I never
saw him there without gladness. The legislature had begun its session in
an economical mood,--as is more or less the habit of legislatures, I
believe,--and was even considering a proposition to reduce the salary
and mileage of its members. Under such circumstances, it ought not to
have been a matter of surprise, perhaps, that no flag floated from the
cupola of the capitol. The people's money should not be wasted. And
possibly I should never have remarked the omission but for a certain
curiosity, natural, if not inevitable, on the part of a Northern
visitor, as to the real feeling of the South toward the national
government. Day after day I had seen a portly gentleman--with an air, or
with airs, as the spectator might choose to express it--going in and out
of the State House gate, dressed ostentatiously in a suit of Confederate
gray. He had worn nothing else since the war, I was told. But of course
the State of Florida was not to be judged by the freak of one man, and
he only a member of the "third house." And even when I went into the
governor's office, and saw the original "ordinance of secession" hanging
in a conspicuous place on the wall, as if it were an heirloom to be
proud of, I felt no stirring of sectional animosity, thorough-bred
Massachusetts Yankee and old-fashioned abolitionist as I am. A brave
people can hardly be expected or desired to forget its history,
especially when that history has to do with sacrifices and heroic deeds.
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