But we had
no desire to belittle this pretty cascade, especially when we found
that Judge Logan would regard a foot abated from the 1400 as a
personal grievance. Mr. Logan once performed the functions of local
judge, a Republican appointment, and he sits around the premises now
in the enjoyment of that past dignity and of the fact that his wife
is postmistress. His house of entertainment is at the bottom of the
valley, a place shut in, warm, damp, and not inviting to a long stay,
although the region boasts a good many natural curiosities.
It was here that we encountered again the political current, out of
which we had been for a month. The Judge himself was reticent, as
became a public man, but he had conspicuously posted up a monster
prospectus, sent out from Augusta, of a campaign life of Blaine and
Logan, in which the Professor read, with shaking knees, this
sentence: "Sure to be the greatest and hottest [campaign and civil
battle] ever known in this world. The thunder of the supreme
struggle and its reverberations will shake the continents for months,
and will be felt from Pole to Pole."
For this and other reasons this seemed a risky place to be in. There
was something sinister about the murky atmosphere, and a suspicion of
mosquitoes besides.
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