Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/139

 *mer, unlimited, in time of winter, were properly horrified. "Oh, but we assure you that this is quite extraordinary," they vociferated. "The weather is always warm in Florida."

The morning after that the wind came roaring down from the northwest, full of needles. The temperature was below freezing and it kept steadily going lower. The water front, steeped in the midday sun and sheltered from the keen wind, was the warmest place in town, and there my old colored man lingered, shivering beneath an old overcoat that, I trow, belonged to that grand, old master whom we all resemble. Beneath it he still clung to his lucky beans, but he found small comfort in the dimes that he took in from overcoated and shivering tourists.

"Uncle," I asked, "what makes it so cold?"

"Huh," he replied, and his usually beaming, shiny black face was ashy gray and twisted into a tragic discontent with the chill, "Hit's dese Nordern people. We ain't had nothin' like dis ontwel dey began to come down here, so much. Pears like dey brought it in dere cloes."

I fancy that is as good an explanation of the freeze as any, though if the Northern people brought it thus they did it against their will. Out on the water front the first severe morning I found an old man from Missouri. When they had told him about the perpetual summer that