the grass would not grow, and heavy coquina tombs whose inscriptions had
crumbled away. The names on the low crosses, nearly all Spanish,
Minorcan, Corsican, and Greek, bore witness to the foreign ancestry of
the majority of the population. We found Alvarez, La Suarez, Leonardi,
Capo, Carrarus, Ximanies, Baya, Pomar, Rogero, and Hernandez. Among the
Christian names were Bartolo, Raimauld, Rafaelo, Geronimo, Celestino,
Dolorez, Dominga, Paula, and Anaclata.
“It looks venerable, but it only dates back about one hundred years,”
said John. “Where the old Dons of two or three centuries ago buried
their dead, no one knows; perhaps they sent them all back home, Chinese
fashion. An old bell which now hangs in the cathedral is said to have
come from here; it bears the inscription, ‘Sancte Joseph, ora pro nobis;
D. 1682,’ and is probably the oldest bell in the country.”
“And what was it doing here?” said Mokes, with the air of a historian.
“There was once an Indian village here, called Tolomato, and a mission
chapel; the bell is supposed to have come from the chapel.”
“Is that the chapel?” asked Mokes, pointing to a small building on the
far side of the cemetery. He was getting on famously, he thought, quite
historical, and that sort of thing.
“No; that is a chapel erected in 1853 by Cubans to the memory of Father
Varela. The old Tolomato chapel was--was destroyed.”
“How?” inquired Mokes.
John glanced toward Sara with a smile. “Oh, go on,” she said, “I am
quite prepared! A massacre, of course!”
“Yes, a massacre. The Indians stole into the chapel by night, and
finding Father Corpa engaged in his evening devotions, they slew him at
the altar, and threw his body out into the forest, where it could never
afterward be found. The present cemetery marks the site of the old
mission, and bears its name.”
Mokes, having covered himself with glory, now led the way out, and the
party turned homeward. Sara and I lingered to read the Latin inscription
over the chapel door, “Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur.” John
beckoned us toward a shadowed corner where stood a lonely tomb, the
horizontal slab across the top bearing no date, and only the initials of
a name, “Here lies T----F----.”
“Poor fellow!” said John, “he died by his own hand, alone, at night, on
this very spot: a young Frenchman, I was told, but I know nothing
more.”
“Is not that enough?” I said. “There is a whole history in those words.”
“There was once a railing separating this tomb from the other graves, as
something to be avoided and feared,” said John; “but time, or perhaps
the kind hand of charity, has removed the barrier: charity that can pity
the despairing, suffering, human creature whose only hope came to
this--to die!”
Happening to glance at Sara, I saw her eyes full of tears, and in spite
of her effort to keep them back, two great drops rolled down and fell on
the dark slab; John saw them, and turned away instantly.
“Why, Sara!” I said, moved almost to tears myself by sudden sympathy.
“Don’t say any thing, please,” answered Sara. “There, it is all over.”
We walked away, and found John standing before a little wooden cross
that had once marked a grave; there was no trace of a grave left, only
green grass growing over the level ground, while lichen and moss had
crept over the rough unpainted wood and effaced the old inscription. A
single rose-bush grew behind, planted probably a little slip when the
memory of the lost one was green and fresh with tears; now, a wild
neglected bush, it waved its green branches and shed its roses year by
year over the little cross that stood, veiled in moss, alone, where now
no grave remained, as though it said, “He is not here: he is risen.”
“Look,” said John. “Does it not tell its story? Why should we be
saddened while we have what that cross typifies?”
[Illustration: THE SUICIDE’S GRAVE.]
That evening, happening to take up Sara’s Bible, I found pinned in on
the blank leaf these old verses:
“There is a calm for those who weep,
A rest for weary pilgrims found;
They softly lie and sweetly sleep
Low in the ground.
“The storm that wracks the wintry sky
No more disturbs their deep repose
Than summer evening’s latest sigh
That shuts the rose.
“I long to lay this painful head
And aching heart beneath the soil,
To slumber in that dreamless bed
From all my toil.”
“Poor child!” I said to myself--“poor child!”
“Who do you think is here, Niece Martha?” said Aunt Diana one morning a
week later. “Eugenio; he came last night.”
“What, the poet?”
“Yes; he will stay several days, and I can introduce him to all of you,”
said Aunt Di, graciously.
“I shall be very glad, not only on my own account, but on Sara’s also,
aunt.”
“Oh, Eugenio will not feel any interest in a person like Miss St. John,
Niece Martha! He belongs to another literary world entirely.”
“I know that; but may not Sara attain to that other world in time? I
hope much from her.”
“Then you will be disappointed, Niece Martha. I am not literary myself,
but I have always noticed that those writers whose friends are always
‘hoping much’ never amount to much; it is the writer who takes his
friends and the world by surprise who has the genius.”
There was a substratum of hard common-sense in Aunt Diana, where my
romantic boat often got aground. It was aground now.
The next morning Eugenio presented himself without waiting for Aunt Di,
and John proposed a walk to the Ponce de Leon Spring in his honor.
“It is almost the only spot you have not visited,” he said to us, “and
Eugenio must see the sweep of a pine-barren.”
“By all means,” replied the poet, “the stretching glades and far
savannas, gemmed with the Southern wild flowers.”
“You have missed the most beautiful flower of all,” said Iris, “‘the
wild sweet princess of far Florida, the yellow jasmine.’”
The Captain was with us, likewise Mokes; but Aunt Diana had sliced in
another young lady to keep the balance even; and away we went through
the town, across the Maria Sanchez Creek, under the tree arches, and out
on to the broad causeway beyond.
“What! _walk_ to Ponce de Leon Spring!” exclaimed the languid St.
Augustine ladies as we passed.
“They evidently look upon Northerners as a species of walking madmen,” I
said, laughing.
“It is a singular fact,” commented Sara, “that country people never walk
if they can help it; they go about their little town and that is all.
City people, on the contrary, walk their miles daily as a matter of
course. You can almost tell whether a young lady is city or country bred
from the mere fact of her walking or not walking.”
“Climate here has something to do with it,” said John, “and also the old
Spanish ideas that ladies should wear satin slippers and take as few
steps as possible. The Minorcans keep up some of the old ideas still.
Courtship is carried on through a window, the maiden within, a rose in
her hair, and the favorite Spanish work in her hand, and the lover
outside leaning on the casement. Not until a formal acceptance has been
given is he allowed to enter the house and rest himself and his
aspirations in a chair.”
“We have adopted English ideas of exercise in New York,” said Eugenio,
“but they have not penetrated far into the interior as yet, and are
utterly unknown south of Mason and Dixon’s line. St. Augustine, however,
is still Spanish, and no one expects the traditional Spanish señorita,
with her delicate slippers, fan, and mantilla, to start out for a
six-mile constitutional--it would not be her style at all. By-the-way, I
saw a beautiful Spanish face leaning from a window on St. George Street
this morning.”
“Yes,” said Mokes, consequentially. “There are two on St. George Street,
two on Charlotte, and one on St. Hypolita. I have taken pains to
trace--er--to trace them out; they like it--er--and I have, I may say,
some experience in outlines and that sort of thing--galleries
abroad--old masters, etc. Paint a little myself.”
“Indeed!” said Eugenio. “Original designs, I suppose?”
Oh no; Mokes left that to the regular profession. They had to do it,
poor fellows--wouldn’t interfere with them.
“Very generous,” said Eugenio.
Yes, Mokes thought it was. But gentlemen of--of fortune, you know, had
their duties--as--as such.
“How _much_ I should like to see your pictures, Mr. Mokes!” said the
poet, assuming an air of deep interest.
The highly flattered Mokes thought that “perhaps--er,” he “might have
one or two sent down by express;” he always liked “to oblige his
friends.”
“Don’t chaff him any more,” whispered John, with a meaning glance toward
Iris.
“What! not that lovely girl!” exclaimed Eugenio, under his breath.
“Two or three millions!” said John.
“Ah!” replied the poet.
On the red bridge Sara paused a moment and stood gazing down the river.
“What a misty look there is away down there over the salt marshes!” she
said, “the boats tipped up on shore, with their slender masts against
the sky. The river is certainly going down to the sea, and yet the
sea-breeze comes from behind me.”
“The Sebastian is nearer the ocean up here than it is down at its
mouth,” said John. “Look across: there is only the North Beach between
us here and the ocean.”
“Between us and Africa, you mean.”
“What is it that attracts you toward Africa, Miss St. John?” asked
Eugenio.
“Antony,” replied Sara, promptly. “Don’t you remember those wonderful
lines written by an Ohio soldier,
“‘I am dying, Egypt, dying;
Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast?’”
“Dear me, Miss St. John, I hope you are not taking up _Antony and
Cleopatra_ to the detriment of the time-honored _Romeo and Juliet_!
Romeo is the orthodox lover, pray remember.”
“But I am heterodox,” replied Sara, smiling.
Beyond the river the road led through the deep white sand of Florida.
Iris’s little boots sank ankle deep.
“Take my arm,” said the Captain.
Now taking the arm means more or less, according to the arm and the way
it is offered. The Captain was tall, the Captain was strong, and he had
a way with him. Iris was small, Iris was graceful, and she had a way
with her. To say that from that moment they flirted boundlessly all the
afternoon does not express it. I am sorry to say, also, that John and
the poet openly, and Sara and I tacitly, egged them on. The bullion star
of Mokes had been in the ascendant long enough, we thought. The
Professor had a staff, a trowel, and a large basket for specimens. He
made forays into the thicket, lost himself regularly, and Miss Sharp as
regularly went to the rescue and guided him back.
“How many old tracks there are turning off to the right and the left!” I
said. “Where do they go?”
“The most delightful roads are those that go nowhere,” said Eugenio,
“roads that go out and haze around in the woods just for fun. Who wants
to be always going somewhere?”
“These roads will answer your purpose, then,” said John. “Most of them
go nowhere. They did go out to old military posts once upon a time, in
the Seminole war, but the military posts have disappeared, and now they
go nowhere. They are pretty tracks, some of them, especially the old
Indian entrance to St. Augustine--a trail coming up from the south.”
Turning to the right, we passed through a little nook of verdure,
leaving the sand behind us. “This,” said John, “is a hamak; and if I
have a pet grievance, it is the general use of the word ‘hummock’ in its
place. ‘Hummock’ is an arctic word, meaning to pile up ice; but ‘hamak’
is pure Carib or Appalachian, and signifies a resting or abiding place,
a small Indian farm. There is another kind of soil in Florida which has
the singular name of ‘sobbed land.’ This has a rocky substratum,
impervious to water, four feet below the surface, which holds the
rain-falls as though it--”
“Devoured its own tears,” suggested Eugenio. “But where are your
flowers, good people? Is not this the land of flowers?”
[Illustration: A PINE-BARREN.]
“No,” said John; “that is another mistake. The Spaniards happened to
land here during the Easter season, which they call Pascua Florida, the
flowery Passover, on account of the palms with which their churches are
decorated at that time; and so they named the country from the festival,
and not from the flowers at all. There is not one word said about
flowers in all their voluminous old records--”
“Don’t be statistical, I beg,” interrupted Eugenio. “And are there no
flowers, then?”
“Oh yes,” answered Sara, “little wee blossoms in delicate colors
starring over the ground, besides violets and gold-cups; these are the
yeomanry. The Cherokee roses, the yellow jasmine, and the
Spanish-bayonets, with their sceptres of white blossoms, are the
nobility.”
Presently we came out upon the barren, with its single feathery trees,
its broad sky-sweep, its clear-water ponds, an endless stretch of desert
which was yet no desert, but green and fair. The saw-palmetto grew in
patches, and rustled its stiff leaves as we passed.
“I can’t think of any thing but Spanish ladies looking out between the
sticks of their fans,” remarked Eugenio.
“That’s just like it,” said Iris, and plucking one of the fan-shaped
leaves, she gave the idea a lovely coquettish reality. The Captain
murmured something (he had a way of murmuring). What it was we could not
hear, but then Iris heard, and blushed very prettily. Mokes took the
“other young lady,” the sliced one, and walked on loftily. She went. The
truth is, they generally go with three millions.
“There is something about the barrens that always gives me the feeling
of being far away,” said Sara.
“The old attraction,” replied Eugenio. “‘Over the hills and far away’ is
the dream of all imaginative souls. Do you remember
“‘Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side?’”
“‘There is a happy land,
Far, far away,’”
I sang.
[Illustration: LOU-EE-ZY AND LOW-II-ZY.]
“Yes, that is it,” said John, “and even our old friend ‘Swannee Ribber’
owes his dominion to the fact that he is ‘far, far away.’”
A little trail turned off to a low cabin on the bank of a brook; we saw
some flowers, and wandered that way for a moment. It was the lonely
little home of a freedman, and two children stood in the doorway staring
at us with solemn eyes. We bestowed some pennies, which produced a bob
of a courtesy; then some jokes, which brought out the ivories.
“What are your names, children?” I asked.
“They’s jes Lou-ee-zy and Low-ii-zy,” replied a voice from within-doors.
“They’s twins, and I’s took car’ ob dein allays.”
It was a crippled old auntie who spoke. She told us her story, with long
digressions about “ole massa” and “ole miss.”
“After all, I suspect you were more comfortable in the old times,
auntie,” I said.
“What’s dat to do wid de acquisition ob freedom?” replied the old woman,
proudly. “De great ting is dis yer: Lou-ee-zy is free, and Low-ii-zy is
free! Bot’ ob dem! Bot’ ob dem, ladies!”
“I have never been able to make them confess that they were more
comfortable in the old days, no matter how poor and desolate they may
be,” I said.
“The divine spark in every breast,” replied Eugenio. “But where is the
spring, Hoffman? I like your barren; it smacks of the outlaw and bold
buccaneer, after the trim wheat fields of the North, and there is a
grand sweep of sky overhead. Nevertheless, I own to being thirsty.”
“It is not ordinary thirst,” replied John; “it is the old yearning which
Ponce de Leon always felt when he had come as far as this.”
“He came this way, then, did he?”
“Invariably.”
“If I had been here at the time I should have said, ‘Ponce’ (of course
we should have been intimate enough to call each other by our first
names)--‘Ponce, my good friend, have your spring a little nearer while
you are magically about it!’” And taking off his straw hat the poet
wiped his white forehead, and looked at us with a quizzical expression
in his brilliant eyes.
“It _is_ warm,” confessed Aunt Diana, who, weary and worried, was
toiling along almost in silence. Mokes was nearly out of sight with the
“other young lady;” Iris and the Captain were absorbed in that murmured
conversation so hopeless to outsiders; and Spartan matron though she
was, she had not the courage to climb around after the Professor in
cloth boots that drew like a magnet the vicious cacti of the thicket.
Miss Sharp had leather boots, and climbed valiantly.
At last we came to the place, and filed in through a broken-down fence.
We found a deserted house, an overgrown field, a gully, a pool, and an
old curb of coquina surrounding the magic spring.
“I wonder if any one was ever massacred here?” observed Sara, looking
around.
“The Fountain of Youth,” declaimed John, ladling out the water. “Who
will drink? Centuries ago the Indians of Cuba came to these shores to
seek the waters of immortality, and as they never returned, they are
supposed to be still here somewhere enjoying a continued cherubic
existence. Father Martyn himself affirms in his letter to the Pope that
there is a spring here the water thereof being drunk straightway maketh
the old young again. Ladies and gentlemen, the original and only Ponce
de Leon Spring! Who will drink?”
We all drank; and then there was a great silence.
“Well,” said the poet, deliberately, looking around from his seat on the
curb, “take it altogether, that shanty, those bushes, the pig-sty, the
hopeless sandy field, the oozing pool, and this horrible tepid water,
drawn from, to say the least, a dubious source--a very dubious
source--it is, all in all, _about_ the ugliest place I ever saw!”
There was a general shout.
“We have suspected it in our hearts all winter,” said the “other young
lady;” “but not one of us dared put the thought into words, as it was
our only walk.”
The poet staid with us a day or two longer, and charmed us all with his
delightful, winsome humor.
“Do you know, I really love that man,” I announced.
“So do I,” said Iris.
“That is nothing,” said John; “he is ‘the poet whom poets love,’ you
know.”
“But we are not poets, Mr. Hoffman.”
“We are only plebes, and plebes may very well love what poets love, I
think.”
“But it does not always follow,” I said.
“By no means. In this case, however, it is true. All love Eugenio, both
poets and plebes.”
“He is the Mendelssohn of poets,” I said; “and, besides that, he is the
only person I ever met who reminded me of my idea of Mendelssohn
personally--an idea gathered from those charming ‘letters’ and the
_Auchester_ book.”
The next evening Eugenio and Sara went off for a stroll on the sea-wall;
two hours later Sara came back to our room, laid a blank book on the
table, and threw herself into a chair.
“Tired?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“It is a lovely evening.”
“Yes.”
“Did you have a pleasant time?”
“Yes.”
I knew that blank book well; it contained all Sara’s printed stories and
verses; my eyes glanced toward it.
“Yes,” said Sara; “there it is! I gave it to him yesterday. I knew he
would read it through, and I knew also that I could read his real
opinion in those honest eyes of his.”
“Well?”
“There isn’t a thing in it worth the paper it is written on.”
“Oh, Sara!”
“And what is more, I have known it myself all along.”
“Is it possible he said so?”
“He? Never. He said every thing that was generous and kind and cordial
and appreciative; and he gave me solid assistance, too, in the way of
advice, and suggestive hints worth their weight in gold to an isolated
beginner like myself. But--”
“But?”
“Yes, ‘but.’ Through it all, Martha, I could see the truth written in
the sky over that old look-out tower; we were on the glacis under that
tower all the time, and I never took my eyes off from it. That tower is
my fate, I feel sure.”
“What do you mean? Your fate?”
“I don’t know exactly myself. But, nevertheless, in some way or other
that look-out tower is connected with my fate--the fate of poor Sara St.
John.”
In John Hoffman’s room at the same time another conversation was going
on.
JOHN. “Has she genius, do you think?”
EUGENIO. “Not an iota.”
JOHN. “What do you mean, you iron-hearted despot? Has the girl no
poetry in her?”
[Illustration: UNITED STATES BARRACKS--A DRESS PARADE.]
EUGENIO. “Plenty; but not of the kind that can express itself in
writing. Sara St. John has poetry, but she ought not to try to write it;
she is one of the kind to--”
JOHN. “Well, what?”
EUGENIO. “Live it.”
Eugenio went, leaving real regret behind. The crowd of tourists began to
diminish, the season was approaching its end, and Aunt Diana gathered
her strength for a final contest.
“We are not out of the wilderness yet, it seems,” said Sara to me, in
her mocking voice. “Mokes, the Captain, the Professor, and the
Knickerbocker, and nothing settled! How is this, my countrymen?”
Our last week came, and the Captain and Iris continued their murmured
conversations. In vain Aunt Diana, with the vigilance of a Seminole,
contested every inch of the ground; the Captain outgeneraled her, and
Iris, with her innocent little ways, aided and abetted him. Aunt Di
never made open warfare; she believed in strategy; through the whole she
never once said, “Iris, you must not,” or wavered for one moment in her
charming manner toward the Captain. But the pits she dug for that young
man, the barriers she erected, the obstructions she cast in his way,
would have astonished even Osceola himself. And all the time she had
Mokes to amuse, Mokes the surly, Mokes the wearing, Mokes who was even
beginning to talk: openly of going!--yes, absolutely going! One day it
came to pass that we all went up to the barracks, to attend a dress
parade. The sun was setting, the evening gun sounded across the inlet,
the flash of the light-house came back as if in answer, the flag was
slowly lowered, and the soldiers paraded in martial array--artillery,
“the poetry of the army,” as the romantic young ladies say--“the
red-legged branch of the service,” as the soldiers call it.
“What a splendid-looking set of officers!” exclaimed Iris, as the tall
figures in full uniform stood motionless in the sunset glow. “But who is
that other young officer?”
“The lieutenant,” said the “other young lady.”
“He is very handsome,” said Iris, slowly.
“Yes, very. But he is a provoking fellow. Nobody can do any thing with
him.”
“Can’t they?” said Iris, warming to the encounter. (Iris rather liked a
difficult subject.) Then, “Oh, I forgot we were going so soon,” she
added, with a little sigh. “But I wonder why the Captain never brought
him to call upon us?”
“Simply because he won’t be brought,” replied the “other young lady.”
“I will tell you what he is like, Iris,” I said, for I had noticed the
young soldier often. “He is like the old Indian description of the St.
Johns River: ‘It hath its own way, is alone, and contrary to every
other.’”
Review over, we went on to the post cemetery, beyond the barracks, the
Captain accompanying us, glittering in gold-lace.
“Were there any encounters in or near St. Augustine during the late
war?” began Aunt Di, in a determined voice. Time was short now, and she
had decided to cut the Gordian knot of Mokes; in the mean time the
Captain _should not_ get to Iris unless it was over her dead body.
“No,” replied Antinous. “The nearest approach to it was an alarm, the
gunners under arms, and the woods shelled all night, the scouts in the
morning bringing in the mangled remains of the enemy--two Florida cows.”
“A charmingly retired life you must lead here,” pursued Aunt Di; “the
news from the outside world does not rush in to disturb your peaceful
calm.”
No, the Captain said, it did not rush much. Four weeks after President
Fillmore’s death they had received their orders to lower the flag and
fire funeral guns all day, which they did, to the edification of the
Minorcans, the Matanzas River, and the Florida beach generally.
The military cemetery was a shady, grassy place, well tended, peaceful,
and even pleasant. A handsome monument to all the soldiers and officers
who fell during the long, hard, harassing Seminole war stood on one
side, and near it were three low massive pyramids covering the remains
of Major Dade and one hundred and seven soldiers, massacred by Osceola’s
band.
[Illustration: MILITARY CEMETERY.]
“There is a dramatic occurrence connected with this story,” said Miss
Sharp, sentimentally. “It seems that this gallant Major Dade and the
other young officers attended a ball here in St. Augustine the evening
before the battle, dancing nearly all night, and then riding away at
dawn, with gay adieux and promises to return soon. That very morning,
before the sun was high in heaven, they were all dead men! So like the
‘Battle of Waterloo,’ you remember: