After this I went more than once to the sugar mill. Morning and
afternoon I visited it, but somehow I could never renew the joy of my
first visit. Moods are not to be had for the asking, nor earned by a
walk. The place was still interesting, the birds were there, the
sunshine was pleasant, and the sea breeze fanned me. The orange blossoms
were still sweet, and the bees still hummed about them; but it was
another day, or I was another man. In memory, none the less, all my
visits blend in one, and the ruined mill in the dying orchard remains
one of the bright spots in that strange Southern world which, almost
from the moment I left it behind me, began to fade into indistinctness,
like the landscape of a dream.
ON THE UPPER ST. JOHN'S.
The city of Sanford is a beautiful and interesting place, I hope, to
those who live in it. To the Florida tourist it is important as lying at
the head of steamboat navigation on the St. John's River, which here
expands into a lake--Lake Monroe--some five miles in width, with Sanford
on one side, and Enterprise on the other; or, as a waggish traveler once
expressed it, with Enterprise on the north, and Sanford and enterprise
on the south.
Walking naturalists and lovers of things natural have their own point of
view, individual, unconventional, whimsical, if you please,--very
different, at all events, from that of clearer-witted and more
serious-minded men; and the inhabitants of Sanford will doubtless take
it as a compliment, and be amused rather than annoyed, when I confess
that I found their city a discouragement, a widespread desolation of
houses and shops.
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