Petals Plucked from Sunny ClimesBrooks, A. M. (Abbie M.)
History
Petals Plucked from Sunny Climes
Brooks, A. M. (Abbie M.)
Cuba -- Description and travel; Florida -- Description and travel; Florida -- History
Fine Matanzar oysters are kept for sale in or out of the shell, as the
purchaser may choose. If any appearance of starvation has ever faced
visitors here, no one has perished here from hunger. It is true, there
have been times when the demand for certain articles has exceeded the
supply a day or two only, but now good, palatable, life-sustaining food
can be obtained; also fresh milk, as some of the citizens are making
dairies a specialty. Very sweet oranges are sold from Dr. Anderson's
grove by the cart-load, while some others have almost every variety
produced, including the Lisbon, Chinese, Maltese, Tangerine, Seville,
and Mandarin, or Clove orange.
Hotels here, with high-sounding names and inviting appearance, are well
kept. The St. Augustine, Magnolia, and Florida Houses, have the most
rooms, while the Sunnyside has taken a front seat for first-class
accommodations with all its patrons. Nearly every house rents rooms or
takes boarders, and many of them feed well--among whom we find the names
of Mr. George Greeno, Mr. Medicis, and Miss Lucy Abbott, as extremely
popular.
Some who visit Florida expect gratuitous offerings from the residents
for the great favor shown them in coming, and when they find every thing
is cash on delivery, a general fault-finding is commenced on
extortion--this exercise being the only escape-valve for their bottled
wrath. The far-famed hospitality of the Southern people is a record of
the past, from the force of surrounding circumstances, now obsolete, as
Webster says with regard to some of his Dictionary words: with most of
them it is a question of bread, and whatever produce or fruit of any
kind is raised--from a ground-pea to a ripe sweet orange--the question
is asked, How can I turn it into something by which my family may be
supported? The South has now neither wealth nor much leisure to spend
without value received. The inhospitality in not giving fruits is only
one of the many sources of complaint--the boarding-houses and hotels
being the most prolific cause for disagreeable remarks. The most
eligible houses of entertainment, with scarcely an exception, are kept
by Northern people, who have charged two dollars for a dinner with the
most unblushing effrontery, while the Floridian is satisfied with fifty
cents for a square meal. There are also those reared here who ask
whatever they think visitors will stand, regardless of principle, but
they always bear brow-beating, when they come down to prices within
range of any ordinary purse.
Many speak of this favorably as a summer-resort, but when the season
advances into May, the winter-visitors all leave. Then a painful silence
pervades every thing, unbroken only by an occasional yawn from the
residents, who are tired doing nothing. These demonstrations sound sad,
as if from the tomb, and where the echoes cease to reverberate we have
never been able to determine. The climate, from its insular exposure, is
said to be lovely even in August.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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