We in the earth life went on as best we could. My only brother Joshua
sold the old homestead with its burdens, too heavy for him to bear
alone, bought our former home for one-half it had cost us, which was
much more than any other would pay for it; while we sold our castle
and farm which had become a mountain on our shoulders, and went to
live with my wife's parents in Boston, where I continued my work of
introducing the school text-books which had been sold, and myself with
them, to a New York publishing firm.
When the winter winds and snows began to blow, I longed for the balmy
zephyrs of fair Florida, and like the summer birds, I once more
journeyed southward; there, after a long search for the best
throughout the land of flowers, journeying in steam yachts, row-boats,
on horseback, and sometimes hand over hand on the branches of trees,
over tracks inaccessible in any other manner, I formed another stock
company consisting of several financiers who had spent all their lives
in Florida, and secured many thousands of acres of excellent lands
in the highlands of Marion County, hoping to do good and get good by
inducing the surplus population of our cities to go back to the bosom
of Mother Earth, where a moderate amount of labor will give them an
independent livelihood free from the snow and cold which infest the
wintry north, free from the heart-breaking demoralization of
begging for work in our overcrowded cities where scores of the
poverty-stricken are tumbling over each other in the frantic grabbing
for every job of work and every crumb of charity.
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