The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1911-07-19
MY EXPERIENCE IN
THE LEGISLATURE
Ri Z loud IL IL: oo1.
BY C. H. B. Floyd. in Apalachicola Times.

the cool Of the afternoon, here in the
hall of the house the seventy picked
men of Florida sit for sixty days ia
make laws under the national fiaG
that has climbed high on the staff over
the dome to get a glimpse of the gilt
tering waters of tie Gulf of Mexico;
here are three men luxuriating in the
rights and power of a free people,
making laws for their citizens. Here
In the house, and in the senate, and in
the office Of the governor, and in the
supreme court rooms, is Florida, dram
affixed. minimized, assembled. You feel
like shouting, and by the eternal, just
as soon as the house is in session, you
do shout.
Floridians should teach their sons to
love Florida, our old mother; the hills
that are her breasts, the valleys that
hold her substance, and the streams
that run with her ripping laughter.
Hen Grady said that about Georgia.
Now, what would he have said about
Florida, ringed with the triumphant
sea! Physically, Georgia Is a bleak
state, naked, almost, of forests and
foliage, her old red hills looking like a
dog after an attack Of the mango; but
there is not a square foot OF Florida on
which the virile soil is not the battle
ground of a frenzied army Of sprouts
worship our magnificent sun. Even the
sun, up in Georgia, is a little twenty
two caliber affair; but down here this
superb luminary looks like the muzzle
of a forty foot coast defense gun like
those which stare out fierce over Pen
sacola bay.
Lives there a man with soul so dead
who never to himself has said, this is
my own, my native land?" No. GER
3y,Jx thn& hoC fob NoY-t
in the government of the state as
member Of the house Of representa-
tives. When the Saviour returns to re-
incarnate Himself, and judge the world
and rule the kingdom of God on earth,
Florida mother will bring Him into
life and here will He gather about Him
the angels and the archangels and the
cehrubim and seraphim and radiating
from this delighted land His DEGREES Of
love will go out that the Millennium
may come on this troubled star; and
from His Palace in Florida He will
guile the earth and the moon and our
burning sun in divine sptrals on splen-
did adventures across the endless and
bottomless sea OF space to every other
inhabited plant that turns about any
system, forever and ever, bringing the
news that the endless day has dawned
and that peace and good will to men
reign frGm end to end Of the universe
at last. I tell you until you have eaten
honey dew and drunk the milk Of para
disc, until you have been caught up
and placed as one cell OF the brain Of
Florida there, in her head, below the
dome of the capitol, until you have felt
great thought strike across that
brain, flushing all her face, you do not
know how good II IS to be an Ameri-
can citizen; to be a man: to be
power; you do not know how fine peo-
pie are; how serene; how honest; how
joyous; you do not know how the great
tears cal wet your face at the thought
of our victorious white race in whose
breast and loins and head is the secret
of free government. Here is the flower
and crown Of the ages; toward what
goes on in the capitol every second
year. the ages have striven and ira
vailed. For this Eve spun and Adam
delved: for this the Ancient Of Days
inspired the arms OF the Greeks at
Marathon and the soldiers OF Charles
Martel; for this the man, whose mem
DRY will remain as in a shrine in the
human heart, long after his high
obelisk has crumbled into dust and no
longer catches the first rays OF the sun
in the city on the Potomac, for this
contamination, that man was uphfted
by the God of Freedom and strength
ened from the beginning OF the war
when the enbattled farmers fired the
shot heard round the world, up to the
delivery up Of the sword Of Cornwall
lis. For this, the earth gathered itself
out of the nebula and became round
and cooled, and, out Of its deep need
called a spirit from the abyss and shut
that spirit in the brain behind the eyes
of a little child IN Genoa, the, little
child who half century later, steer
ing his three boats over the wine dark
sea beyond the gray Azores and the
Gates Of Hercules, in the direction OF
Tallahassee saw first the surf ad-
vancing on San Salvador; for this free,
equal unrestrained government also,
the man Of Gallilee taught his undying
doctrine of the equality and grandeur
Of each man, for out Of that seed grew
also the United States.
And so I say, go to the legislature
of your state; feel the intoxicating
stream of power run through your
arms realize Florida: get drunk on