200 A FLORIDA SHRINE. 
everything through very blue spectacles. 
“‘ Have you seen any of those fine old coun- 
try mansions,” he asked, “ about which we 
read so often in descriptions of Southern 
life?” He had been on the lookout for 
them, he averred, ever since he left home, and 
had yet to find the first one; and from his 
tone it was evident that he thought the 
Southern idea of a “fine old mansion ” 
must be different from his. 
The Murat house, certainly, was never a 
palaee, except as love may have made it so. 
But it was old; people had lived in it, and 
died in it; those who once owned it, whose 
name and memory still clung to it, were 
now in narrower houses; and it was easy 
for the visitor —for one visitor, at least 
—to fall into pensive meditation. I[- 
strolled about the grounds; stood _be- 
tween the last year’s cotton-rows, while 
a Carolina wren poured out his soul from 
an oleander bush near by; admired the 
confidence of a pair of shrikes, who had 
made a nest in a honeysuckle vine in 
the front yard; listened to the sweet mu- 
sic of mocking-birds, cardinals, and orchard 
orioles; watched the martins circling above 
