194 ISLES OF SUMMER. 
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 the 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 
‘had 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 
their sad experiences—that we were brought almost into the very 
presence of the much to be dreaded fever itself. Buta kind and 
