’ 
14 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
Hence, after the dwellers in the north have each in his genera- 
tion for untold thousands of years been snow-bound and ice- 
anchored, their descendants in our day are able at winter’s 
approach, to migrate with the birds, and thus secure perfect 
exemption from its discomiorts. To many, suffering from dis- 
ease, or with blood which age has made sluggish, this is a great 
boon. 
In the winter of 1879, and again in 1880, the author influenced 
mainly by sanitary considerations, fled from frost to the islands 
of unending summer, spending sometime in Florida when going 
and returning in 1879, and again on his way home n 1880. The 
knowledge he was thus enabled to acquire, isin part contained 
in these pages. Most of his notes upon Florida may perhaps 
form the ground work of a future volume. 
On a clear morning in January, A. D. 1879, the author looked 
out of his office window upon New Ilaven’s beautiful ‘* Green,” 
E and saw its noble elms in their maturity, lifting their long bare 
brown arms towards heaven as if in supplication, while a whit ze) 
“and beautiful carpet of snow revealed the shadows and reflected 
the sunlight. Three days afterwards, he sat upon the deck of 
an occan steamer, in a pleasant summer atmosphere, within one 
-hundred and fifty miles of the city of Savannah, with nothing 
‘in view but the blue dome of the sky, the restless ocean waves, 
‘and some daring sea birds which hovered high in air above the 
steamer’s foaming track, and watched with their telescopic eyes, 
and waited for their share of the noon-day meal. The contrast 
was most striking; the change from a life of care and of continu- 
ed moil and toil, to a state of calm and peaceful rest, was as 
agreeable as it was marked and sudden. But life is full of start- 
ling and unexpected contrasts. There is seemingly no stability 
but instability, nothing constant but unrest. Change itself be- 
comes changeless in its unvarying mutability, 
