The children seemed about at most hours of their parents’ waking, and, as in Italy and Spain, one saw little ones of tender age sharing their pleasures of the public places. Very small boys and girls played at night in the paths of the Plaza, or hung upon the railing of the alligator’s bath-tub, and admired his secular repose; now and then one fell asleep at its mother’s knee, and I thought the whole usage homelike and kindly, however not perfectly wise. It was at least part of the native life, which the tourist lite so much overran; and yet that tourist life was genial, too. It went and came in conversible enjoyment of the place, from its various lodgings and from the delicatessen shops where it inexpensively fed. As the season advanced it thickened upon the town, and the dwellers up and down the more convenient streets were adventurously besought to share their houses with the roomers. We ourselves were not exempt from their entreaties, and I do not yet quite know how we escaped having one mother in Israel for a paying guest; she sat down at her own suggestion to argue the matter with us, and I thought really she had much of the logic on her side. Possibly she prolonged her argument because she liked so much the rich glow from the mass of the live-oak logs burning on our hearth, and I did not blame her; rather do I blame myself, and shall always blame, for not asking in to that genial warmth the little frail old dame who arrived one cold day on our veranda to offer her pathetically humble stock of needles and pins for our purchase. I then thought it enough to buy a quarter’s worth of pins, and did not think, insensate that I was, to ask her indoors to warm herself at our fire. She was from Michigan, she said, and that Florida day must have been mockingly bitter to her. She faded into the afternoon chill, and left me, when I realized it, to suffer for my sin of omission with vain thoughts of pursuing her, and bringing her back and offering her tea and toast and whatever instant refreshments I could imagine.