As soon as the hospitable people learned that I represented our beloved Uncle Sam, I was overwhelmed with free passes and free hotels, anywhere and everywhere.

The Count De Barry, who had amassed a vast fortune as the American representative of “Mum’s Extra Dry,” and who had received numerous valuable seeds and shrubs from our generous department, took us on his palatial steamer for hundreds of miles up the lordly St. John’s River, where we feasted our eyes upon acres of wild ducks, pelicans, cranes and many huge, lazy alligators floating on the waves, rejoicing in the life-giving beams of the sun.

The stately trees along the banks, old when Adam was a baby, were covered with flowering vines of wondrous beauty and fragrance; then vast orange groves appeared covered with blossoms, small and ripe fruit all at the same time; numerous herds of cattle standing knee deep in the water, leisurely browsing upon the river plants both on the surface and under the shallow river.

We would anchor, and throwing a clasp-net which spread out on the bottom and then closed like a purse, we pulled in excellent fish by the hundreds; sitting on the canopied deck we shot ducks which the negroes captured in small boats, and soon served cooked for our delectation; pineapples and berries were brought from the shore, in fact, it was a lotus-eater’s dream of paradise, and seemed to be a land and a river “flowing with milk and honey.”

The words from Willis’ confessional came floating to our minds.

  “On ocean many a gladsome night,
  When heaved the long and sullen sea,
  With only waves and stars in sight,
    We stole along by isles of balm;
  We furled before the coming gale,
    We slept amid the breathless calm,
  We flew beneath the straining sail.

  Oh, softly on these banks of haze
  Her rosy face the summer lays,
  Becalmed along the azure sky
  The argosies of cloudland lie;
  The holy silence is God’s voice
  We look, and listen, and rejoice.”

When the night fell, and one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, blossomed out the beautiful stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels, they seemed so near that you almost expected to touch them with the hand, and the silver moon arising, set the clouds on fire with gladness and “left upon the level water one long track and trail of splendor, down whose stream we sailed into the purple vapors, to the islands of the blessed, to the kingdom of Ponemah to the land of the hereafter.”

While thus we dreamed, the balmy zephyr brings from the forecastle to our delighted hearing, the tinkling music of the banjo and guitar, the melody of the singing voices and dancing feet of our freedmen boat’s crew.  The lines of Whittier were resurrected in our thoughts.

  “Dear, the black man holds his gifts
    Of music and of song,
  The gold that kindly nature sifts
    Among his sands of wrong,
  The power to make his toiling days
    And poor home comforts please;
  The quaint relief of mirth that plays
    With sorrow’s minor keys.”