WHAT FLORIDA OFFERS. 11 



We hardly know what our own ideas of Florida life 

 were until the realities were before us ; for, in fact (like 

 many another, doubtless), we hardly had time to think 

 about it at all. 



" Jack and gill went up the hill 

 To get a pail of water ; 

 Jack fell down and broke his crown, 

 And gill came tumbling after," 



and never stopped until they landed in the midst of a 

 young orange grove, which some day will surely carry 

 Jack and gill up hill again in a gold and green chariot, if 

 only they are patient and energetic. 



But there were some of us, we remember, who thought 

 the trees had only to be stuck in the ground anyhow and 

 then let severely alone for two or three years, when they 

 would be found full of glorious fruit. Visions of special 

 steamers to be chartered, of whole trains of cars loaded 

 with the produce, floated before the glowing imagination ; 

 and as for vegetables, they were to be had for the scatter- 

 ing of the seed, all the year round, if, indeed, they did not 

 spring up and grow of their own accord. 



It is curious to find, in collecting the preconceptions of 

 "Florida fever" patients, how wildly just such ideas as 

 these obtain credence. Very rarely, indeed, do we find a 

 settler who has not formed impossible expectations, and is 

 therefore "gwine to be disappinted," and in the rebound 

 to see his future home in darker hues than it deserves. 

 And all this comes of the unwise laudations of the enthu- 

 siastic friends who have done more actual harm to our 

 beautiful State than all her foes collectively. 



To clear away the mists and throw in the shadows that 

 all earthly paintings must accept as part and parcel of 

 themselves, and to tell the honest truth, and in such shape 



