P. S.—This is called a cold winter in Savannah, yet at six A.M., Thursday, January 29, the thermometer marked sixty degrees.
THOMASVILLE, GEORGIA.
Time, eleven A.M., February 1.—Your correspondent is seated at his bedroom window; there are two large windows in the room, and both are wide open. The apartment is twenty feet square with a twelve-foot ceiling; it is not heated artificially and yet the temperature in it is seventy-two degrees. This is not said from hearsay, nor is the record taken from a hotel thermometer, which may be unreliable, but from a portable thermometer of my own.
When the Place was Settled.—People ask, “How old is Thomasville: when was it first settled?” The writer can answer this question because he had the good fortune to be presented to no less a personage than Mrs. M. A. Bower, a most charming woman to look at and to converse with, who is proud of her fifty-six years, but whom you would judge to be at least ten years younger. Mrs. Bower was the first white child born in Thomasville, and in the first real house erected in the place. It stood on the present site of the Mitchell House. Mrs. Bower is the daughter of Colonel and Mrs. Edward Remington who came here from Pawtuxet, R. I., in the year 1828. Set it down for a fact then that Thomasville is three score years old.
Location.—Thomasville, the capital of Thomas county (this is not from a gazetteer, please believe), stands three hundred and thirty feet above sea level, being on the highest ground between Macon and the Gulf of Mexico, in the Uplands of Georgia. It is two hundred miles from the Atlantic, sixty miles from the Gulf of Mexico as the bird flies, twelve miles from the Florida State line, a thirty-three-mile drive from Tallahassee, and is reached from Jacksonville at the South or from Savannah coming from the North in a few hours by way of Waycross or Jesup, two places not particularly attractive to the tourist but quite useful as way stations, affording junctions for several lines of railroad.
Health and Pleasure.—Thomasville was at one time simply a health resort: people with consumption or other lung or throat diseases came here for relief and they found it. They, the sickly people, still come to get well; but beside being a health resort it is now also a place for pleasure. Fashion has set its seal on Thomasville. New York and Boston are well represented among the visitors, but the West especially favors Thomasville, and St. Paul, for its size, sends more people probably than any other city. A number of St. Paul citizens have cottages here and have set up fine establishments. Ladies dress for the morning ride or drive; they dress for the mid-day dinner and again for the evening dance. Ladies at the hotels exchange visits with the cottagers, also with the townspeople, the permanent residents giving strangers a warm, Southern welcome.
Features of the Town.—To-day Thomasville has churches of all denominations (including a Jewish place of worship), two hotels far superior to any between Baltimore and Jacksonville, unless exception be made of the new Oglethorpe at Brunswick; a number of smaller hotels, numerous boarding houses, two daily newspapers, several good private schools, a flourishing college for girls and one for the other sex, a railway direct to the town—and five thousand inhabitants. The boys’ college is a branch of the State University and has at present two hundred and fifty pupils. The other institution, called “Young’s Female College,” was endowed by a Georgian, and the charge for tuition is so low as to be nominal, ten dollars per year to each pupil. So the religiously inclined have ample opportunity to worship at their particular shrine, and the educational advantages of Thomasville are good.
Nature’s Gifts.—The reputation of this place was gained by its dry and balmy atmosphere, its even temperature, its health-giving pine forests and by its freedom from cold or sudden changes. The United States Signal Service report shows that the average winter temperature is about fifty-five degrees, and the average temperature last July, the hottest month here, was eighty-two degrees. While the winter days are warm the mornings and nights are pleasantly cool, and it never snows here. Once during the past fourteen years they did have a flurry of snow. It happened on a Sunday and the churches remained empty; so interested were the inhabitants in the uncommon sight that they neglected the church and all took to snowballing. You need no overcoats nor wraps for outdoor wear, except, perhaps, for an evening drive, or for rainy days; but an umbrella or parasol to protect you from the heat of the sun is indispensable. I am speaking of needing such an article at the present time, February 1.
The Piney Woods Oak.—To those coming from the North the sight of the trees in full leaf is as agreeable as it is strange. The pine, live-oak, hemlock and holly all have their branches thickly covered. There is a gorgeous live-oak on the grounds of the Piney Woods Hotel whose spreading branches measure sixty feet across. There is still a larger one in the town, which people travel miles to see. It spreads ninety feet across. But beauty does not always consist in bigness. The Piney Woods oak is both beautiful and big, but its symmetrical beauty is its main attraction. Is it too warm on the hotel porch? Are the sun’s rays too fierce? Cross over the road, fifty yards distant, and seek a comfortable bench or rustic seat in the grateful shade of the pines, in what is popularly termed “Yankee Paradise,” but known more correctly as Paradise Park. It includes thirty acres laid out in walks and drives. There is no ice to make your step unsteady, but the needles of the pines render the paths rather slippery.