As for the allure of St. Augustine itself, it was largely that of all small cities not densely built over their area, and it kept the tradition of a country town in dooryards with flowers, and back yards with homely vegetables, and here and there a vacant lot where the sweet corn and the pea vines flourished, not remote from the centers of commerce and fashion which, as I have said, do not intermit their business or pleasure on Sundays. I liked driving in the outlying streets which had once hoped to be avenues, but when Palm Beach and Miami had taken the hope of all-winter resort from St. Augustine had given it up (not in desperation so much as in resignation) and become gently weed-grown and grass-grown roadways. Where the tops of the wayside oaks or cedars arched together overhead, they were of a gloom that was very pleasant, and where the colonnading and arcading ceased, it was still a pensive pleasure to find oneself passing the simple gardens and lawns, not too wild-grown, of houses that had quite ceased trying to be the winter homes of well-to-do Northern invalids, and were now either for sale outright, or were putting off the inevitable hour by offering furnished rooms to let. Every point of the winning city had its moment of charm, and I did not yield a fonder allegiance to the great Ponce de Leon when that hostelry gathered a rich sunset in its clustering palms, and lifted its roofs and towers above them in the lingering afterglow, than to the Plaza of a sunny morning when my home-towners ranged themselves with their home-papers on the benching in the checkered shade, or then, when the full moon sailed above the campanile of the cathedral, and the alligator dreamed in his fountain, and the old Spanish market-house tried to remember which of the home-towners it was that beat at checkers during the long games of the forenoon. It was fine also when the swift twilight fled before the dusk over the waters that stretched between St. Augustine and St. Anastasia; but no finer than other divisions of the day at other places. If I were driven to choose, I should favor a mild Sunday forenoon on the road crossing from farther St. George Street over the water-gate that keeps the estuary of Maria Sanchez full, independently of the changing tide. It is then a smooth, motionless mirror, where the distant towers and roofs of the city glass themselves with a certain delicate beauty of line and color, and let you imagine them in whatever story of the city’s past you like. I myself like some idyllic passage of it not too weighted down with fact, and not above sympathy with such homely effects as the reedy pastures of the shore, and the rather shabby cows grazing there in the keeping of colored mothers past more active cares. If you are for a more romantic outlook, you are welcome to the long expanse of the southward savannah, fenced along the horizon by the shadowy walls of woodland. But I think