178 ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. 



latures, I believe, and was even consider- 

 ing a proposition to reduce the salary and 

 mileage of its members. Under such cir- 

 cumstances, it ought not to have been a mat- 

 ter of surprise, perhaps, that no flag floated 

 from the cupola of the capitol. The people's 

 money should not be wasted. And possibly 

 I should never have remarked the omission 

 but for a certain curiosity, natural, if not in- 

 evitable, on the part of a Northern visitor, as 

 to the real feeling of the South toward the 

 national government. Day after day I had 

 seen a portly gentleman with an air, or 

 with airs, as the spectator might choose to 

 express it going in and out of the State 

 House gate, dressed ostentatiously in a suit 

 of Confederate gray. He had worn nothing 

 else since the war, I was told. But of course 

 the State of Florida was not to be judged by 

 the freak of one man, and he only a member 

 of the " third house. " And even when I 

 went into the governor's office, and saw the 

 original " ordinance of secession " hanging 

 in a conspicuous place on the wall, as if it 

 were an heirloom to be proud of, I felt no 

 stirring of sectional animosity, thorough-bred 

 Massachusetts Yankee and old-fashioned 



