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.
