Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-05-05
Continued from page S

COHNnHed rom page ,
most interested in were the statistics, such
as, Mr.. So and So gathered thirty boxes of
grapefruit last season from one tree; mar
ket price, five dollars a box. One tree brings
in hundred and fifty dollars. One hun
dred trees would yield net income of fifteen
thousand dollars. Figure it out for your
self And did figure. could see where l
could clear two thousand dollars year on
celery alone, while l was waiting for my
trees to grow into bearing. And | should
be a free man! My wife would get back her
health! In ten years we should be spending
our summers abroad!'
Il see," says l. @Built up some rosy
dreams, Ell? And them"
@Then sent the Royal Palms Improve
ment Company two hundred dollars as part
payment on ten acres of land at forty dol
lars an acre, and agreed to pay ten dollars a
month until had paid up the balance. Next
threw up my job and we started for Florida
and fortune.
WELL, we got off at little station with
our traps and couple of tents, and
hired man with mule team to drive us
out to our plantation. 1t was six miles from
the nearest store, two miles from another
house. and all there was in sight was scattered
pines, palmetto scrub, and green-scum swamp
land.
mo flowers saysI
@Not even weeds" says he: Gust sand
and swamps My wife had some sense. She
cried and wanted to back out then; but l
wouldn't. l was pigheaded. l said we'd
stay right there and make the best of it. |
found little raised hummock of land that
was dry, pitched the tents, and bargained
with the driver to bring us out supplies once
week. In the course of a month | had
knocked together something we called
house. And perhaps you can imagine the
kind of building a city bred bookkeeper
could make with an ak, a hammer, and tin
saw
Il can't, says l. "But what next?'
3Clearing land says Alec According
work done for me by lumber company who
would pay me for the standing timber. That
scheme didn't work out. In the first place,
all the big trees had been cut off, and the
smaller ones that had been left had been
boxed for the turpentine SO long that they
were fit only for firewood. So l went at
chopping them. Between times | grubbed
out palmetto roots And of all the hopeless,
unending jobs a misguided penpusher ever
tackled, guess that's about the worst; for
a palmetto scrub, with half dozen leaves
two feet high and as useless as a Canada
thistle, will have root ten feet long and as
thick as your leg, with a thousand sucker
roots trailing off in every direction
$50 you gave up, eh?' says l.
NO." says he, Il was trying to get ground
enough ready SO could put in that crop of
celery l worked. My wife worked. We
lived like wild beasts in a dirty shack. We
got up at daylight, and grubbed and ditched
until it was dark, and then we dropped on
our shakedowns We grew sullen, morbid.
For weeks at time we hardly saw another
human soul, and we didn't care. You know
how people get to be, off away from every
one
He stopped long enough to rub his hands
over his eyes and shudder. Then he went on.
at was nightmare" says he; abut
nothing to what happened when the rains
came. Then the swamps began to close us
in. After the third day the water was barely
an inch lower than the floor boards. We
were living in a lake. l splashed out and
found that there wasn't square yard of my
whole ten acres but was covered. So knew
the jig was up. l went to town and asked
few questions, and found that the land I'd
been breaking my back to clear for an orange
grove wasn't fit to grow anything but what
I'd found on it,-long-leaf pine and palmetto
scrub. The soil was only a few inches
thick. Under that was hardpan. Water
couldn't pet through it. There was no Way