“The room may not be faithfully described in its frescoes and its lights and pictures, any more than I could satiate your appetite by copying the menu here—it can’t be done.
“Just at the end of this hall and very near the entrance to the dining-room is a grand orchestrion, which, with interchangeable rollers, plays the latest music, from the popular airs of the day to the classic productions of the great composers.
“Just off the rotunda is the music-room with its waxed floor for terpsichorean uses. There is a perfect stage suitable for concert, lecture, or tableau, there are foot-lights, and overhead, the electric fire gleams in a star and crescent group. The room is circular in form with broad galleries extending around it, so the company may sit in the open air and listen to the music or look in upon the dancers. These broad galleries extend on the west and east side, forming a grand promenade for the gay company such a place attracts.
“The interior scenes under the brilliant glow of the lights is entertaining, but I remember in more dreamy way a stroll by moonlight, down by the river under the palmettos. The moon shone bright and made a wide silver ribbon far up the broad river and across it, and here came to me the idea of Ponce de Leon’s dream.
“The arched and towered façade, the silvered dome, again silvered by the moon’s rays, lifted up more brightly against the star-lit sky, the crescented minarets, the electric-fired crescent on the color-staff, the lights from a hundred windows, the soft patter of the water in the fountains falling on the lily-pads, the perfume of the flowers, the splash of an oar and the half murmur of a love song from him who splashed the oar. Think you this is not an Alhambric picture? Then you have not read of the Alhambra nor seen Tampa Bay.”
