Pensacola claims to be the oldest white city in the United States, disputing the matter with St. Augustine, Jacksonville, and is taking the question very seriously in view of any celebration. It is not an important place, but is building toward its own supposed greatness, has a fine new railway station and huge, white stone post office and mammoth hotel. These buildings are puzzling in a town where life seems so placid. Here was a bad lynching for rape a year ago, and a Negro was burned to death. Representations were made to the governor of Florida on the matter. The governor, Sidney I. Catts, replied that he made every effort to keep down lynching in the State, but he could not bring the lynchers to trial, as the citizenship of the State would not stand for it. Apparently he condoned the burning of the Negro, because it was a clear case of sexual wantonness and violence on the part of one of the Negro race. It is somewhat surprising that the chief officer of the law should thus fail to uphold the law. Who is to uphold it if he do not? A contrast this, to the heroic behavior of Mayor Smith of Omaha! * * * * * Nature did not intend the Gulf of Mexico as a frame for lynching, nor that those happy, blue skies should look down on human candles. If ever there was a serene and happy place in the world it is here, and there is scope for all races to live and to let live. Health is on the shoulder of the winds that blow; fish and fruit and grain and sugar are abundant. Are not the harbors bobbing with grapefruit; upon occasion does not every boy suck the natural sugar from the cane? The luscious canteloupe fills with the sun; peaches and nectarines swell to double sizes of lusciousness and sweetness. Visitors, moreover, bring a plenitude of dollars and scatter them as they go. Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Pensacola, Mobile, New Orleans—they are more blest by Nature than other cities of the South. Personally, I preferred New Orleans. It is the finest and most interesting city in which to live. It is by far the largest city of the South, Atlanta coming second, and Birmingham, Alabama, third. It is the great port of the vast Mississippi River, and is the head of what was a mighty river traffic. It faces south, and is more related to France and Spain and the Indies than to Britain and Scandinavia and the North Atlantic. Like New York, it has also a strange mixture of races, but they are southern races.