity of the method. He asked me if I would be kind enough to write
out a statement of the result after the manner of Dr. HAYES, Prof.
ROGERS, and others who have examined these waters and testified that
they would cure everything but hydrophobia. I told him I would, and
retiring to my room, wrote as follows:
"Sulphur water contains mineral properties of a sulphuric character,
owing to the fact that the water runs over beds of sulphur. Nobody has
ever seen these beds, but they are supposed to constitute the cooler
portions of those dominions corresponding to the Christian location of
Purgatory. Sinners, preliminary to being plunged into the fiery furnace,
are laid out on these beds and wrapped in damp sheets by chambermaids
regularly attached to the establishment. This is meant to increase the
torture of their subsequent sufferings, and there can be no doubt that
it succeeds. Herein we have also an explanation of the reason of these
waters coming to the surface of the earth--it is to give patients and
other _miserables_ who drink them a foretaste of future horrors. Passing
from this branch of the subject to the analysis proper, I find that
fifty thousand grains of sulphur water divided, into one hundred parts,
contains,
Bilge water, - - - - - - - - - - 95.75
Sulphate of Bilgerius, - - - - - 1.855
Chloride of Bilgeria, - - - - - - .285
Carbonate de Bilgique, - - - - - - .750
Silica Bilgica, - - - - - - - - - 1.955
Hydro-sulp-Bil, - - - - - - - - - .28
Twenty thousand grains of the water would contain less of the above
element than fifty thousand grains, which ought to be mentioned as
another one of the remarkable peculiarities of this most remarkable
fluid."
I sent the foregoing scientific deductions to the "Resident Physician,"
and the bearer told me afterwards that the venerable Esculapian only
observed,--"Well, the writer of that must have been a most egregious
ass. There is no such thing as 'Sulphate of Bilgerius,' or 'Silica
Bilgica,' or anything like them", and then the old fellow chuckled to
himself over my supposed ignorance. I was willing he should. I'm
accustomed to being called an ass, and always like to be recognized by
my kindred. Chemically thine,