80' HOME LIFE IN FLORIDA. 



because it would do no good ; tropical fruits can not be 

 grown with profit in regions swept every winter by air 

 that is frosty, even if it does not actually touch the freez- 

 ing point. 



Florida is over four hundred miles long, and her tem- 

 perature varies more from one degree to another than is 

 usual for equal distances on the main land ; plants that 

 will flourish in ordinary winters as far north as Orange 

 County, for instance, are unreliable for crops a little fur- 

 ther north, and regularly, winter killed yet a little more to 

 the north. 



Some poor, deluded people were actually trying to 

 ' ' live in comfort all winter in tents " down on the 

 Gulf coast at the very time that the unprecedented cold 

 wave of January, 1886, came rushing down from the 

 north pole on its way to astonish Cuba ; these good 

 people had not been very happy before this cold wave 

 interviewed them ; they felt still sadder (and madder) 

 afterward, and it was not long before, learning wisdom 

 by experience, they had good substantial walls and roofs 

 to shelter them and good honest fires to warm them, and 

 then for the first time they ceased to regret and began to 

 rejoice that they had selected Florida as their future home. 

 Others too had followed directions and left behind them 

 the comfortable winter overcoat and the cosy carpets 

 which they were not to require, and even before those few 

 bitterly cold days they found out how little dependence is 

 sometimes to be placed in flaming circulars set afloat by 

 interested parties. 



Those few days in January, 1886 (w^hich will never be 

 forgotten by the many who, in person or in property, felt 

 the force of the blast), are not to be set down to the ac- 

 count of the Florida climate, or their eflTects quoted as 

 those of even an "unusually severe winter," as this is 



