206 ISLES OV SUMMER. 



hidden Itiv/s of tlie world of matter and mind are born of the 

 north wind sweeping over the snow fields. 



Wandering through the wilderness of streets in the noisy Bahel 

 of the Empn-e State, only seventy-four miles from home, a little 

 nnassimikted globule in a great eddying, boiling sea of human 

 life, separated and isolated from familiar scenes and faces, and 

 from warm and SA'fhpathetic hearts, a murky and crushing feel- 

 ing of loneliness that we cannot dispel pervades the soul, and 

 life for the time loses its value by reason of its comjjarative in- 

 significance. But the frequent mails, the long lines of railroad, 

 the locomotive with its ribs of steel and mouth of fire, the bridges 

 of steamboats over all the deep separating water-ways, the perfect 

 net-work of telegraph and telephone wires, like great life-roots, 

 still closely unite and bind to the familiar places and faces that 

 we have left behind ns; while the morning press, that miracle of 

 modern enterprise and invention — seems to so closely connect us, 

 that we realize that Ave are indeed a component part of the great 

 world of human life, and we feel every pulsation of its great 

 heart. But upon the little island of New Providence — a rock 

 fast anchored in the great ocean — communication with the out- 

 side world is so infrequent and contingent, that we seem when 

 anxiously waiting, watching, and vainly longing for the arrival 

 f r(5m Jacksonville of the only steamer that connects these islands 

 with the mainland, like a little colony of Eobinson Crusoes. 



On stejiping from the deck of a steamer, upon one of the 

 docks at Nassau, we have a consciousness that we are mere waifs 

 on the ocean of life, dissevered and far away drifted from every- 

 thing that makes a residence upon tlie sun's little satelite desir- 

 able. 



The tired worker, needing absolute quiet and rest, can find it 

 there. But he must make up his mind not to be anxious or 

 fussy about friends and business in his distant home. If, day 



