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Copy of
Newspaper Clipping, dated June 28, 1889

LIFE IN FLORIDA

by

ALBERTUS VOGT

THE WITHLACOOCHEE

"The water-lily dips its vase of snow
On many a shallow cove along whose graceful edge the purple

flowers grow

And dappled river beds and tufted sedge,
And in the stream beneath their image lies
Mirrored like beauty in a lover's eyes."

Almost immediately on the 29th parallel of latitude, there empties into
the Mexico Gulf one of the most weird, romantic and beautiful of Americans
rivers. On account of its strong current flowing at least five miles an hour,
making it's ascent in a row-boat is full of pulling, but with my good darkies,
Tom and Paddie, at the oars, my Winchester for 'gators, my Parker's gun for
water-fowl, and our old dogs, Hamp and Vie, for game; when in camp along the
banks, a stout bamboo pole and phantom minnows for bobbing, 100 feet of line,
and a tiny spool hook for trolling, with my very estimable wife for company,
a bottle of Augustova &c. for tonic and scoring, we've made, probably, the
most pleasurable of the many trips of our lives, up the ever-changing, always
tolling, suggestive waters of our beloved Withlacoochee.

To reach the gulf we drive from our home near Dunnellon, 18 miles across
a sparsely settled country to the winter home of our friends, the Alldays,
who have purchased "Bonita Island" from the estate of Dr. Hodges, who knew a
good thing when he saw it, and who here built one of the most conveniently
appointed of the three homes in which he lived, accumulating a competency
and enjoying it like a white man. Rev. C. A. Allday, on the strength of his
bordering blonde beauty, wedded an Alabama fortune, invested a part of it
here and is living after the Hodge fashion, with a variation of s]^t^s_. He
keeps a fair pack of hounds, some good guns, and in the proper season kills
a few deer, varying the fun by gratuitous preaching in the rural settlements
around, where with a voice a half-mile square, he wakes up the natives.

In the creation of Mrs. Allday, nature was working on an intensive
system and put all the good possible into her make-up. Generous, brainy,
accomplished, domestic, andwith a voice like Neilson's, she forces us to the
conclusion that while her "marriage is NOT a failure", her choice of domestic
life has robbed the world of a song queen. After an evening of charming
music, and being subjected to an antiquated order of camp meeting prayer, com-
pressed into a room 18 feet square, with a 12 foot ceiling, rushing out and
up until it flows through the top of a 35 foot chimney.

We turned in to rest * * *. It is morning. We are up early—eight
o'clock—our breakfast is perfect. Oysters not five minutes out of the water,
"any way you want 'em", venison steak, fish, rice, sliced tomatoes, cukes with
the dew on and onions white as snow, a charming hostess and our prayerful.
parson-sportsman; metamorphosed into the most jovial of hosts — as full of
jest and frolic as a sixteen year old, notwithstanding his white hair and
49 years.