FIRE!
THE first of December had arrived! the fatal day! for, if the projectile were not discharged that very night at 10h. 46m. 40s. P. M. more than eighteen years must roll by be- fore the moon would again present herself under the same conditions of zenith and perigee.
The weather was magnificent. Despite the approach of winter, the sun shone brightly, and bathed in its radiant light that earth which three of its denizens were about to abandon for a new world.
How many persons lost their rest on the night which pre- ceded this long-expected day! All hearts beat with dis- quietude, save only the heart of Michel Ardan. That im- perturbable personage came and went with his habitual business-like air, while nothing whatever denoted that any unusual matter preoccupied his mind.
'After dawn, an innumerable multitude covered the prairie which extends, as far as the eye can reach, round Stones Hill. Every quarter of an hour the railway brought fresh accessions of sightseers; and, according to the statement of the Tampa Town Observer, not less than five millions of spectators thronged about on the soil of Florida.
For a whole month previously, the mass of these per- sons had bivouacked round the enclosure, and laid the foundations for a town which was afterwards called "Ar- dan's Town." The whole plain was covered with huts, cottages, and tents. Every nation under the sun was rep- resented there; and every language might be heard spoken at the same time. It was a perfect Babel re-enacted. All the various classes of American society were mingled to- gether in terms of absolute equality. Bankers, farmers, sailors, cotton-planters, brokers, merchants, watermen, magistrates, elbowed each other in the most free-and-easy way. Louisiana Creoles fraternized with farmers from Indiana; Kentucky and Tennessee gentlemen and haughty Virginians conversed with trappers and the half-savages of the lakes and butchers from Cincinnati. Broad-brimmed white hats and Panamas, blue cotton trowsers, light colored stockings, cambric frills, were all here displayed; while upon shirt-fronts, wristbands, and neckties, upon every
