Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/67

Rh Anne W. along the beautiful cockle-shell road to Lake Pontchartrain. The air was delicious, and the sky once more gazed upon us with blue eyes from between the clouds, which parted more and more. The road for the most part runs through flat and still unreclaimed forest-land. One does not here see our beautiful moss and lichen-covered mountains and hills, but thickets of the primeval forest, from which, on all sides, look forth those beautiful palmetto trees, with their large fan-like leaves waving in the air, and the regular and graceful form of many half-tropical plants, which, indicating a new phase of earth's vegetable productions, have a wonderful fascination for me.

In the morning, in the morning, my Agatha, I shall go on board the great steamer, “The Philadelphia,” and in three days I shall be at Cuba. I shall be very glad to get there, both because I shall see some new beauties of nature, and because I shall breathe a milder air, and shall escape during the winter months this variable American climate, which is so trying to my strength both of body and mind. I have become physically ten years' older during this twelve months' journey in North America.

But be not afraid for me, my dear heart, but trust, as I do, that my travelling fairy, your little friend, which has hitherto conducted me safely through all perils—which conducted me without any misadventure down the whole extent of the Mississippi to New Orleans, at the very time when four steamers, with their passengers, were blown into the air upon its waters, and caused me to remove from St. Charles's Hotel to this good home the day before the hotel became the prey of flames,—the same will conduct me safe and sound once more to my own sister-friend, to.

P.S. I have been gladdened here by letters from my friends in the North, the Downings, the Springs, and the