prances and curvets, — not he!

He is a beast that may

So we

be trusted to stand for any length of time without an attempt at motion. Catch him running away! leave Fly, and determine to explore the branch.

fifteen feet.

cau

The short palmettos here are grown to the height of Their roots look like great scaly serpents, which, after knotting and convoluting a while, suddenly raise their crests high in air, and burst forth into a graceful crest of waving green fans. These waving clumps of fanlike leaves are the first and peculiar feature of the foliage. Along the shore here, clumps of pale-pink azaleas grow high up, and fill the air with sweetness. It is for azaleas we are come; and so we tread our way cautiously, tiously, because we have heard tales of the moccasin-snake -fearful gnome! said to infest damp places, and banks of rivers. In all our Floridian rambles we never yet have got sight of this creature; though we have explored all the moist places, and sedgy, swampy dells, where azaleas and blue iris and white lilies grow. But the tradition that such things are inspires a wholesome care never to set a foot down without looking exactly where it goes. The branch, we find, is lighted up in many places by the white, showy blossoms of the dogwood, of which, also, we gather great store. We pile in flowers azalea and dogwood till our wagon is full, and then proceed with a trowel to take up many nameless beauties. There is one which grows on a high, slender stalk, resembling in its form a primrose, that has the purest and intensest yellow that we ever saw in a flower. There is a purple variety of the same species, that grows in the same neighborhoods. We have made a bed of these woodland beauties at the roots of our great oak, so that they may finish their growth, and seed, if possible, under our own eye.

By the bye, we take this occasion to tell the lady who writes to beg of us to send her some seeds or roots of Florida

Any

The coral

plants or flowers that we have put her letter on file, and perhaps, some day, may find something to send her. one who loves flowers touches a kindred spot in our heart. The difficulty with all these flowers and roots sent North is, that they need the heat of this climate to bring them to perfection. Still, there is no saying what a real plant-lover may do in coaxing along exotics. The " run we have been exploring has, we are told, in the season of them, beautiful blue wistaria climbing from branch to branch. It does not come till after the yellow jessamine is gone. honeysuckle and a species of trumpet-creeper also grow here, and, in a little time, will be in full flower. One of our party called us into the run, and bade us admire a beautiful shrub, some fifteen feet high, whose curious, sharply cut, deep-green leaves were shining with that glossy polish which gives such brilliance. Its leaves were of waxen thickness, its habit of growth peculiarly graceful; and our colored handmaiden, who knows the habits of every plant in our vicinity, tells us that it bears a white, sweet blossom, some weeks later. We mentally resolve to appropriate this fair Daphne of the woods on the first opportunity when hands can be spared to take it up and transport it.

But now the sun falls west, and we plod homeward. If you want to see a new and peculiar beauty, watch a golden sunset through a grove draperied with gray moss. The swaying, filmy bands turn golden and rose-colored; and the long, swaying avenues are like a scene in fairyland. We come home, and disembark our treasures. Our house looks like a perfect flower-show. Every available vase and jar is full, -dogwood, azaleas, blue iris, wreaths of yellow jessamine, blue and white violets, and the golden unknown, which we christen primroses. The daily sorting of the vases is no small charge; but there is a hand to that department which never neglects, and so we breathe their air and refresh our eyes with their beauty daily.

Your cold Northern snowstorms hold back our spring. The orange buds appear, but hang back. They are three weeks later than usual. Our letters tell us frightful stories of thermometers no end of the way below zero. When you

have a snowstorm we have a cold rain; so you must keep bright lookout on your ways up there, or we shall get no orange blossoms.

We have received several letters containing questions about Florida. It is our intention to devote our next paper to answering these. We are perfectly ready to answer any number of inquiries, so long as we can lump them all together and answer them through "The Christian Union."

One class of letters, however, we cannot too thankfully remember. Those who have read our papers with so much of sympathy as to send in contributions to our church here have done us great good. We have now a sum contributed with which we hope soon to replace our loss. And now, as the mail is closing, we must close.

P. S. We wish you could see a gigantic bouquet that Mr. S has just brought in from the hammock. A little shrub-oak, about five feet high, whose spreading top is all a golden mass of bloom with yellow jessamine, he has cut down and borne home in triumph. What an adornment would this be for one of the gigantic Japanese vases that figure in New York drawing-rooms! What would such a bouquet sell for ?

IX

FLORIDA FOR INVALIDS

We find an aggrieved feeling in the minds of the Floridian public in view of a letter in "The Independent," by Dr. headed as above; and we have been urgently requested to say something on the other view of the question. Little did we suppose when we met our good friend at

Magnolia, apparently in the height of spirits, the life of the establishment, and head promoter of all sorts of hilarity, that, under all this delightful cheerfulness, he was contending with such dreary experiences as his article in "The Independent" would lead one to suppose. Really, any one who should know the doctor only from that article might mistake him for a wretched hypochondriac; whereas we saw him, and heard of him by universal repute at Magnolia, as one of the cheeriest and sunniest of the inmates, taking everything by the smoothest handle, and not only looking on the bright side himself, but making everybody else do the same. Imagine, therefore, our utter astonishment at finding our buoyant doctor summing up his Florida experience in such paragraphs as these :

"From what I have observed, I should think Florida was nine tenths water and the other tenth swamp. Many are deceived by the milder climate here, and down they come -to die. The mildness, too, is exaggerated. Yesterday morning the thermometer was at thirty-six degrees. Outside, our winter overcoats were necessary; and great wood fires roared within. Now and then the thermometer reaches eighty degrees at midday; but that very night you may

have frost.

"Another fact of Florida is malaria. How could it be otherwise? Souse Manhattan Island two feet deep in fresh water, and would n't the price of quinine rise?

"I have no objection to the term 'sunny South: ' it is a pretty alliteration; but I object to its application to Georgia and Florida in February. I wish you could have seen me last Friday night. We were riding two hundred and sixty miles through a swamp, -Okefinokee of the geographies. I was clad in full winter suit, with heavy Russian overcoat."

But a careful comparison of the incidents in his letter solves the mystery. The letter was written in an early date

in the doctor's Floridian experience, and before he had had an opportunity of experiencing the benefit which he subsequently reaped from it.

We perceive by the reference to last Friday night, and the ride through Okefinokee Swamp, that the doctor was then fresh from the North, and undergoing that process of disenchantment which many Northern travelers experience, particularly those who come by railroad. The most ardent friends of Florida must admit that this railroad is by no means a prepossessing approach to the land of promise, and the midnight cold upon it is something likely to be had in remembrance. When we crossed it, however, we had a stove, which was a small imitation of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, to keep us in heart. Otherwise there is a great deal of truth in our friend's allegations. As we have elsewhere remarked, every place, like a bit of tapestry, has its right side and its wrong side, and both are true and real, - the wrong side, with its tags and rags, and seams and knots, and thrums of worsted, and the right side with its pretty picture.

It is true, as the doctor says, that some invalids do come here, expose themselves imprudently, and die. People do die in Florida, if they use the means quite as successfully as in New York. It is true that sometimes the thermometer stands at seventy at noon, and that the nights are much cooler; it is true we have sometimes severe frosts in Florida; it is true we have malaria; it is true that there are swamps in Florida; and it is quite apt to be true that, if a man rides a hundred miles through a swamp at night, he will feel pretty chilly.

All these are undeniable truths. We never pretended that Florida was the kingdom of heaven, or the land where they shall no more say, "I am sick." It is quite the reverse. People this very winter have in our neighborhood had severe attacks of pneumonia; and undoubtedly many

VOL. II.