A FLORIDA SHRINE. 195 



still older Tallahassean, Judge , whose 



venerable name I am sorry to have forgot- 

 ten, and that indisputable citizen confirmed 

 all that his neighbor had said. For once, 

 the guide-book compiler must have been 

 misinformed. 



The question, happily, was one of no great 

 consequence. If the Prince had never lived 

 in the house, the Princess had ; and she, by 

 all accounts (and I make certain her hus- 

 band would have said the same), was the 

 worthier person of the two. And even if 

 neither of them had lived there, if my sen- 

 timent had been all wasted (but there was 

 no question of tears), the place itself was 

 sightly, the house was old, and the way 

 thither a pleasant one first down the hill 

 in a zigzag course to the vicinity of the rail- 

 way station, then by a winding country road 

 through the valley past a few negro cabins, 

 and up the slope on the farther side. Prince 

 Murat, or no Prince Murat, I should love to 

 travel that road to-day, instead of sitting 

 before a Massachusetts fire, with the ground 

 deep under snow, and the air full of thirty 

 or forty degrees of frost. 



In the front yard of one of the cabins op- 



