MANDARIN, FLA., Feb. 13, 1872.
Yes, the girls! Let me see: who are they? I mean _you_, Nellie, and
Mary, and Emily, and Charlotte, and Gracie, and Susie, and Carry, and
Kitty, and you of every pretty name, my charming little Pussy Willow
friends! Dear souls all, I bless your bright eyes, and fancy you about
me as a sort of inspiration to my writing. I could wish you were every
one here. Don't you wish that "The Arabian Nights" were true? and that
there were really little square bits of enchanted carpet, on which one
has only to sit down and pronounce two cabalistic words, and away one
goes through the air, sailing off on visits? Then, girls, wouldn't we
have a nice wide bit of carpet? and wouldn't we have the whole bright
flock of you come fluttering down together to play croquet with us under
the orange-trees this afternoon? And, while you were waiting for your
turns to come, you should reach up and pull down a bough, and help
yourselves to oranges; or you should join a party now going out into the
pine-woods to gather yellow jessamine. To-day is mail-day; and, as the
yellow jessamine is in all its glory, the girls here are sending little
boxes of it North to their various friends through the mail. They have
just been bringing in long wreaths and clusters of it for me to look at,
and are consulting how to pack it. Then this afternoon, when we have
done croquet, it is proposed that we form a party to visit Aunt Katy,
who lives about two miles away in the pine-woods, "over on Julington" as
the people here say. "On Julington" means on a branch of the St. John's
named Julington Creek, although it is as wide as the Connecticut River
at Hartford. We put the oldest mule to an old wagon, and walk and ride
alternately; some of us riding one way, and some the other.
The old mule, named Fly, is a worn-out, ancient patriarch, who, having
worked all his days without seeing any particular use in it, is now
getting rather misanthropic in his old age, and obstinately determined
not to put one foot before the other one bit faster than he is actually
forced to do. Only the most vigorous urging can get him to step out of a
walk, although we are told that the rogue has a very fair trot at his
command. If any of the darky tribe are behind him, he never thinks of
doing any thing but pricking up his ears, and trotting at a decent
pace; but, when only girls and women are to the fore, down flop his
ears, down goes his head, and he creeps obstinately along in the
aforementioned contemplative manner, looking, for all the world, like a
very rough, dilapidated old hair-trunk in a state of locomotion.
Well, I don't blame him, poor brute! Life, I suppose, is as much a
mystery to him as to the philosophers; and he has never been able to
settle what it is all about, this fuss of being harnessed periodically
to impertinent carts, and driven here and there, for no valuable purpose
that he can see.
Such as he is, Fly is the absolute property of the girls and women,
being past farm-work; and though he never willingly does any thing but
walk, yet his walk is considerably faster than that of even the most
agile of us, and he is by many degrees better than nothing. He is
admitted on all hands to be a _safe_ beast, and will certainly never
run away with any of us.
As to the choice of excursions, there are several,--one to our neighbor
Bowens to see sugar-making, where we can watch the whole process, from
the grinding of the cane through the various vats and boilers, till at
last we see the perfected sugar in fine, bright, straw-colored crystals
in the sugar-house. We are hospitably treated to saucers of lovely,
amber-colored sirup just on the point of crystallization,--liquid
sugar-candy,--which, of course, we do not turn away from. Then, again,
we can go down the banks of the river to where our neighbor Duncan has
cleared up a little spot in what used to be virgin forest, and where now
a cosey little cottage is beginning to peep through its many windows
upon the river-view. Here a bright little baby--a real little Florida
flower--has lately opened a pair of lovely eyes, and is growing daily
in grace and favor. In front of this cottage, spared from the forest,
are three great stately magnolias, such trees as you never saw. Their
leaves resemble those of the India-rubber tree,--large, and of a glossy,
varnished green. They are evergreen, and in May are covered with great
white blossoms, something like pond-lilies, and with very much the same
odor. The trees at the North called magnolias give no idea whatever of
what these are. They are giants among flowers; seem worthy to be trees
of heaven.
Then there are all sorts of things to be got out of the woods. There are
palmetto-leaves to be pressed and dried, and made into fans; there is
the long wire-grass, which can be sewed into mats, baskets, and various
little fancy articles, by busy fingers. Every day brings something to
explore the woods for: not a day in winter passes that you cannot bring
home a reasonable little nosegay of flowers. Many of the flowers here
do not have their seasons, but seem to bloom the year round: so that,
all the time, you are sure of finding something. The woods now are full
of bright, delicate ferns that no frosts have touched, and that spring
and grow perennially. The book of Nature here is never shut and clasped
with ice and snow as at the North; and, of course, we spend about half
our time in the open air.
The last sensation of our circle is our red-bird. We do not approve of
putting free birds in cages; but Aunt Katy brought to one of our party
such a beautiful fellow, so brilliant a red, with such a smart, black
crest on his head, and such a long, flashing red tail, that we couldn't
resist the desire to keep him a little while, just to look at him. Aunt
Katy insisted that he wouldn't take it to heart; that he would be tame
in a few days, and eat out of our hands: in short, she insisted that he
would consider himself a fortunate bird to belong to us.
Aunt Katy, you must know, is a nice old lady. We use that term with a
meaning; for, though "black as the tents of Kedar," she is a perfect
lady in her manners: she was born and brought up, and has always lived,
in this neighborhood, and knows every bird in the forest as familiarly
as if they were all her own chickens; and she has great skill in getting
them to come to her to be caught.
Well, our red-bird was named Phoebus, of a kind that Audubon calls a
cardinal-grossbeak; and a fine, large, roomy cage was got down for him,
which was of old tenanted by a very merry and rackety cat-bird; and then
the question arose, "What shall we do with him?" For you see, girls,
having a soft place in our heart for all pets, instead of drowning some
of our kittens in the fall, as reasonable people should, we were seduced
by their gambols and their prettiness to let them all grow up together;
and the result is, that we have now in our domestic retinue four adult
cats of most formidable proportions. "These be the generations" of our
cats: first, Liz, the mother; second, Peter, her oldest son; third, Anna
and Lucinda, her daughters. Peter is a particularly martial, combative,
obnoxious beast, very fluffy and fussy, with great, full-moon, yellow
eyes, and a most resounding, sonorous voice. There is an immense deal of
cat in Peter. He is concentrated cathood, a nugget of pure cat; and in
fact we are all a little in awe of him. He rules his mother and sisters
as if he had never heard of Susan Anthony and Mrs. Stanton. Liz, Anna,
and Lucinda are also wonderfully-well-developed cats, with capital
stomachs. Now comes the problem: the moment the red-bird was let into
his cage, there was an instant whisk of tails, and a glare of great
yellow eyes, and a sharpening of eye-teeth, that marked a situation. The
Scripture tells us a time is coming when the lion shall lie down with
the lamb; but that time hasn't come in Florida. Peter is a regular
heathen, and hasn't the remotest idea of the millennium. He has much of
the lion in him; but he never could lie down peaceably with the lamb,
unless indeed the lamb were inside of him, when he would sleep upon him
without a twinge of conscience. Unmistakably we could see in his eyes
that he considered Phoebus as caught for his breakfast; and he sat
licking his chops inquiringly, as who should ask, "When will the cloth
be laid, and things be ready?"
Now, the party to whom the red-bird was given is also the patron-saint,
the "guide, philosopher, and friend," of the cats. It is she who
examines the plates after each meal, and treasures fragments, which she
cuts up and prepares for their repast with commendable regularity. It is
she who presides and keeps order at cat-meals; and forasmuch as Peter,
on account of his masculine strength and rapacity, is apt to get the
better of his mother and sisters, she picks him up, and bears him
growling from the board, when he has demolished his own portion, and is
proceeding to eat up theirs.
Imagine, now, the cares of a woman with four cats and a bird on her
mind! Phoebus had to be carefully pinned up in a blanket the first
night; then the cage was swung by strong cords from the roof of the
veranda. The next morning, Peter was found perched on top of it, glaring
fiendishly. The cage was moved along; and Peter scaled a pillar, and
stationed himself at the side. To be sure, he couldn't get the bird, as
the slats were too close for his paw to go through; but poor Phoebus
seemed wild with terror. Was it for this he left his native wilds,--to
be exposed in a prison to glaring, wild-eyed hyenas and tigers?
The cats were admonished, chastised, "scat"-ed, through all the moods
and tenses; though their patroness still serves out their commons
regularly, determined that they shall not have the apology of empty
stomachs. Phoebus is evidently a philosopher,--a bird of strong sense.
Having found, after two or three days' trial, that the cats can't get
him; having clusters of the most delicious rice dangling from the roof
of his cage, and fine crisp lettuce verdantly inviting through the
bars,--he seems to have accepted the situation; and, when nobody is in
the veranda, he uplifts his voice in song. "What cheer! what cheer!" he
says, together with many little twitters and gurgles for which we have
no musical notes. Aunt Katy promises to bring him a little wife before
long; and, if that be given him, what shall hinder him from being happy?
As April comes in, they shall build their nest in the cage, and give us
a flock of little red-birds.
Well, girls, we are making a long letter; and this must do for this
week.
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