138 HOME LIFE IN FLORIDA. 



every apartment, though furnished in the plainest manner, 

 conveys an idea of comfort, ease, and home. 



Now, though we have few^ very fine houses as yet in 

 Florida, we find this same difference in full existence. We 

 have seen houses well built, with large rooms, halls, and 

 piazzas, and all necessary furniture, the dwelling-places of 

 wealthy people, which conveyed not the faintest touch of 

 that home feeling so dear to us all. We have seen the same 

 thing in other houses, where the owners had dwelt for years 

 and yet had planted neither tree, nor vine, nor flowers, 

 around them ; where chickens and pigs roamed in and out 

 of the house at will, in and under the beds and tables ; 

 sometimes a rough rail fence suffices to keep cattle at a 

 respectful distance from the house, but often the house is 

 dropped down in the piney woods without any fence at all. 

 We passed such a house as the latter one day (our con- 

 science forbids us to call it a home), and a woman arrayed 

 in one scanty garment, a ' ' kaliker " dress, was singing over 

 the wash-tub, near the door, while a sow and three of her 

 progeny were visible from our point of view (a saddle) in- 

 side the narrow entry ; at the door, half inside, were a cow 

 and calf, and, roosting contentedly on the window-sill, were 

 a half dozen chickens. 



The woman nodded at us with the customary " Howdy !" 

 and we rode on with a wonder and a half-sigh — the wonder 

 at the evident contentment of that woman under such a 

 state of existence, and the half-sigh because some of the 

 rest of us could not be content with it also — it involves so 

 little work and so little expense — at least, until our groves 

 come into profit; for that little significant word, " until," 

 covers for many a Florida settler a multitude of weary 

 days and months, aye, and years, if he has not the where- 

 withal to meet current expenses or raise other fruits and 

 vegetables while waiting the happy climax to his labors. 



