BESIDE THE MARSH. 
I am sitting upon the upland bank of a 
narrow winding creek. Before me is a sea 
of grass, brown and green of many shades. 
To the north the marsh is bounded by live- 
oak woods, —a line with numberless inden- 
tations, — beyond which runs the Matanzas 
River, as I know by the passing and repass- 
ing of sails behind the trees. Eastward are 
sand-hills, dazzling white in the sun, with a 
ragged green fringe along their tops. Then 
comes a stretch of the open sea, and then, 
more tothe south, St. Anastasia Island, with 
its tall black-and-white lighthouse and the 
cluster of lower buildings at its base. Small 
sailboats, and now and then a tiny steamer, 
pass up and down the river to and from St. 
Augustine. 
A delicious south wind is blowing (it is 
the 15th of February), and I sit in the shade 
of a cedar-tree and enjoy the air and the 
scene. <A contrast, this, to the frozen world 
I was living in, less than a week ago. 
