Jacksonville.--Our hotel.--Greenleaf’s museum.--Floridian curiosities.--East winds and tropical breezes.--Strawberry packing.
We shake the dust from our garments and wash our travel-stained faces, and by the time we descend to the dining-room we find that the regular _table-d’hôte_ dinner is over, but the tables are still laid for the accommodation of late comers. Some of the lights are out, the rest are turned low, and scores of dusky shadows seem to be hiding in the distant corners of the big room. The tables are laid with snow-white cloths, and furnished with shining silver and glass and flowers, but the long saloon is so empty and still it looks like a dead banquet lying in state rather than the preparations for a social meal. However, as we enter with a few others, the lights flash up and everything is lively enough, the ever-attentive black waiters bustle briskly about, and by the time we are comfortably seated the first instalment of our meal is before us. Judging from the first ladle of soup, you may generally tell what your dinner will be, they say. So from our first dainty dish of roast oysters we augured well for our general entertainment. They are evidently accustomed to cater for epicures and invalids; every dish is delicately served; even if you were not hungry you would be tempted to eat. We had scarcely commenced when our waiter inquired, in an insinuating whisper, “Would we like a little ‘blue cat?’”
We know that in some countries rats and mice are considered rare dainties, and even in the more civilised quarters of the globe snails and frogs are regarded as luxurious tit-bits. We desired the blue cat to be served, and half expected to see the feline animal served up--claws, tail, and all smothered in sauce piquante! And why not? I believe that French art could dress up the sole of an old shoe, or even a rusty door-nail so as to tempt the appetite and sit easy on the digestion. However, our blue cat turned out to be a familiar fish of most delicious flavour; we had made acquaintance with it before, but had not been introduced to it by its proper name; we had eaten “blue cat,” but knew it not.
It is growing late in the month of March, and Jacksonville is not itself, they tell us. A month ago, and the hotels were all crowded, and so great was the influx of people they could not be comfortably housed; fair ladies and fastidious gentlemen were forced into strange quarters, taking their places, like aristocratic stowaways, in garrets, in lumber rooms, or in any hole or corner where humanity can stretch itself and sleep. Such scores of invalids and pleasure-seekers come hither in search of health or amusement during the winter months, that although there are many first-class hotels, and over a hundred and fifty--counting those of a second-class and boarding-houses together--yet even then the accommodation is scarcely enough for the visitors. Everybody flocks to the large hotels; they like the elegantly upholstered drawing-rooms, with their gorgeous decorations and gilded mirrors, the lofty corridors, and, above all, the well-appointed _cuisine_. There are some people who would rather sleep on a shelf with their feet out of the window, like _Alice in Wonderland_, and enjoy these luxuries, than occupy a large airy room with commonplace comforts.