At the
close of the Civil War he was a twenty-five-year-old Colonel with a
played-out plantation and about a thousand dollars in gold.
Fitz-Norman Culpepper Washington, for that was the young Colonel's
name, decided to present the Virginia estate to his younger brother
and go West. He selected two dozen of the most faithful blacks, who,
of course, worshipped him, and bought twenty-five tickets to the West,
where he intended to take out land in their names and start a sheep
and cattle ranch.
When he had been in Montana for less than a month and things were
going very poorly indeed, he stumbled on his great discovery. He had
lost his way when riding the room and the sides and bottom of the bath
itself was a blue aquarium, and gazing through the crystal surface on
which he sat, he could see fish swimming among amber lights and even
gliding without curiosity past his outstretched toes, which were
separated from them only by the thickness of the crystal. From
overhead, sunlight came down through sea-green glass.
"I suppose, sir, that you'd like hot rosewater and soapsuds this
morning, sir--and perhaps cold salt water to finish."
The negro was standing beside him.
"Yes," agreed John, smiling inanely, "as you please,"; Any idea of
ordering this bath according to his own meagre standards of living
would have been priggish and not a little wicked.
The negro pressed a button and a warm rain began to fall, apparently
from overhead, but really, so John discovered after a moment, from a
fountain arrangement near by.
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