A peach
orchard, a vineyard, a lemon grove, will carry my name to posterity. I
am founding a place which, thirty or forty years hence, will be called
the old Stowe place.... You can have no idea of this queer country,
this sort of strange, sandy, half-tropical dreamland, unless you come
to it. Here I sit with open windows, the orange buds just opening and
filling the air with sweetness, the hens drowsily cackling, the men
planting in the field, and callas and wild roses blossoming out of
doors. We keep a little fire morning and night. We are flooded with
birds; and by the bye, it is St. Valentine's Day.... I think a uniform
edition of Dr. Holmes's works would be a good thing. Next to Hawthorne
he is our most exquisite writer, and in many passages he goes far
beyond him. What is the dear Doctor doing? If you know any book good
to inspire dreams and visions, put it into my box. My husband chews
endlessly a German cud. I must have English. Has the French book on
Spiritualism come yet? If it has, put it in.... I wish I could give
you a plateful of our oranges.... We had seventy-five thousand of
these same on our trees this year, and if you will start off quick,
they are not all picked yet. Florida wants one thing,--grass. If it
had grass, it would be paradise. But nobody knows what grass is till
had grass, it would be paradise. But nobody knows what grass is till
they try to do without it."
Three months later she wrote: "I hate to leave my calm isle of Patmos,
where the world is not, and I have such quiet long hours for writing.
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