Two passages are characteristic: --
"And now it is bed-time. Let me tell you how to sleep
on an Ocklawaha steamer in May. With a small bribe persuade Jim, the steward,
to take the mattress out of your berth and lay it slanting
just along the railing that incloses the lower part of the deck
in front and to the left of the pilot-house. Lie flat on your back
down on the mattress, draw your blanket over you, put your cap on your head,
on account of the night air, fold your arms, say some little prayer or other,
and fall asleep with a star looking right down on your eye.
When you wake in the morning you will feel as new as Adam."
"Presently we abandoned the broad highway of the St. Johns,
and turned off to the right into the narrow lane of the Ocklawaha.
This is the sweetest water-lane in the world, a lane which runs
for more than one hundred and fifty miles of pure delight betwixt
hedge-rows of oaks and cypresses and palms and magnolias and mosses and vines;
a lane clean to travel, for there is never a speck of dust in it save
the blue dust and gold dust which the wind blows out of the flags and lilies."
In the discussion of "The Symphony", emphasis was laid upon
Lanier's national point of view. The opportunity soon came to him
of giving expression to his love of the Union. At Bayard Taylor's suggestion
he was appointed by the Centennial Commission to write the words for a cantata
to be sung at the opening exercises of the exposition in Philadelphia.
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