194 ISLES OF SUMMEE. 



Unfavorable rumors floated more or less loosely in the soft and 

 silky air, but, notwithstanding, the wings of fear were kept 

 wonderfully well clipped. Nor did we permit ourselves to be 

 made unhappy by unfavorable possibilities. We knew that bor- 

 rowed troubles are worse than real ones; but still the fact was 

 too patent to be overlooked or ignored, that only a single floating 

 bridge, of limited capacity, connected us with Florida's wet and 

 flowery land, and that if it, for any cause should give way, as 

 several of its predecessor's had done, it might be some weeks be- 

 fore its owners in New York would learn of ibe disaster, and span 

 the Florida gulf with a substitute. Nor did we feel any strong 

 desire, personally, to " lie down to pleasant dreams " in the white 

 coraline rock of ''the greatest sanitarium of the western world," 

 even though a colonial capital should in consequence thereof be 

 beautified and made forever famous by our monument. 



After a while our turn to depart came, and a feeling of great 

 satisfaction — not to say relief — came over us when we bade adieu 

 to the great sanitarium, and the charming picture of jewelled 

 isles in a turquoise sea disappeared from view. Proudly our 

 steamer skimmed the smooth, untroubled and tranquil world of 

 waters, slowly and grandly the day god 



"Steeped 

 His fiery face in billows of the west," 



while the night was made glorious with its canopy of brilliant 

 stars. It spoke well for our ship, and for the hotel in which we 

 liad spent so many happy hours, that in neither of them had 

 there been a single case of serious sickness of any kind. 



Mr. Phelps and his mother, and Dr. Aiken, were our fellow- 

 passengers, so that it seemed — especially while they detailed to us 

 tbeir sad experiences — tbat we were brought almost into the very 

 presence of the much to be dreaded fever itself. But a kind and 



