eries" and the
wistaria is drooping in purplish splendor from the low branches of the
trees and from the red heights of brick walls.

The yellow jonquils, too, are swelling, and the geraniums are throwing
out their scarlet flame across wide stretches of greensward, while the
violets are nodding at the feet of the gigantic magnolias, whose huge
yellowish-gray buds will soon burst into white beauty, crowning this
noblest of flower-bearing trees.

It is a strange old city, this city that lives outdoors--a city rich in
romantic history, throbbing with tragedy and fascinating events, a
beautiful old city, with a child by its side as beautiful as the mother.
The child is the newer, more modern city, and the child, like the
parent, lives out of doors.

The people seem to come into closer touch with nature than the people of
most other portions of the land. The climate, the constant invitation of
the earth and sky, seem to demand a life lived in the open. This city
that lives outdoors is a real city, with all a city's varied life; but
it is a country place as well--a city set in the country, or the country
moved into town.

For at least nine months in the twelve, the people of this rare old town
live out of doors nearly all the waking hours of the twenty-four. For
the remaining three months of the year, December, January, and February,
they delude themselves into the notion that they are having a winter,
when they gather around a winter-time hearth and listen to imaginary
wind-roarings in the chimney, and see through the panes fictitious and
spectral snow-storms, and dream that they are housed so snug and warm.
But when the day comes the sun is shining and there is no trace of white
on the ground, and the grass is green and there are industrious buds
breaking out of cover, and the earth is sleeping very lightly.
Open-eyed, the youngsters sit by these December firesides and listen to
their elders tell of the snow-storms in the long ago that came so very,
very deep--ah, yes, so deep that the darkies were full of fear and would
not stir from their cabins to do the work of the white people; when
snowballs were flying in the streets, and the earth was white, and the
"banquettes," or sidewalks, were ankle-deep in slush.

All the long years of the two centuries since this old city was born, a
mighty river has been flowing by its doors, never so far forgetting its
purpose to live outdoors as to freeze its yellow crest, stealing so