Going South

I.

“WE are seven,” — Ma Dame, Heraclitus, Our Sister, Merle, St. Thomas, Molly, and I. Molly is a lady of color. The rest of us, in varying degrees and with different or indifferent success, are generally conceded to be white. At least, we are so at the epoch whence this chronicle emanates, the epoch at which we sit in conclave cautious and profound, desperately face to face with the great New England problem of what to do with our winter.

We are the possessors, among us, of one case of acute sore throat and one neuralgia of the eyebrow. These are our invalids, properly speaking. To these might be added one case of chronic ill-temper and one of incipient idiocy. Modesty forbids me to indicate very particularly the claimant of the latter; but not to mention it were plainly to be standing in one’s own light, for they estimate invalids at so much a head in traveling South. Beyond Savannah a toothache acquires a pro rata value unequaled, I believe, in any other portion of the globe; and to acquire, say in the latitude of the St. John’s River, a cold upon the lungs, would shed a lustre upon a party of twice the size of ours.

Possessing such qualifications to win renown in another and a sunnier clime, it becomes plain that we cannot permit them to run to waste in the obscurity of our Northern homes. Mere gratification of the instinct which leads the human being to struggle for social prestige renders it clear that a New England winter is of all things to be dreaded for us.

“ Florida ? ”

One of our number timidly offers this remark in an essentially general way, and as if appealing altogether to the general mind. To this day it is unknown which of us it was. I have heard it whispered above a breath that it was the Incipient Idiot; but let that pass.

“ Florida,” observes our Weeping Philosopher, “is a great way from home.”

“ So,” urges St. Thomas, “ is heaven. You will admit as much as that, Heraclitus, I’m sure.”

“ True,” says Heraclitus sadly; and we relapse into a general religious melancholy.

“ Philadelphia,” remarks Heraclitus, brightening after a pause, “is nearer than either.”

This suggestion meets with general approval until Merle reminds us that they had the small-pox severely in Philadelphia, some winters since; which strikes Philadelphia immediately off our list.

Now, at this point we begin to be collectively and severally convinced that we are fated to winter in the State of Florida. But the human mind comes so slowly to the expression of a genuine conviction, that we launch ourselves for a week or so adrift upon a sea of convulsive doubt. We plunge into waves of Pathfinders and Travelers’ Tales. We inflict life-long injuries upon our optic nerves by poring over atlases. We resolve ourselves into a committee of Rosa Dartles, of which the Incipient Idiot is unanimously appointed chairman, and, “ asking for information,” we let our thirst for knowledge loose upon a defenseless public. We investigate the climatic influences of Cuba; we acquaint ourselves with the velocity of the wind in the Bahamas, the price of eggs in Mexico, the polities of Peru, and the quality of alpaca in Patagonia. Nobody says anything about Florida. We avoid Florida as if it were a shipwreck or a love-story. As if there were no other place than Florida to spend a winter in! As if, forsooth! we are to be entrapped at this early stage of our fresh Bohemianism into committing ourselves to anywhere !

To a mind somewhat imbued both by nature and by training with faith in the credibility of testimony, the experiences incident to the preparation for a journey into an unfamiliar region are a severe shock. Between the Statements of witnesses picked and chosen for their unassailable veracity there exists the most “ conspicuous inexactness.” People whom I trust as implicitly as I trust myself treat me to the most appalling antitheses. An orthodox church-member in good and regular standing assures me that the climate of Richmond is even and mild. A deacon in a neighboring parish swears that he perished in Richmond of sleet and caprice. An old and revered friend writes that I must go to the pine-belts of Georgia; in the pinebelts of Georgia there is no snow, and consumptives never cough. My nextdoor neighbor runs in before I have finished the letter to remind me, with tears in her eyes, that her brother died of consumption in the pine-belts of Georgia, and was buried in a four - inch snowstorm. She has scarcely left before the evening mail brings me nine letters: three recommending different hotels in the mountains of North Carolina, three advising camp-life in the city of Charleston, two suggesting a yacht in the Savannah harbor, and one a cottage in the Louisiana Muddle: each of these courses of conduct is urged upon us by its several intelligent and honorable advocates as the only one which we can pursue with the best feasible prospect of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.

When it comes to Florida the case is sadder yet. By the time that we have slowly narrowed our restless imaginations to the confines of that admirable State, — which in time we do, with something at once of the alacrity of a lover and the reluctance of a maiden, with souls at once hankering regretfully for every little village which has been recommended to us from Maine to Mexico and fired with enthusiastic faith in the attractions of the St. John’s River, — by this time my confidence in the veracity of the educated Christian world is terribly shaken.

There is but one civilized spot in Florida, and that is Jacksonville.

There is but one civilized spot in Florida, and that is St. Augustine.

There is but one spot of any kind in Florida, and that is Enterprise.

Whatever else we do, we must avoid the river for dear life’s sake.

Whatever else we do, we must settle on the river immediately.

Northerners cannot be out after sunset.

Northerners can be out all night if they like.

We need not carry rubbers, because when it rains in Florida the sandy soil soaks the water away.

Wc may leave our rubbers at home, because it never rains in Florida.

It is hotter on the river than it is by the coast.

It is just as hot on the coast as it is by the river.

The thermometer has been known to run to one hundred degrees in December.

The thermometer never rises above ninety degrees in July.

Ice sometimes forms in Florida about Christmas.

Ice never forms in Florida at any time.

There is nothing to eat in Florida.

There is as much to eat in Florida as there is at home.

You don’t want anything to eat in Florida.

Carry your muslin dresses if you wish to avoid immediate dissolution.

At your peril go without your furs!

You will find it difficult to sleep, because of the barking of the dogs in which the South abounds.

Never heard a dog bark in Florida.

You may be annoyed by the sound of passing on the hard shell roads of St. Augustine.

They never shoe the horses in St. Augustine, because the roads are drifting sand.

It takes four days to go to Florida. It takes two days and three nights to go to Florida. It takes a week to go to Florida.

There is malaria in Florida in March.

There is malaria in Florida all the year round.

There is never any malaria in Florida at all.

I feel that my brain is reeling under this, and that if it goes on much longer that peculiar species of invalidism which I so successfully represent in our party will develop at such a rate as to render us, however gloriously, perhaps uncomfortably conspicuous in traveling.

I therefore suggest that the clearest way out of these depressing circumstances will be to start for St. Augustine next week.

“Yes,” says St. Thomas, “I think St. Augustine is the place for us.”

“I cannot satisfy myself about the roast beef of St. Augustine,” muses Heraclitus mournfully, “ and I have heard that the wild turkey is canned. Would it not be better to try the pinebelts of Geor—”

“ Yes,” says St. Thomas, with fresh conviction, “ I think the air of Georgia would be very beneficial. I think myself we should like it quite as well.”

And off we go again! Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, Carolina mountains, the yacht, the muddle, malaria and no malaria, — we run the gamut through. For aught I know to the contrary we should be sitting there yet, playing at this geographical coquetry with the evasive, eluding, baffling bewitchment of that unknown country —

had not Merle suddenly and quietly observed that she should start for St. Augustine a fortnight from Monday night in the half-past nine express, and that the rest of us might do as we pleased.

This settles the matter. Nobody thinks of protesting. We are reduced to that condition in which if anybody had possessed the nerve to say, “ I shall start on Monday night to spend the winter yachting on the river Styx,” we should pack our trunks and follow with no emotions more mixed than those of grateful enthusiasm.

I am free to confess, for my own part, that I am not what one may call an experienced traveler. It is true that twice a year 3 make a journey to the city of Boston, say in the months of November and May, and I cannot deny that I once visited the State almshouse at Tewksbury; but I mention these circumstances with the greatest modesty, and, as I say,

I do not call myself an experienced traveler.

Especially is there something in this journey South which I find metaphysically, I may say even morally, confusing. To lose a winter out of one’s life! How may one dare? Deliberately to give nature the slip in this way, to steal a march upon her, to take her by surprise, to cheat her out of her rights, crosses one’s sense of harmony so closely as almost to cross one’s conscience. For, to a Northern conscience, as to a Northern constitution, winter seems as much of a necessity as faith in specie payments or mission Sunday-schools.

Consider the matter. All the nerves of soul and body are braced for bleakness, bareness, whiteness, muteness, — the great restraints and reserves and solitudes of a frozen world. The melancholy September languors prepared us gently for these things as they settled down the hills; the rich heart of October, beating fast and warm against our own, whispered to us how grand the end of summer hours might be if only they died bravely; the grave yet sweet decay that purpled on November fields and across the wavering, dim horizon that forests make, led us kindly into the repose of leaflessness and lifelessness and ice. The mind reaches forward with a content that is not unlike the enduring elements of a large passion, to grasp at the stern inspirations and severe delights which lurk folded in the dead and dying year.

But behold, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the face of the world has changed. Your bewildered gaze opens upon a country in which the year can never die. Your steeled nerves are let suddenly down into brightness, opulence, color, song, into the soft languages and companionships of eternal summer. The low winds whisper like lotos-eaters as you pass; and beneath your feet the shadows of drifting clouds nod to one another, and use a speech and language that you know not of.

In short, you were prepared for sleet, snow, sleigh-bells, slush, your furriers’ bill, a January influenza, your old gaiters, trouble with the furnace, and the Lyceum Bureau.

You find yourself (in your cambric dresses) wandering forever and forever by a summer sea, no sadder care at heart than to listen to perpetual mocking-birds, and no graver work in hand than to pick undying roses and get tanned and terrible in eternal sun.

Is it any wonder, I say, that the Northern conscience starts at such a state of things? Is it a matter of surprise that one should linger “ yet a little longer, half lovingly, in the biting, bleak December days, and buy one’s excursion ticket to Florida with a doubtful oppression at the heart that is half a fear and half a sense of guilt?

“ I shall hear those mocking-birds before I make a case of conscience of it; ” observes Merle, with whom conscience is not a forte, “ and as for cambric dresses ” —

Significant is the vim with which Merle tucks my woolen gaiters into the crown of my straw hat, and depressing is the smile with which I am asked if there is n't room for my rubber boots on top of that Nainsook polonaise; and dreadful is the calmness with which I am advised to roll up the Japanese fans in the double-zephyr sontag.

“ In the winter months,” I insist, reading from the last letter of the last intimate friend who spent two winters in Florida, “ the thermometer stands at about seventy degrees. The sea breezes moderate the golden languor of the sun. The sky is sweet and even as a happy temper. You live in the open air. You breathe in the blessedness of a new life. You inhale the fragrance of the yellow jasmine ” —

“ Yellow jasmine! ” says Merle, squeezing Hamilton’s Metaphysics in between Jean Ingelow and Elia, and bruising the anatomy of my sun-umbrella with Maudesley on Insanity, or some such cheerful little matter.

“ I believe in yellow jasmine,” says Ma Dame, who could n’t help believing in a pleasant thing if she tried, “ and the thermometer and the roses and the mocking-birds, and I’d rather go on believing till I ’m taught better by experience. One may not go to Florida twice in a life-time.”

True, very true; we feel this keenly, dreamily, and delightfully, as the last rapid days slip by. Something of Ma Dame’s blessed faith shines through them, despite the Northern conscience. We, too, will believe in Florida! We, too, just for once in a life-time, will turn our faces, unquestioning and unresisting, to the golden grandeur of the Southern sun. Never mind the brisk little early snow-storm that the December sky pours down upon us in benediction! We will not think how hearty, how happy, how healthy it is, how the keen air enters into our blood like wine, and the clear gaze of the sky sets our feet to crushing the tiny snow-drifts with a step of steel. We will think only how cold it is, and bare, and what the coal bill was last winter, and how Washington Street will look in the January thaw. We will not wonder who will take our Sunday-school class, or if the Legislature of Massachusetts can pass the Woman Suffrage Bill without us, or if that soldier’s widow will have the help about the pension, — we will only go to Florida; Florida, where there are no widows and no Sunday-schools, and where Woman Suffrage is a babe unborn; Florida, where the thermometer stands at seventy, and where the hearts of roses open forever by a summer sea. Florida, where —

“Where we shall be now in four days’ time,” St. Thomas breaks in upon my musing. “And I am assured at the office that the Pullman parlor cars do run through all the way to Jacksonville.”

For the rapid days have all slipped, and we are off. And however it may be with the roses or the thermometer, it is a comfort to believe that the Pullman cars will run to Jacksonville.

New York proves to be a thriving village, in which we find ourselves accommodated for the continuance of our journey by the Pullman parlor cars. I don’t know why Our Sister smiles a sisterly, sardonic smile. I don’t know why we should any of us feel any skepticism on the subject of those Pullman cars. There is no doubt that, the Pullman cars run through to Jacksonville. The timetable says so, and the Florida Guide, and “the newspaper.”

Philadelphia is doubtless an agreeable city, but we pass through it hastily, remembering the small-pox.

Washington is the capital of the District of Columbia, and Heraclitus points out to me, as we approach it, a graceful dome which he tells me is St. Peter’s. From Philadelphia to Washington I may notice that we are again accommodated with the Pullman parlor cars.

I call down upon myself unwittingly the derision of the party, by observing, as we leave Washington, which we do at midnight, that now we have fairly set our faces towards the tropics. Do I consider St. Augustine, they would like to know, as situated in the tropics ? I have the moral courage — and in view of the well-known fact that geography is not my forte it requires courage — to reply, though faintly, that I am open to conviction on the matter, but that I certainly supposed that Florida was — perhaps it would be more accurate to say semitropical; still, I must boldly confess to a general conviction that with sharks and alligators and moccasins, and so on, you may be said to be in the tropics. I have a misty impression that you are in the tropics when you get among things that bite. I am rewarded for this piece of candor, as the candid are always rewarded in this insincere world, by perceiving that I fall at once in the estimation of my friends (who all stood at the head of their geography classes at school) to a point where I am likely to be patronized insufferably, for the remainder of the journey.

Doubtless the experienced traveler, blasé in all such sweet emotions, would fail to appreciate the quality of mine upon entering “ the tropics ” at sunrise. Even the sleeping-car (and may I never rest in my coffin, if it is any narrower than the berths in the sleeping-car which takes us southward out of Washington!) — even the sleeping-car fails to take the romance out of them.

In point of fact, we are approaching Petersburg. In point of fancy, we might be approaching heaven. I draw aside the dingy little window - curtain, poke away Edwards on the Will, — whom I carry for light reading, and who has kept the window open for me and served a more useful purpose, I venture to say, than ever he served before, — and, lying at ease in my coffin, watch with all the enthusiasm of verdancy the first sunrise in the South.

Did I ever see the sun rise before ? He lifts upon the great levels of the desolate country into which we are whirling a countenance strange to me. Slowly through the mighty dark the straight horizon cuts like a knife of pearl. Reluctantly, as one awaking from a blessed dream, the massive foreground of the barrens changes color. What does morning mean, uninterpreted by the contours of summit and abyss? Where are the moods of my already half-forgotten hills? This is the beauty of rigor; this is the strength of simplicity; this is the passion of repose. Softly from the reticence of pearl tints bloom the blushes of the rose, deepens the vividness of fire. All the warm Southern heavens are at last alight. The infinite Southern solitudes are at length alive. I am not used to a horizon in which sky and land seem to be alone together. I have seen a new heavens and a new earth.

And now the sun has lifted up the light of his countenance so far as to enable me to see that I want my breakfast.

We are to breakfast at — I think it is Weldon; but I beg to inquire, in the name of the suffering public, why we do not get to Weldon till ten o’clock; or why, if we cannot get to Weldon before ten o’clock, we cannot have our breakfast at the other place, where we are shot out of our coffins into another train and pushed on, chilly, cross, and hungry, for three mortal, breakfastless hours ? I suppose Weldon has taken out the contract for feeding us, and that the three hours’ fast is a stroke of business policy on the part of Weldon. If so, it is a shrewd one. Nobody would eat in Weldon who had n’t waited three hours for breakfast.

It is the exquisiteness of novelty which creates for us our few memorable experiences, and it is at Weldon that we first appreciate the true delicacy of Southern cookery. By the time we become experienced travelers it is a tale that is told; but at Weldon it is a discovery.

Man cannot live on sunrises alone, — even on the Southern sunrise, — and I eat my breakfast. It is with much repression of the imaginative faculty, but I eat my breakfast. I don’t know what I am eating. There is the most generous variety at Weldon. Strictly speaking, however, it is what you might call variety in unity. There is a certain lack Of originality, I will go so far as to say a certain monotony, in the flavor of the different articles of food which are pressed upon us, to which I do not believe the New England mind, even the New England dépôt-restaurant mind, is capable of reducing itself. I am told that this dish is steak and that is ham. I take it upon faith that one thing is potato and another eggs; but I have little else than the word of the waiter to vouch for it; my sense of sight is confused, and the palate absolutely set at naught. Everything tastes like everything else, and everything tastes fried.

Heraclitus is bolder than the rest of us; he has been experimenting upon the different dishes, with an expression, chiefly about the muscles of the mouth, such as one must know Heraclitus to appreciate, and has hit upon something which he thinks will bear repetition so far as to defer, if not prevent, starvation. He is bolder than we, as I say, and, conceiving that he has found out what he is eating, recklessly calls for “ some more of that fish! ”

Now the rest of us came South for various purposes, but Heraclitus, it is understood, came to gather useful information; so we all sympathize keenly in his pleasure when the waiter hastens to acquaint him with the fact that it is hominy.

Of course the Pullman parlor cars run through to Jacksonville. My faith in the Pullman parlor cars is not in the least affected by the circumstance that we are put at Weldon into a “ plain ” car, as old-fashioned as a leg-o’-mutton sleeve, and that we have not seen a parlor car since then.

“ But I was assured at the office ” — repeats St. Thomas.

And what if we travel in the cold comfort of this assurance from Washington to the St. John’s River? Undoubtedly the parlor cars run through to Jacksonville.

Southward and southward still! Three mortal nights of sleeping-cars. Three immortal days of deepening, warming, wonderful weather. The sun shines and shines and shines. I have never seen such sunshine!

Is it indeed sunshine ? Or is it a fair, fused amber? Or is it a delicate, unflickering flame? Or is it a fine, rare, transparent wine? Cleopatra might have melted all her pearls in such a light. Yet Cleopatra was not fit to breathe it. It might be an aureola for the Lady Una. it might be a garment for Godiva. It might be a thousand things that I cannot capture in my thought. I chase my flying fancies up and down as we ride deeper and deeper into it. For it seems to deepen as we journey with it, like the comfort of a tried friendship, or a finelyharmonized love. What is it Ruskin says about painting the midday sky? “ No human hand can paint blue fire! ” My Ruskin is near a thousand miles away, but that is something like it. No human hand could capture the color of this Southern sunshine. It is living fireIt penetrates the pores of soul and body. We are bathed in brilliance. We breathe light.

Slowly through the golden weather the great Southern wilds slide by our unaccustomed eyes. What miles upon miles of waste! What realms of ruin! I feel rather than perceive or recall that we are in a land where the feet of war have trodden. The country has a bruised look, like one recovering from a deep wound. The signs of life are few and sad. Through acres of desolate everglades we steam lazily up to more desolate little stations, where the sense of solitude becomes a refinement of pain from the appearance of ineffectual effort to break it. A house, a barn, six negroes, and a road winding into the wilderness make a town. I take an idle pleasure in the warm monotony as we jog along. Never since the invention of steam, I am convinced, did a railroad train jog like ours. The lassitude of the Southern temperature seems to have crept into the very cog-wheels, and the smoke-stack itself breathes wearily. I am sure all the locomotives south of Washington have been ordered to Florida by the company’s physician, for chronic debility and acute asthma.

Idly, I say, as we roll along, I adjust myself to the idle scenery. Once in a while I remember that I ought to be collecting useful information. I start with a jerk, and stare about me, wondering how they do it. I try to speculate upon the nature of the vegetation which sprawls over the glaring sand; but I am not learned in “greens.” I wonder what are the educational advantages of the prettiest negro babies, and if that was a member of the South Carolina legislature in the swallow-tail coat and second-hand beaver, whom all the old women in men’s hats hobbled up to see when he got off the train; but I get little light upon the dark subject, and I had much rather wonder where all those desolate, darkening roads go to — where do they? I wonder still! — that crawl away low under the live-oaks and scrub, as if they crawled upon their hands and knees in search of something lost; roads upon which nobody ever seems to go anywhere, and at the end of which there seems to be nothing to go to; mystical, mournful roads, as the dusk drops upon them,—winding away, Heaven knows where! unpeopled, untrodden, unloved, seeking the great shadow of the eternal forest, behind which the sun is sinking red and sad as a hope that sheer solitude has quenched beyond recall.

And then I know, besides, that Heraclitus will collect useful information for the party; so why should I trouble myself? Indeed, did he not tell me something about the imposition of Southern railroads, and how they pushed us sixty miles out of our way and refused to carry us back till he insisted upon it? But I do not remember exactly how it was, for I was reading Shirley, and thinking how the sun shone; and while we waited we sent out into the fields and had a cow milked for our luncheon, and the woman who sold us the milk said she thanked Heaven, for her child was sick this long while and she had no money to buy the medicine. Was not that worth while? And what does it matter if you are imposed upon, provided you do not know it ?

My geographical education is improved perceptibly as we journey. Wilmington, for instance, I know as the place where they would not allow Molly to come to the supper-table at the dépôtrestaurant, because, though comely, “ she was black.” Charleston is the only spot upon the map between New York and St. Augustine where I can get a cup of English breakfast tea. Savannah is the city where the old lady screamed because the horses ran away with the omnibus; and Yemassee is the place between, where they gave us—something — fried for dinner. It was n’t beef; it was n’t pork. I ventured the suggestion that it, was duck, but was laughed to scorn; and, as I say, it was fried. It was fearfully and wonderfully fried. We ate, but trembled. For a dinner at once novel and nutritious, I recommend the traveler to Yemassee. In this wearyworld a new sensation is worth something; and we paid our dollar apiece for the Yemassee refreshments without undue reluctance. I should say in this connection that I have, since coming to Florida, about made up my mind what that dinner was. Indeed, at times I am morally certain that it was fiddlers. It is enough that the Florida resident knows what fiddlers are; to the general mind it is unimportant to go into details.

Southward and southward still! Fair with a wonderful fairness rises one morning, behind the purple mists of swamp and forest, the uninterpreted smile of the Florida sun.

We sit out upon the platform of the car and bask in the brightness like native lizards. It is warm, very warm. My winter cloak and I parted company at Savannah, and I triumph in the little drap dété wrap which everybody laughed at me for putting into that omnivorous shawl - bundle. It is warm, warm. I envy the lady in the linen duster, and am sure we shall go home in February.

Jacksonville looks like Lowell on a July day. The St. John’s River looks like — what does the St. John’s look like? All day we steam shiftlessly over its muddy face. It is sluggish, coffeecolored, hot, lonely. One day on the St. John’s River is better than a thousand. Perhaps we do not appreciate the St. John’s River. We are hungry, sleepless, cross, tired, and black as Molly with three days’cinders. Heraclitus and St. Thomas consult the captain for useful information, and Ma Dame is peacefully appreciative of the scenery. Let them! I am past comprehending useful information, and the scenery is Solitude personified. Like a huge boa - constrictor the miserable river winds through the beautiful wilderness. I make up my mind about Florida at once. “Florida,” I announce confidently, “ is fair, false, and lonely. I don’t want any of it.”

I revive a little at Tocoi, in hopes of the horse-car which is to take us through the forest to St. Augustine. But the horse-car has given place to a self-confident and cheerful little locomotive, and, excepting that we sit in a baggage car, and that they keep a negro on the tender to jump down and drive the cows off the track, there’s not a spice of romance left, to save the famous ride through the wilderness from river to sea.

But we sit in the baggage car, and through the great, open doors on either side the dying day looks in. It is the first sunset in Florida. Passionately through the eternal fastnesses of the everglades penetrate the vivid colors of the hour. I see the opaque grays of the hoary moss, and they are transfigured almost to transparency before they dim. I see the wild oranges, and they shine like golden lamps, and flicker and go out. The deepening dark lays its hands upon my head like a high-priest’s, and I know no more that I am cross and tired and dnsty and homesick, when faintly, from the Ancient City, there steals into my face the first breath of the sea.

There is this advantage in seeing a thing in the dark at the outset: you cannot see the worst of it, and you are left at liberty to believe in the best of it.

We make the most of this liberty as our voluble little locomotive — the locomotive, of which St. Augustine, I believe, is prouder than of all the dead Huguenots or live Yankees who people her historic streets—drops us with a shriek of immense personal relief, not to say of distinct personal injury, at “ the dépôt.”

At least they tell us it is the dépôt. Dimly we perceive the mellow colors of a few pine boards, upon which the light of a splendid bonfire flashes wildly, and we take the dépôt on faith, while we make the rush of escaped lunatics for the possession of half of a geometrical point upon the cushions of the city omnibus.

What, I wonder, is the bonfire for? It is so pretty that it does n’t even seem to me unusual, till we have put a weird mass of moving figures between ourselves and it and find ourselves suddenly plunging into the blackness of outer darkness and the pit of despair. At least, that is the way it strikes the traveler. The more prosaic mind of the St. Augustinian calls it a mud-puddle, and says the new road will soon be built.

What’s in a name, then? Call it a mud-puddle. Make the best of it. Don’t allow yourself the shadow of a “ first impression” that the loveliest spot in lovely Florida could be inhospitable if she tried. Struggle for the beautiful faith of that cheerful passenger — of whose class, thank Heaven, you always find one specimen in the worst mishap which time and tide can inflict upon traveling humanity — who placidly observes, as we reel to and fro, up to the hubs “ in unfathomable mines ” of Florida soil, that “ we are going by water.”

Take it not unkindly that dignity is a lost art, and breathing a forgotten luxury, and a fixed position a calm despair, as the vehicle staggers drunkenly but hopefully on through the howling wilderness; and do not mind it too much if the unaccommodated passenger whose wife said if he went in the express cart she should go too, and who hangs wildly by tooth and nail upon the omnibus steps, should, however polite by nature and by culture, poke you horribly in the neck with his helpless elbow at every jerk and every jar. Mind it? You’ll never mind any of it; it is forgiven, forgotten, it is nothing, it is nowhere, when shrill and suddenly, as the lights of the little city break upon your somewhat critical and not over-ardent gaze, there rings out the bewitching toot of the driver’s old-fashioned horn.

I wonder would that horn be to the experienced traveler as charming as it is to me? Perhaps because I am inexperienced, perhaps because I am tired, perhaps because I am hungry, perhaps because I am sleepy, perhaps because I am determined to fall in love with St. Augustine if a no longer youthful nor susceptible nature will admit of it, that horn is the sweetest music in the world to me just now. The sweetest music in the world to me always is something that it ought not to be. I can think of nothing to compare with the driver’s horn but certain of those indefinable and indelible impressions which one receives from hand-organs played on sunny corners in sunny cities, on days when the heart is light. Perhaps there is a touch of the barbaric in joy; and who knows if melancholy he not the result as well as the companion of culture ? Proportionally as one approaches a moment of distinctly-recognized happiness, how simple and scanty grow the perceptions ! A moment of joy is a moment of primitive emotions. There may be many a glow of the heart which Beethoven and the orchestra would refine away into unutterable sadness, which an accordion struck to a negro melody from an attic window will fuse and fix, perfect and immortal. At all events, if one has poor taste, there is no better way out of it, that I know, than to invent an aesthetic principle to excuse it.

The most inexperienced traveler is aware that the Ancient City is like nothing else in the United States, and confusedly, as we swing into the little halflighted town, we perceive already that this is true. Is it the reeling of the omnibus that makes the houses look as if they were crossing hands over the densely dark streets to dance the Virginia reel? Is it the unreliable fancy of the supperless that makes us think our omnibus occupies the width of the street? What a tormenting sense of queer architecture that one cannot see! What a perfectly imperturbable consciousness that we would n’t see the gates of the New Jerusalem till to-morrow morning! And how charming to be wakened in the Sabbath sunshine of tomorrow morning by the sound of matins in the little church close under the hotel windows, where the colored Christians worship by themselves, as — we begin already vaguely to perceive — it is quite proper that colored Christians should. But I do not go to matins. I slip out alone in the warm colors of the early hour, to look the town in its foreign face. And what went I out for to see? A little city (oh, is it not a little one?) grave and calm and gray. High above my head rise old coquina walls, casting heavy shadows across the narrow ways. I do not know what coquina is, to be sure, but never mind! I will find out in course of time. Why hurry to he wise? Already I perceive that one never hurries in St. Augustine.

I am not mathematical, but I can understand, even so soon, that fifteen feet make a Broadway in the Ancient City, and I thread little mazes of lanes and byways which twelve or eight paces would span. These are as charming as the opening chapter of a long novel, from whose initiatory sentences one perceives that the plot is reserved and nicely-laid. What will it all be when I know it — love it? Shall I some time understand what life is like behind those staid little verandas which all but touch across the thread-like street? Shall I, too, wander in and out with good Catholics, half fancying myself to be one of them, through the hoary door of the little cathedral, which the experienced traveler tells me is “ almost European”? And here, like the figures in a mediæval poem, break upon my musing the placid sisters from the convent which I cannot see, but which I instantly believe to be well worth seeing; and the more immediate outlines of the monks from the gray monastery which I can see, and which I think is not worth seeing at all. And there are wonderful little curiosity shops — but they are closed ; and there are the tantalizing contours of Fort Marion, magnificent and mute—but that is barred: for St. Augustine is a godly city, and keeps the Sabbath holy.

We too will keep the calm day sacred as well as homeless travelers may; but we are not sorry when the busy Monday morning’s sunshine welcomes us to secular action. Fate is kind, St. Augustine is hospitable, “ the season ” has not yet begun, and in two hours we are at home, we think, forever.

We unpack our pictures. Till I know whether my Da Vinci is broken, or my Francesca scratched, my best bonnet may bide its time. We dance jigs of delight over the open fireplaces and old brass andirons, in the very face of the thermometer, which points to seventy-five degrees; we wonder if we could toss rosebuds to our unknown “ native ” neighbors in the little red painted coquina house whose veranda peers closely but incuriously through our open windows; we wander up to the palmetto store and invest confidently in the shadiest of shade hats; we condescend, after Da Vinci is hung, to resurrect a white dress for dinner; we scorn, as the baldest superstition, the statement of the scientific member of our party that this is the 15th of December; we see with a mystified sense, as if we were children playing at going somewhere, that there are orange-trees in the garden, and that the sky cuts itself against the sharp, fine outlines of banana leaves ; we see from all the windows that the world is fair; we fall in love with our hostess; we wonder if it is getting time for dinner — and life in St. Augustine begins.

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.