* * * * *

The season wanes.  Crowds on the beach grow thinner.  Millionaires begin to move their private cars from Palm Beach sidings, and depart for other fashionable places farther north.  Croupiers at the Beach Club stand idle for an hour at a time, though ready to spin the wheel, invitingly, for any one who saunters in.  The shops hold cut-price sales.  And we, regarding somewhat sadly our white trousers, perceive that there does not remain a single spotless pair.  The girl in Mr. Foster’s fruit store has more leisure, now, and smiles agreeably as we pass upon our way to the hotel dining-room.  The waiter, likewise, is not pressed for time.

“They was seven-hunduhd an’ twe’ve folks heah yestahday,” he says.  “On’y six-fohty-three to-day.  Ah reckon they a-goin’ t’ close the Breakuhs day aftuh t’-mo’w.”

Still the flowers bloom; still the place is beautiful; still the weather is not uncomfortably warm.  Nevertheless the season dies.  And so it comes about that we depart.

The ride through Florida is tedious.  The miles of palmettoes, with leaves glittering like racks of bared cutlasses in the sun, the miles of dark swamp, in which the cypresses seem to wade like dismal club-footed men, the miles of live-oak strung with their sad tattered curtains of Spanish moss, the miles of sandy waste, of pineapple and orange groves, of pines with feathery palm-like tops, above all the sifting of fine Florida dust, which covers everything inside the car as with a coat of flour—­these make you wish that you were North again.

The train stops at a station.  You get off to walk upon the platform.  The row of hackmen and hotel porters stand there, in gloomy silent defiance of the rapidly approaching end of things, each holding a sign bearing the name of some hotel.  In another week the railway company may, if it wishes, lift the ban on shouting hotel runners.  Let them shout.  There will be nobody to hear.

You buy a newspaper.

Ah!  What is this?  “Great Blizzard in New York—­Trains Late—­Wires Down.”

You know what New York blizzards are.  You picture the scenes being enacted there to-day.  You see the icy streets with horses falling down.  You see cyclonic clouds of snow whirl savagely around the corners of high buildings, pelting the homegoing hoards, whirling them about, throwing women down upon street crossings.  You have a vision of the muddy, slushy subway steps, and slimy platforms, packed with people, their clothing caked with wet white spangles.  You see them wedged, cross and damp, into the trains, and hear them coughing into one another’s necks.  You see emaciated tramps, pausing to gaze wanly into bakery windows:  men without overcoats, their collars turned up, their hands deep in the pockets of their trousers, their heads bent against the storm; you see them walk on to keep from freezing.  You remember Roscoe Conkling.  That sort of thing can happen in a New York blizzard!  Little tattered newsboys, thinly clad, will die to-night upon cold corners.  Poor widows, lacking money to buy coal, are shuddering even now in squalid tenements, and covering their wailing little ones with shoddy blankets.