The children and I had a grand, long sleep, and came down late to breakfast. There had been showers of warm rain in the early morning, and the breezes that blew over New Orleans were as well perfumed with the odor of Southern flowers and vegetation as ever lady's boudoir was with the perfumes and colognes. Fresh-cut flowers in vases stood on the dining-room table, and there were plenty of the fresh fruits of the Sunny South, which the family had brought in from the market in the early morning. The girls seemed quite at sea amid so many tropical pleasures, and my first-born exclaimed, as she looked around and viewed the plants, and flowers, and shrubbery in every direction, both in the house and out of it,
"My goodness, mamma; the people have good times down here in Dixie. Papa has a grand time in that fine hospital, reading the latest news from the front, and scenting the perfumery wafted from 10,000 flowers and shrubs! I just envy him so much happiness."
"Yes," said the younger child, "and he is here all the time."
To which her elder sister rejoined,
"Oh, my dear sister, I wish that mamma and papa would stay here altogether, and not go back to Buffalo!"
"What?" said I, in great surprise, "don't you know that there are 10,000 serpents among the grasses and shrubs out in the woods? Don't you want to go back to our sweet little church on Vine street, in Buffalo? And don't you want to visit the Gibsons, at Richmond Hill, once more?"
"Oh, yes, mamma," she replied, "I want to go back to class to the church on Vine street, Buffalo, and I want to dig up potatoes, and pull down apples and peaches at Richmond Hill, where those good Gibsons live, in Western Canada."
"But," resumed my oldest daughter, "you say, mamma, that there are 10,000 serpents in this part of the Sunny South; is that so?"
"Yes," I replied, whilst I cut another orange in two, "there are more than 10,000, I suppose; but take all the hundreds of species in the world, there is not one species in a hundred that is poisonous at all; and they will seldom or never sting anybody, if one does not go in their way, or trample on them in the woods. They generally get out of the way. But tell me, my dear, what makes you so fond of the South?"
"Indeed, mamma, I can hardly tell, unless it be that there is such a sweet and delicious feeling about all our surroundings here. Why, the very winds themselves seem to be fond of blowing about in this place."