Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/288

Rh feelings and thoughts might clearly be read in the expression and demeanour of this husband and wife. They seemed to me the happiest of human beings, excepting—myself, who saw them, and to whom God has given so much enjoyment in the happiness of others.

The youngest child was a nice little lad, handsome and cheerful, with a smart little cap on his head; the oldest boy, fifteen years old, was not so nice; and the girl of fourteen, Molly by name, was a black line in the romance of the parents, for although not ugly, and with the father's good looks in her round countenance, she was a genuine daughter of the sand-hills, and had grown up with her old grandmother, like a pine-tree in the sand, without any more trimming or training than it. Our dominant lady took this wild shoot of humanity under her charge, and her attempts to educate the young novice, and the girl's spirit and mode of behaviour, furnished us with subjects for many a hearty laugh.

The first night on the St. Matthew was hot and oppressive in the crowded and narrow saloon. The floor was strewn over with outstretched ladies, some of whom were handsome, two quite young and with regularly classical features, very lovely in their sleep, and their reposing position; and when I could not sleep, I amused myself by contemplating them with an artistic eye from my elevated berth.

By evening we had left the river Altamahah, and after a few hours by sea, we found ourselves the next morning in the St. John's River, after having happily passed a dangerous sand-bank at its mouth without suffering more than a severe shock occasioned by a swell of the waves dashing us against the bank, and which made old St. Matthew creak in all his joints. But he did not go to pieces, which sometimes happens under such circumstances, in which case we should all infallibly have gone to the bottom, so that we had nothing to complain of.