FLORIDA DAYS.


persuade a man to yield himself up to those
laws which bear men and worlds into eternity
as a torrent carries straws upon its breast, and
in so doing find much that is beautiful and gra-
cious, and nothing that is hard in his instant's
voyage. All this is in the air. It is inexpli-
cable, and leaves one with the query whether
Religions are not altogether a matter of climate,
-the wonder how many years it would take to
change a Norseman into Buddha himself.

 The Sergeant, parrot-like and half asleep, has.
many stories of this little greatness, or of that,
to tell of the fort. Very likely the stories have
grown with the years; but one does not look at
them too closely,- they belong to this luminous
dusk that blurs all the angles and arches of the
fort, and makes the line of sky and sea only an
advancing mist. The man's thread of memory
is strung with legends which go very far back.
He begins with Ponce de Leon,- a caballero,
already old, who has come to find the fountain
of perpetual youth. Already old, yet incapa-
ble of accepting age. What! had he not been