Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1902 — FLORIDA LETTER. [ARTICLE]

FLORIDA LETTER.

Thelma Go., Fla., Feb .18 Editor Democrat:— We have at last reached the end of our journey—the turning around place. When we next start we will go towards home. We are very comfortably settled in a house with a big roaring fire in the fire-place. The weather has been very cold and disagreeable for three days—a Nor-Wester that was fairly icy. Today the wind has subsided and is working into the south while the sun shines nice and warm.

We are still longing for a fill of bear steak. The party of bear hunters of last week found lots of “old signs” of bear that had been out during the warm weather but were denned up again on account of the cold, so they only camped down one night in the swamps and came home next morning and went fishing at the mouth of Fish Creek. They made one strike in a deep hole with the gill net and caught 16 nice fish—mullet and sheepahead. We are going fishing to-morrow if the weather is pleasant. We find our friend, Mr. Clark, not in very good health but trying hard to get well enough to go hunting with us

Last Saturday Mrs. 8., where we were camped, had a rail-split-ting, a “workin,”’ as they called it. There were great preparations made for the occasion. There are in the family two grown sons, Rabe the old bachelor, who is “sorter puny” and has a misery in his heel-string, and a younger son 23 years old, 6 foot 2 in his stockings and so constitutionally tired that all he can do is to shove his knees under his mother’s table and live off her little pension. Besides these two she has three orphan grand-children to support. She killed a hog for the occasion and, being out of flour and none to be had at the store, she borrowed fifty cents worth of us, and made up a great lot of what she called potato custard but we would call it sweet potato pie. She cooked about three quarters of the piny woods hog, made dumplings with it, baked sweet potatoes and corn bread, cooked grits and made coffee. That, with Florida syrup, constituted the bill of fare, and was a very nice dinner for this country. All this cooking and baking was done with covered cook pots and spiders over a fire out-doors on a little platform built up above hog and dog level and covered with sand. Well, two men came about eight o’clock in the morning, two more men, two women and a girl came about ten o’clock, and at noon one more man came. They all stayed for dinner and supper and split 500 rails. The common price for splitting rails is 40 cents a hundred so she got two dollars’ worth of work done. The younger sou staid out with the men and pretended to work while the older one went turkey hunting with Mr. Myers and nearly walked his legs off till they were nearly home then he took “the hurtin in his heel-string” and crippled in home. They did not get any turkeys but Rabe still hopes that by the help of the Good Master they will get one yet. There was a married daughter visiting them last week who is in an “interesting condition” and she bought three bottles of laudanum to use during her sickness. She wanted some sugar mighty bad but could lyot get a ctiance to send for it. She said dry sugar was a heap better in sickness than syrup, so we gave her some of our sugar to save for the occasion and she started home happy, in an ox wagon, sitting on a box, for a two days trip, with three little children, the oldest one six years old. She also had a quarter’s worth of snuff to keep her spirits up. Our wagon and outfit seems to be a great curiosity to the most of them. One evening Mrs. M., fed, curried and blanketed the horse while Mr. M. was out hunting and the children all crowded around and watched the operation, and when it was finished one little girl, after a straight spit at a mark, said “Gentlemen! that’s the first time in my life I ever seed a creeter wrapped up.” Even Mrs. M’s explanation, that that was the horse’s night-gown, seemed to puzzle them. Myers <fc Myers.

Mrs. C. E. Van Deusen, of Kilbourn. Wis„ was atHlcted with stomach trouble and constipation for a long time. She says, “I have tried many preparations hut none have done me the good that Chamberlain’s Stomach and Liver Tablets have." These Tablets are for sale at A. F. Long's drug store. Price, 3fc. Samples free.

A whole armload of old paper* for a nickel at The Democrat office