“The Tampa Bay Hotel, Port Tampa Inn, and the Seminole, Winter Park, Florida, are monuments of Mr. Plant’s enterprise and a portion of the System. From one of these palatial hotels one can catch a fish on the back porch and pluck a lemon to dress it with from the front porch. In Charleston the name of Henry B. Plant is a synonym for success, and a name which many a young man mentions with veneration, as one to which he owes a lasting debt of gratitude.” The May number of the _Express Gazette_, Cincinnati, Ohio, has this appreciative paragraph: “The editor of the _Advertiser_, Key West, Florida, pays the following eloquent tribute of praise to Mr. H. B. Plant, President of the Plant System of Railroads and the Southern Express Company: “‘Mr. H. B. Plant, the president, the founder, and the controlling spirit of the great Plant System, is held in high estimate by the citizens of this island. He found it, years ago, isolated and remote from the great centres of commerce, and his partiality to us soon changed a semi-occasional connection with the mainland, by vessels of inferior character, into a tri-weekly communication by the finest coastwise steamers in the Southern waters. Brought in ready touch with the marts of trade, factories sprang into existence, commerce grew, and a city with millions of revenue supplanted a fishing hamlet. Through his enterprise we are enabled to write our history in a line--a village, a city, a metropolis--and all this in a decade. “‘The debt of gratitude which Key West owes to Mr. Plant is beyond estimate. Indeed, so accustomed are we to the conveniences at hand, that we are prone to fail in appreciation of what we have, in our greed for more. That Mr. Plant has been and is still our best friend cannot be questioned in the light of past experience; and while we cordially welcome and hail with delight the coming of other transportation, our city should never be forgetful of the man who was our friend when we had no other.’” [Illustration: text decoration] [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER XI. Mr. Plant’s Close and Constant Contact with the Great System as Seen in the Following Letters--Letter Written on Board the Steamer _Comal_--Letters on Trip to Jamaica, West Indies, March 15, 1893, and Published in the _Home Journal_.