The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1916-03-27
HERE'S ANOTHER CROUCH

| The Herald has noticed that a
certain DR.. Metcalf, of Hemming
Mimi, has secured considerable space
in some of the papers of the state, on
account of an interview with him,
published in paper in the town
from which he came, after he had
returned from a trip through Flor
ida.
The interview says that the doctor
stopped off, at Jacksonville, Miami
and St. Petersburg. and it is the
mention of the name of Miami that
brings The Herald to the point of
giving the doctor few words of
notice.
You have no idea" says the doc
tor, what a desolate, dilapidated re
gion Florida is | would not trade
one hundred and sixty acres of good
Minnesota land for the whole state.
In the entire journey from Jackson
vile to st. Petersburg. distance of
thousand miles, | did not see one
good farm house"
Among other statements as given
by the very much peeved doctor, is
/, one that the negroes out-number
the white people many times over. :"
Another Jacksonville was damned
with tourists, and one paper esti-
mated that there were a million in
the city"
These pleasant little statements
with others as to the tumble down
dilapidated buildings, cattle and
horsese being scrawny and thin,
pieces of rope used for harness, and
so on and SO on, comprised quite an
incident of Florida by the tourist
who travelled thousand miles be-
tween Jacksonville and St. Peters
burg.
One is led to wonder whether it
was the same gentleman who told
him that the. papers estimated that
there were a million visitors in Jack
sonville, who also told him that he
had arrived in Miami, if he stopped
off" here
OF course, when the doctor says he
prefers Minnesota to Florida that is
his privilege Everyone to his own
taste, as the old lady said when she
embraced the family COW. But the
writer of this has had some expert
ence in that same Minnesota, some
thirty-three years of it, and submits
that climate that is liable to pro-
duce anything in the way of tenn
perature from one hundred and ten
above in the summer time, to fifty
two below in the winter time, can
hardly be compared to the article
which Florida furnishes. The times
| were not so long ago that many peo-
pie in the region from which the
doctor comes, lived in houses dugout
| in the sides of the hills and We're
glad to hole up for the entire winter
| waiting for the subsequent three
months of summer for a chance to
in which the doctor lives has been
get in a precarious crop. The town
named a long time. but has not yet
| ,nI Ct1 triN- "a 10
on any recent map. Hundreds Of
| prosperous thrifty Florida towns
have found places on the aliases
within the last decade, and Miami.
much younger than the settlement in
which the doctor practices, has
,grown into a city of twenty thous-
and people, and he is the first man
who ever claimed to have seen it who
had the nerve to say that ii was
dilapidated place or that its build
ings are old and broken down.
The chances are that the doctor
needed some of his own physic when
he set out on his memorable journey,
and with ii all, he was too gullible.
He ought to have made the acquaint-
ance of a few intelligent people who
would have been glad to show him
something about Florida, so that
/ when he returned to his frozen town
in the north, he would have had at
least slight glimmer of the real
conditions throughout the state.
Florida occasionally suffers in
reputation from the visits of con-
stitutional grouches who see nothing
good and find nothing pleasant here.
and who then go home and vent their
accumulated bad temper in the press.
But that kind of person is so fire.
quent and the thousands of visitors
who come to the state in a condition
10 enjoy life here. are always so en-
thusiastic and go away such good
friends of the state, that we may
well overlook the dyspepties who
will not be satisfied with the fit of