It should be said here that up to the time that Mr. Plant established the steamship line between Tampa and Havana, there had been no regular communication between those two ports during the quarantine season. There were some irregular opportunities of transfer when passengers were detained for days to be investigated, fumigated, and harassed by quarantine regulations. Mr. Plant held that ships could be built and managed that would make communication as safe in summer as in winter, and he has proved the correctness of his theory. In ten years of regular service, the steamer _Mascotte_ has never had a case of yellow fever. Through Mr. Plant’s suggestions, the Tampa Board of Health has established rules and regulations for travel to the West Indian ports which make it perfectly safe at all seasons of the year, so far as contagion from disease is concerned. How much Mr. Plant has done to bring this blessed change to thousands, many beautiful tributes testify in the public press of our times. The expressions of enjoyment in the following letters could be extended almost indefinitely. In the Saint Augustine _News_ of March, 1895, an enthusiastic correspondent writes: “It was early in the present century that this man of brains and bounty appeared on the great stage, and began a career scarce equalled by any in the annals of American financiers, and it is to him that Florida owes a debt of gratitude, deeper than to any other man--and this man is H. B. Plant. Favored indeed is Florida, not only in climate, scenery, and fruit, but with the munificence of these mighty-hearted millionaires, who have Alladin-like metamorphosed the sunny peninsula into a veritable fairyland. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. H. B. Plant, who has transmogrified Tampa, and ribboned Florida with his railroad system. As usual with men of great minds and means, he is wholly unpretentious, as much so as his humblest employee. He is anything but fastidious; yet he is a clean-cut man of the world, of vast business capacity, a keen, penetrating financier, and altogether lovable in his domestic life. His shipping interests extend from Halifax to Boston, his express and rail lines from New York to Tampa and New Orleans, and his connecting vessels run from Cuba and all Gulf of Mexico ports. Mr. Plant’s homes are the family place in Branford, Connecticut, a palace on Fifth Avenue, New York, and the Tampa Bay Hotel in winter. Mr. Plant’s family consists of a son who will succeed to his great responsibility and estate.” Writing from Cuba in January 1888, “J. C. B.” says in his “Notes”: “In the language of an intelligent observer, writing from Havana early in the present month, it would be difficult to find any other interesting foreign land, when its accessibility is considered, so worthy the attention of American travellers as Cuba. To the average thought of one who has not visited it, it seems far and repellent. It is neither of these.