94 FLORIDA DAYS.

 There are men who think that the great earth,
which went spinning through space when all
the morning stars sang together, was made for
them!
 In the fading light, given up to thistles, and
with the whir of swallows' wings through the
dusk, the fort is so quiet it is hard to real-
ize that it was ever the scene of stormy hu-
man life; that there were men here once who
watched this darkening expanse of blue with
keen and anxious eyes. They must have crept
behind the worn ramparts, to the round sentry-
boxes which hang like cages over the walls, to
look out from the loop-holes in hope or fear,
as might be the fortunes of war. And there
were those who suffered agonies of apprehen-
sion in the dungeons hollowed out of the rocks
below, while within sound of their misery other
men plotted and planned, with high ambition
or magnificent pride. For there is something
magnificent in transcendent folly; and such it
seems, now that they are all dead and gone and
there remains only a rusted ring in the wall, or
a half-obliterated coat-of-arms over the port-