VII

MAGNOLIA

MANDARIN, FLA., March 6, 1872.

Magnolia is a name suggestive of beauty; and, for once, the name does not belie the fact. The boarding-house there is about the pleasantest winter resort in Florida. We have been passing a day and night there as guest of some friends, and find a company of about seventy people enjoying themselves after the usual fashions of summer wateringplaces. The house is situated on a little eminence, and commands a fine sweep of view both up and down the river. In the usual fashion of Southern life, it is surrounded with wide verandas, where the guests pass most of their time, the ladies chatting and working embroidery ; the gentlemen reading newspapers and smoking.

The amusements are, boating and fishing parties, of longer or shorter duration; rides and walks along the shore; or croquet on a fine, shady croquet-ground in a live-oak grove back of the house.

We tried them all.

First we went in a rowboat about

a couple of miles up a little creek. The shore on either side was ruffled with the green bonnet-leaves, with here and there a golden blossom. The forest trees, which were large and lofty, were almost entirely of the deciduous kind, which was just bursting into leaf; and the effect was very curious and peculiar. One has often remarked what a misty effect the first buddings of foliage have. Here there was a mist of many colors, rose-colored, pink, crimson, yellow, and vivid green, the hues of the young leaves, or of the different tags and keys of the different species of trees. Here and there a wild plum, sheeted in brilliant white, varied the tableau. We rowed up to shore, drew down a branch, and filled the laps of the ladies with sprays of white flowers.

The sun beat down upon us with the power of August; and, had it not been for the fresh breeze that blew up from the creek, we should have found it very oppressive. We returned just in time to rest for dinner. The dining-hall is spacious and cheerful; and the company are seated at small tables, forming social groups and parties. The fare was about the same as would be found in a first-class boardinghouse at the North. The house is furnished throughout in a very agreeable style, and an invalid could nowhere in Florida have more comforts. It is more than full, and constantly obliged to turn away applicants; and we understand that families are now waiting at Green Cove for places to be vacated here. We are told that it is in contemplation, another season, to put up several cottages, to be rented to families who will board at the hotel. At present there is connected with the establishment one house and a cottage, where some of the guests have their rooms; and, as the weather is so generally mild, even invalids find no objection to walking to their meals.

The house is a respectable, good-sized, old-fashioned structure; and, being away from the main building, is preferred by some who feel the need of more entire quiet. Sitting on the front steps in the warm afternoon sunshine, and looking across to the distant, hazy shores, miles away, one could fancy one's self in Italy, an illusion which the great clumps of aloes, and the tall green yuccas, and the gold-fruited orange-trees, help to carry out. Groups of ladies were seated here and there under trees, reading, working, and chatting. We were called off by the making-up of a croquet party.

The croquet-ground is under the shade of a fine grove of live-oaks, which, with their swaying drapery of white moss, form a graceful shade and shelter. We shared the honor of gaining a victory or two under the banner of a doctor of divinity, accustomed, we believe, to winning laurels on

quite other fields in the good city of New York. It has been our general experience, however, that a man good for anything else is commonly a good croquet-player. We would notify your editor-in-chief that, if ever he plays a game against Dr. C—, he will find a foeman worthy of

his steel.

In the evening the whole company gathered in the parlors, made cheerful by blazing wood-fires. There were songsinging and piano-playing, charades and games, to pass the time withal; and all bore testimony to the very sociable and agreeable manner in which life moved on in their circle.

Magnolia is about three quarters of a mile from GreenCove Springs, where are two or three large, well-kept boarding-houses. There is a very pleasant, shady walk through the woods from one place to the other; and the mail comes every day to Green Cove, and is sent for, from the Magnolia House, in a daily morning carriage. It is one of the amusements of the guests to ride over, on these occasions, for a little morning gossip and shopping, as Magnolia, being quite sequestered, does not present the opportunity to chaffer even for a stick of candy. Of course, fair ones that have been accustomed to the periodical excitement of a shopping-tour would sink into atrophy without an opportunity to spend something. What they can buy at Green Cove is a matter of indifference. It is the burning of money in idle purses that injures the nervous system.

There are no orange groves on this side of the river. The orange-trees about the house are entirely of the wild kind; and, for merely ornamental purposes, no tree more beautiful could be devised. Its vivid green, the deep gold-color of its clusters of fruit, and the exuberance with which it blossoms, all go to recommend it. Formerly there were extensive orange groves, with thousands of bearing trees, on this side of the river. The frost of 1835 killed the trees,

and they have never been reset. Oranges are not, therefore, either cheap or plenty at Magnolia or Green Cove. Nothing shows more strikingly the want of enterprise that has characterized this country than this. Seedling oranges planted the very next day after the great frost would have been in bearing ten years after, and would, ere now, have yielded barrels and barrels of fruit; and the trees would have grown and taken care of themselves. thought so very simple and easy a measure would have been adopted.

One would have

At eleven o'clock the next morning we took steamer for Mandarin, and went skimming along the shores, watching the white-blossoming plum-trees amid the green of the forest. We stopped at Hibernia, a pleasant boarding-house on an island called Fleming's, after a rich Colonel Fleming who formerly had a handsome plantation there. There is a fine, attractive-looking country-house, embowered in trees and with shaded verandas, where about forty boarders are yearly accommodated. We have heard this resort very highly praised as a quiet spot where the accommodations are homelike and comfortable. It is kept by the widow of the former proprietor, and we are told that guests who once go there return year after year. There is something certainly

very peaceful and attractive about its surroundings.

But now our boat is once more drawing up to the wharf at Mandarin, and we must defer much that we have to say till next week. Phoebus, we are happy to say to our girl correspondents, is bright and happy, and in excellent voice. All day long, at intervals, we can hear him from the back veranda shouting, "What cheer!" or sometimes abbreviating it as Cheer, cheer, cheer!"

Since we have been writing, one of those characteristic changes have come up to which this latitude is subject. The sun was shining, the river blue, the windows open, and the family reading, writing, and working on the veranda,

when suddenly comes a frown of Nature, a black scowl in the horizon. Up flies the wind; the waves are all whitecaps; the blinds bang; the windows rattle e; every one runs to shut everything; and for a few moments it blows as if it would take house and all away. Down drop oranges in a golden shower; here, there, and everywhere the lightning flashes; thunder cracks and rattles and rolls; and the big torrents of rain come pouring down. But in the back porch, Phoebus between each clap persists in shouting, "What cheer! what cheer!" Like a woman in a passion, Nature ends all this with a burst of tears; and it is raining now, tenderly and plantively, as if bemoaning itself.

Well, we would n't have missed the sight if we had been asked; and we have picked up a bushel of oranges that otherwise somebody must have climbed the trees for. Meanwhile the mail is closing. Good-by!

VIII

YELLOW JESSAMINES

MANDARIN, FLA., March 14, 1872.

"They talk about Florida being the land of flowers: I'm sure I don't see where the flowers are!"

The speaker was a trim young lady, with pretty, highheeled boots, attired in all those charming mysteries behind and before, and up and down, that make the daughter of Eve look like some bright, strange, tropical bird. She had come to see Florida; that is, to take board at the St. James. She had provided herself with half a dozen different palmetto hats, an orange-wood cane tipped with an alligator's tooth, together with an assortment of cranes' wings and pink curlews' feathers, and talked of Florida with the assured air of a connoisseur. She had been on the boat up to Enterprise; she had crossed at Tekoi over to St. Augus