My journal reads:
Key West, May 9, 1873.
Arrived here at about five A.M., after a nearly sleepless and utterly wretched night. Passed the flagship Worcester and three other navy ships, the Canandaigua, Bache and Terror. Papa had important business with Admiral Lee, and we were very much afraid the flagship was about to sail as she was getting up steam. It proved she was only coming up to the wharf. Papa was much relieved.
My journal makes no further mention of my father’s business with the Admiral. It gives a list of every officer on board the ships, from the captain to the youngest midshipman, and detailed accounts of the hops and other festivities the hospitable officers arranged for us on board and on shore. Reading over the record all these years after, certain phrases suggest to me that my father’s business with the Admiral was connected with those poor boys under death sentence in the Havana prison. I know he never forgot them, and I believe that he made an effort to secure American intervention on their behalf.
We had turtle steak for dinner at Key West, turtle stew for supper, turtle hash for breakfast! That is all that I remember of the place, at this time our most important naval station in southern waters.
After leaving Key West we stopped at Cedar Keys and broke the journey to Boston into several stages, stopping at Savannah, Charleston, and Norfolk. At the latter place we visited the New Hampshire, described in my journal as, “A splendid old line-of-battleship, with four decks. I rang the fire quarters, and was alarmed at the rushing and scattering of the officers and men. They all tore about the ship, putting out the supposititious fire. The first stream of water came from the hose just two minutes after I sounded the alarm.”
We called the journey from the South to the North “Our jaunt with Spring”, for we traveled hand in hand with her, halting when she halted, pushing on with the first roses and strawberries all the way from Florida to Massachusetts, to find the best of both in our own garden.
This, my first experience of foreign travel, was doubly precious because I was thrown so much with my dear father. During our four months’ absence from home we were constantly together. He taught me how to travel, to take the open road with an open mind and an open hand, not a bad rule for the journey of life and an invaluable one for a young traveler, who like Kipling’s soldier, takes as his motto;
For to admire and for to see,
For to be’old this world so wide—
It never done no good to me,
But I can’t drop it if I tried!