Only waiting till the angels Open wide the mystic gate, At whose feet I long have lingered, Weary, sad, and desolate; Even now I hear their footsteps, And their voices far away-- When they call me, I am waiting, Only waiting to obey. AFTERMATH CHAPTER XXXI. THE FLORIDA CRACKERS. When the previous thirty chapters were in press, the conviction was forced upon me that any book which touched upon Florida without a description of its poor whites called "Crackers," would be like the play of "Hamlet" with the Prince of Denmark left out, and I gladly pay this tribute of grateful remembrance to the most unique, and the only truly contented people that I have ever met on earth. So far forth as history enlightens us, the ancestors of these peculiar specimens of the human race were never born anywhere in particular, but like Topsy, they "simply growed." Why these usually long, lean, lank, saffron-hued, erst-while clay-eaters have received such an unromantic name has been variously accounted for. Some say the name was suggested by the fact that when not otherwise employed, they are constantly cracking the lice which swarm in their never-combed hair; others ascribe it to the frequent cracking of their rifles and long whip-lashes as they pursue their game or drive their cattle. An ex-slave of one of them tells me that they are called "Crackers," because they are all "cracked as to their cocoanuts." Although the faces of many of these children of nature are usually as expressionless as a cast-iron cook-stove, they are far from being as stupid as they look; for even General Jackson, "the man of blood and iron," would have won but few, if any, laurels in his campaigns against the Seminoles, had it not been for his advanced guard of the warlike "Crackers." "Out there in history" we see him and his army, while recklessly rushing the redskins, become lost and bewildered in the vast primeval forest. Day after day, they marched, but always in a circle; and each nightfall found them near where they broke camp in the morning. Provisions failed, and hunger and thirst drove the soldiers frantic. Every night they were pelted by bullets from unseen foes; stabbed and stung by innumerable insects; death for all stared them in the face; myriads of buzzards whirled above them, anxious for their prey.