"
In 1872 she wrote a series of Florida sketches, which were published
in book form, the following year, by J. E. Osgood & Co., under the
title of "Palmetto Leaves." May 19, 1873, she writes to her brother
Charles at Newport, Fla.:--
"Although you have not answered my last letter, I cannot leave Florida
without saying good-by. I send you the 'Palmetto Leaves' and my
parting love. If I could either have brought or left my husband, I
should have come to see you this winter. The account of your roses
fills me with envy.
"We leave on the San Jacinto next Saturday, and I am making the most
of the few charming hours yet left; for never did we have so delicious
a spring. I never knew such altogether perfect weather. It is enough
to make a saint out of the toughest old Calvinist that ever set his
face as a flint. How do you think New England theology would have
fared if our fathers had been landed here instead of on Plymouth Rock?
"The next you hear of me will be at the North, where our address is
Forest Street, Hartford. We have bought a pretty cottage there, near
to Belle, and shall spend the summer there."
In a letter written in May of the following year to her son Charles,
at Harvard, Mrs. Stowe says: "I can hardly realize that this long,
flowery summer, with its procession of blooms and fruit, has been
running on at the same time with the snowbanks and sleet storms of the
North.
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