The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms: Or Lost in the Wilds of FloridaHope, Laura Lee
General
The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms: Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida
Hope, Laura Lee
Florida -- Juvenile fiction; Girls -- Juvenile fiction; Motion pictures -- Production and direction -- Juvenile fiction
"We'll all sample it!" cried Russ, and as Ruth was induced, just for the
fun of the thing, to try some, they heard the murmur of voices behind
them.
"Save some for us!" was the call, and Miss Pennington and Miss Dixon came
up.
"We'll all be young together," said Alice. Though she and her sister were
not very chummy with the two former vaudeville actresses, they were not
exactly unfriendly. And who could be unfriendly in that beautiful spot,
and on the reputed site of the Fountain of Youth?
"The more you drink the younger you get!" bantered Paul, as Miss Dixon
asked him for a second cup.
"Gracious, then I'll turn into a baby," exclaimed Miss Pennington. "I've
been here once before this morning, and I took several glasses."
"Back to juvenile roles for yours!" cried Russ. "Mr. Pertell will have to
look for another leading lady."
"I haven't noticed any effect yet," she said, as she took out a vanity
box, and surreptitiously used her chamois, leaving a more brilliant tint
on her face.
"It takes time," went on Russ, half-seriously. "You will awaken in the
morning, crying for a rattle."
Thus they made merry near the well, with its queer square stones built
into pillars to hold up the roof.
"Poor Ponce de Leon," sighed Ruth. "How disappointed he must have been
when he found out that his life was slipping away in spite of the
Fountain of Youth. I wonder if he really believed he had found it?"
"He couldn't have--when he came to die," remarked Russ, practically.
"But it is a pretty story," Ruth said, softly. "Poor Ponce de Leon!"
"The Indians told him this was the fountain," said Paul, who had been
reading history. "Near this fountain was found a large coquina cross.
The cross was located by the discovery of a silver casque, which
contained documents telling of the matter, and one seems to fix the date
of the first visit of Ponce de Leon to Florida. That was in 1513,
according to the documents found in the casque.
"Am I boring you?" he asked quickly, for he thought the two former
vaudeville actresses looked as though they wanted to talk of something
else besides dry historical facts.
"No, indeed!" cried Alice. "I just love to hear about this."
"Do go on," urged Ruth, and even Miss Pennington condescended to say:
"It sounds interesting."
"I'll read you what one of the old documents said," went on Paul. "'As we
bore down upon him we found him to be an Indian, in a skin boat with a
skin sail, running to a point twenty feet in the air, with a bow at the
top. In the boat, which I describe in my descriptive image, I went ashore
with the Indian. We landed near a spring that they call the Fountain of
Youth; there they had a temple built where they worshipped the sun, and
there I built a cross out of coquina, which is a natural formation of the
sea, and I laid it with the rising and setting sun. In the heart of the
cross I placed a descriptive image of myself, and took possession in the
name of our beloved Catholic King.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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