THE HUMORIST WRITES FROM HIS WINTER RESORT IN HIS USUALLY HAPPY VEIN ON
VARIOUS TOPICS.
ASHEVILLE, N. C.--As soon as I saw in the papers that my health was
failing, I decided to wing my way South for the winter. So I closed up
my establishment at Slipperyelmhurst, told the game-keeper not to
monkey with the preserves and came here, where I am now writing. At
first it seems odd to me that I should be writing from where I now am,
but the more I think it over the better I am reconciled to it, for what
better place can a man select from which to write a letter than the
point where he is located at the time.
Asheville is an enterprising cosmopolitan city of six or seven thousand
people and a visiting population during the season of sixty thousand
more. It is situated in the picturesque valley of the French Brood and
between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies. Asheville is the metropolis
of Western North Carolina, and has no competition nearer than Knoxville,
Tenn., one hundred and sixty miles away, and, in fact, not in any way
competing with Asheville, for it is in another county altogether.
This region of country is from 2,000 to 7,000 feet above sea level and
is, in fact, a mountain region with a southern exposure.
Strange stories are told here of people who came five, ten, twenty or
more years ago, with a view of dying here, but who afterward decided to
live on, and they are living yet. One man who was a survivor of the
Samso-Philistine war, if I am not mistaken, came here at last from the
mouth of the Amazon, full of malaria. He had been kind of "down in the
mouth"--of the Amazon for some years, and they say his liver looked
like a rubber door-mat and his skin was like the cover of a sun-kissed
ham.
He picked up his spirits here and recovered his youth, and though he was
very old when he came, he is still older now and in pretty good health.
I went to see him the other day. He is so old that there is moss on the
north side of him and hieroglyphics on his feet. When I made some
facetious remarks to him and told him a story I had recently acquired,
he brightened up a good deal and emitted a dry, cackling laugh like a
xylophone, and said that he believed he enjoyed that story just as well
as he did when they used to tell it in the rifle-pits in front of Troy.
He said he liked Asheville very much indeed.
Asheville is called the Switzerland of America. It has been my blessed
privilege during the past twenty years to view nearly all the
Switzerlands of America that are here, but this is fully the equal if
not the superior of any of them.
You can climb to the top of Beaucatcher Mountain and see a beautiful
sight in any direction, and on most any day of the year. Every where the
eye rests on a broad sweep of dark-blue climate. Up in the gorges, under
the whispering pines, along the rhododendron bordered margins of the
Swannonoa, or the French Brood, out through the Gap, and down the
thousand mountain brooks, you will find enough climate in twenty minutes
to last a week.
The chief products of Western North Carolina are smoking tobacco and
climate. If you do not like the climate you can keep yourself to the
smoking tobacco.
Here you will find old Mr. Ozone with his coat off and a feather duster
in his hand, prepared to dust the cobwebs from the catacombs of the
asthmatic or the consumptive. There is enough climate wasted here every
year to supply a city the size of Chicago. Moreover, there is now a
handsome hotel here called the Battery Park--that has been full ever
since it was built and you can get good saddle horses, carriages or
donkeys at reasonable rates in town.
The donkey is quite a feature of this country as he is apt to be of all
mountain countries in fact. I have never associated with a more genial
urbane or refined donkey than we have here. He is generally a soft mouse
color, about nine hands high, and delights in making small, elongated
foot-prints on the sands of time.
This small animal of the mountains is frequently accompanied by a robust
but poorly-modulated voice. It is very pathetic and generally needs a
little oil on it. The North Carolina donkey like the Colorado burro,
lives to a great age. He then dies.
Asheville has splendid water works supplying first-class water to those
who wish to use this popular fluid; electric lights all over the city, a
street railway organized with its money put up to construct it next
summer, first-class churches, schools and colleges, well supplied
markets with moderate prices, and lots of genuine attractions beside the
climate. Fuel and whiskey are about the same that they are in Chicago,
so a man need not suffer here provided he has a moderate income.
The sportsman may sport here with impunity, and the angler may also
triangular relaxation.
Moonshine whisky is also produced here in the mountains, though in a
crude way, and very quietly. None of the moonshiners advertise much in
the papers. They do not care for a big run of trade, but seem content to
remain in obscurity. Sometimes, however, their work attracts the
attention of prominent people who come out and call on them with
shot-guns and regrets.
Then the moonshiner does his distillery up in a napkin and goes away
into the primeval forest. Some years ago a party of revenue officers
hunted out one of these amateur distillers and chased him up the side of
the mountain, where they surrounded and captured him with his distillery
on his back, like a Babcock fire-extinguisher, and still warm.
The officer, in his report of the capture, referred to it as a still
hunt, whereupon his commission was promptly revoked. The man who tries
to have any fun with the present Administration must have his
resignation where he can put his hand on it at a moment's warning.