WHAT FLORIDA OFFERS. 13 



has come to our beautiful State, lured by glowing descrip- 

 tions and rose-colored pictures of impossible perfections, 

 with his expectations wrought to the highest pitch, and 

 finding no paradise of ease and plenty awaiting his picking 

 up without working or waiting, has turned his back upon 

 her and gone back whence he came, to revile her as a 

 fraud, a sham, a " trap to catch sinners." 



Surely it is better for Florida that her settlers should 

 come to her with moderate, reasonable expectations, and 

 find their ideas lower than the reality ; far better this way 

 than the opposite of expecting too much, and meeting bit- 

 ter disappointment, and such a revulsion of feeling that 

 the good that really lies before them is swallowed up in 

 the gloom. Florida desires nothing but tlie truth to be 

 told of her wealth and virtues — the plain, sober truth, in 

 facts and figures, of deeds done and work accomplished, of 

 what has been and is, not of the theoretical ''might be," 

 this should be enough to satisfy an energetic, reasonable 

 man ; and she wants none other. She is beautiful, but is 

 not a paradise ; her climate, both summer and winter, is 

 delightful, but it is not perfection; the summer days and 

 nights are cooled by such breezes as are seldom known at 

 the North. The heat is therefore less oppressive than the 

 same season in any other State, in the North or South, but 

 the warm weather continues longer. The winter has no 

 snow, but sometimes there is ice, a thin skim that forms 

 during the night and usually vanishes in the morning, but 

 stays long enough to nip tender vegetables; so that the 

 truck gardener must hasten to plant again in order not to 

 lose the cream of the early Northern markets. And some- 

 times there is a drought that shrivels up the vegetables and 

 keeps back the earliest shipments. 



So you see there do exist drawbacks and discourage- 

 ments, but they are not always nor all the time, and the 



