During the season Jacksonville is the gayest of gay cities; its hotels are brilliantly lighted, and the sounds of mirth and music float from its open windows; there are concerts, private theatricals, picnics and water-parties, no end of them. The flagging spirits of the invalids are stirred and stimulated by the general gaieties round them; they are driven to forget themselves, and have no time to dwell upon their own ailments, as they are apt to do in their own domestic circle, with anxious sympathising friends around them. Perhaps in the early stages this is well, but in the later phases of disease the necessity of dressing, and dining, and living in public is the heavy penalty paid for such enjoyment. Some, however, seem to think that it is cheap at the price.
In the morning we sally forth on a tour of inspection through the streets of Jacksonville. The roads are so heavy with deep sand, that driving is attended with much dust and discomfort. A lumbering vehicle passes us on the road and we are enveloped in a cloud of fine white sand, and grope our way with closed eyes until it has had time to settle itself. No one, unless disposed to self-martyrdom, will think of entering a vehicle except under direst necessity; but there are delightful little street cars, running on an iron tramway, which take you the entire round of the city, past all the hotels, the stores and principal thoroughfares, and bring you back to the starting-place for five cents. Walking is here a most delightful exercise; the side-walks everywhere are laid with light springy planks on which it is a pleasure to tread. We stroll on in a kind of go-as-you-please, walking-made-easy fashion, as though we never wanted to stop. The streets are all wide, and beautifully shaded with vigorous young water-oaks, whose luxuriant green foliage is a contrast to the pines and palmettoes we have lately been passing through. So rich and so dense is their wealth of leaves, so extensive their branches, that in places they reach above our heads across a roadway seventy-two feet wide, and we walk on under an arching roof of green; so rapid is their growth in these latitudes that some were pointed out to me which had attained to ten feet circumference in forty-two years. Some grow strong and lusty in the clinging clasp of the mistletoe, and are only saved from being smothered in its tender embraces by the pruning-knife, which cuts down and strews the ground with all such pleasant parasites as would otherwise sap the strength and destroy the life of the strong young oaks. Whichever way we turn we look through long vistas of green.