158 
THE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
and a hard snowstorm raging.” Laying that letter on 
the table, I step out onto our eastern porch. O ! wonder¬ 
ful Southern night! How can I justly describe thee ! 
The fresh, warm air caresses me, laden, burdened with 
the fragrance of a thousand Orange blooms. The moon 
is not yet full, and yet so clear is its radiance, that 
ordinary print is easily read. 
The lake lies quiet under those silvery beams, as 
smooth and transparent as are its frozen sisters of the 
North. Deep shadows lie beneath the Orange trees, and 
faintly across the grove comes thd sound of distant 
laughter and the thrumming of a banjo at a cabin where 
the happy darkies, while away the time. 
Crickets are chirping in the grass; a few strangely 
luminous fire-flies dart here and there; while around all 
and above all is that marvelous, subtle sweetness of 
blossoming flowers. 
I sit for a long time alone, drinking it all in; the 
A WHITE 
“ Does anyone know where Jamie Morrow lives, and 
what is the matter with him ? He has not been here 
for three Sundays.” 
It is Miss Montrose who speaks to her Sunday-school 
class in the mission chapel. A hard-faced set of little 
street Arabs they are, and she misses more than she 
can say the thin, delicate, white face and dark blue 
eyes of the absent boy. There is silence for a moment, 
as the scholars nudge each other and squirm, after the 
manner of boys. Then one speaks out; 
“Jamie’s sick a-bed, and they live in the alley back 
of Flagler Street.” 
“Sick, is he? O, I’m sorry! what ails him?” asks 
Miss Montrose. 
“Fever, I guess,” says the boy. “They have lots of 
fever down there.” 
Miss Montrose says no more, but looks thoughtful. 
“Scared of the fever, I'll bet you a copper,” whis¬ 
pers the boy to his neighbor and they both chuckle. 
Miss Montrose is n'ot “scared of the fever” though. 
She is only thinking whether she shall go to see Jamie 
that afternoon, or wait until the next day. She had 
intended to spend the afternoon differently. A great 
preacher is to be at the church which she attends, and 
she is specially anxious to hear him. 
“ To-morrow will do,” she thinks and then she gives 
out the lesson. 
“ Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do.” 
“That isn’t the lesson, teacher,” cries a shrill voice. 
“ It’s about going to see them that’s sick, and in prison 
and sick.” 
“To be sure,” says Miss Montrose, and turns the 
pages, but somehow the right and wrong lessons seem 
to fit into each other curiously. 
“ ‘ Whatsover thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
might.’ ‘ I was sick and ye visited me.’ I will go this 
afternoon,” she decides. 
“ Dr. M. will be here again, or if not—well, I should 
not enjoy his sermon if I felt that I had neglected a 
duty to hear it.” 
So it comes about that four o’clock finds Miss Mont¬ 
sweet, drowsy silence, the wealth of moonlight, the 
intoxicating and delicious odor. In such times as these 
“speech” may perhaps be “silver.” but “silence is 
golden.” 
And yet so suddenly do mortals descend to prose, no 
sooner are my ears, my eyes, my nose refreshed and 
delighted, than I become distinctly aware that I am 
thirsty. So out to the big Lemon-tree at the corner of 
the house I go; there are blossoms, green fruit and ripe, 
hanging side by side. 
Selecting a large, fine specimen I repair to the kitchen, 
where, with the help of sugar and a generous chunk of 
ice (manufactured, dear friends, in this tropic land for 
half a cent a pound), I brew me a delicious lemonade. 
Then to the parlor, and with the goblet by my side and 
the last number of the Floral Cabinet in my lap, I 
read and sip by turns until bed-time comes. 
Altamont, Fla. ■ LOUTSE. 
# 
HYACINTH. 
rose climbing the long, dark, dirty stairs which lead to 
the room where Jamie lives. A knock at the door 
brings a woman to open it, a thin, fragile-looking crea¬ 
ture, with Jamie’s dark blue eyes, looking out of a face 
which might once have been delicate and pretty, but is 
now only sickly and haggard. A brown calico dress, 
worn without collar or cuffs, slip-shod shoes, rough 
untidy hair—such is the picture which Miss Montrose 
sees. 
“Does Jamie Morrow live here?” she asks. 
“Live?” says the woman, in a voice which may be 
surly or may be only sad. “ If you can call it living he 
does, but it’s more like dying, it seems to me.” 
Then, all in a moment, her hands go up to her face, 
and the tears are trickling through her thin fingers as 
she turns away, shaken by a storm of sudden sobs. 
It is a miserable, dark, dirty little room. The one 
window faces the South, but is so coated with dust and 
dirt that the sunbeams have long since given up the 
attempt to struggle through it. The floor is grimy, the 
walls battered and dingy, the furniture covered with 
dust and stains. The bed is tumbled, but the bed¬ 
clothes look tolerably clean, the only things which bear 
the trace of soap and water. And the whole room is 
filled with the miserable, sickly, squalid smell of the 
poverty which is too much afraid of losmg an atom of 
heat from the tiny stove to admit a breath of fresh 
air. 
Upon the bed lies a limp little figure, upon the pillow 
a dead-white face with long dark lashes lying upon the 
waxy, hollow cheek. Jamie was thin and pale enough 
when Miss Montrose saw him last, but it had been the 
perfection of life and vigor compared to this. 
“What ails him?” she asks of the woman, whose 
hands still cover her pale face. 
She shakes her head, “ Nothing, the doctor says. The 
fever is gone, but he is dying for, all that.” 
Miss Montrose bends over him and speaks his name, 
but the fringed lids do not even flutter. 
“ What has he had to eat?” she asks, sharply, for she 
has had much experience of the ways of the poor. 
