as the general air
of friendliness and good-nature everywhere, of agreeableness--it went
along with the roses and the easy-going life. You didn't feel all the
time on a strain. I don't suppose they are any better than our people,
and I've no doubt I should miss a good deal there after a while--a
certain tonic and purpose in life. But, do you know, it is pleasant
sometimes to be with people who haven't so many corners as our people
have. But you went south from Fortress Monroe?"

"Yes; I went to Florida."

"Oh, that must be a delightful country!"

"Yes, it's a very delightful land, or will be when it is finished. It
needs advertising now. It needs somebody to call attention to it. The
modest Northerners who have got hold of it, and staked it all out into
city lots, seem to want to keep it all to themselves."

"How do you mean 'finished'?"

"Why, the State is big enough, and a considerable portion of it has a
good foundation. What it wants is building up. There's plenty of water
and sand, and palmetto roots and palmetto trees, and swamps, and a
perfectly wonderful vegetation of vines and plants and flowers. What it
needs is land--at least what the Yankees call land. But it is coming on.
A good deal of the State below Jacksonville is already ten to fifteen
feet above the ocean."

"But it's such a place for invalids!"

"Yes, it is a place for invalids. There are two kinds of people there
--invalids and speculators. Thousands of people in the bleak North, and
especially in the Northwest, cannot live in the winter anywhere else than
in Florida. It's a great blessing to this country to have such a
sanitarium. As I said, all it needs is building up, and then it wouldn't
be so monotonous and malarious."

"But I had such a different idea of it!"

"Well, your idea is probably right. You cannot do justice to a place by
describing it literally. Most people are fascinated by Florida: the fact
is that anything is preferable to our Northern climate from February to
May."

"And you didn't buy an orange plantation, or a town?"

"No; I was discouraged. Almost any one can have a town who will take a
boat and go off somewhere with a surveyor, and make a map."

The truth is--the present writer had it from Major Blifill, who runs a
little steamboat upon one of the inland creeks where the alligator is
still numerous enough to be an entertainment--that Mr. King was no doubt
malarious himself when he sailed over Florida. Blifill s