Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/279

Rh of flowers, and some other friends also. How kind and how delightful!

And now, after a day's pleasure-sail on the river, I am once more in this verdant city, once more among old friends, good, kind, and hospitable, as formerly—Mr. and Mrs. T., Mrs. B., and many others.

I found the Mac I.'s in deep sorrow on account of the death of a beloved daughter and sister in the past autumn. The father, however, the estimable Colonel Mac I., and his youngest daughter, an intellectual and highly cultivated young girl, were ready to accompany us to Florida, where we were to pay a visit to the eldest son of the family, who was married and lived there. On my return, I shall visit the plantations of a Mr. C., where, I am told, I shall meet with the ideal of plantation-life in the Slave States.

On the morning of the day after to-morrow, we set off by a pretty little spick-and-span new steamer, “the Magnolia,” and intend to go up the river St. John as far as steamers can go, that is to say, as far as Lake Munroe.

Miss Dix, who came by steamer to Savannah, has joined our little party, as she also wishes to visit Florida. The weather is glorious, the moon is at the full, and I am full of the desire for travelling, and the desire to see Florida, the flower of the Southern States, the land of which the delicious balmy odours made the Spaniards believe that the fountain of eternal youth was hidden there. And now—thither, thither, to taste its nectar!

&emsp; Very seldom are letters written from a steamer which lies on a green meadow; it is from a steamer in that very predicament, that I am now writing to you. And how long it and its passengers are so to lie—depends upon the moon and human kindness; but, we have reason to suspect the good-will both of one and the other, at this moment.