Oh, how times have changed

Yours truly thought ye socks would enjoy the following excerpt from one of the old Harney letters I mentioned a couple of days ago. He is responding to an unflattering editorial about Florida that appeared in a New Orleans newspaper in late 1875:

It is not pleasant to observe that an editor of ability and character goes out of his way in a little jealousy of the prosperity of a sister State to associate the origin of Florida’s present popularity with persons of pronounced unpopularity in the South,* as if that could affect her deserving. The real cause of Florida’s occupying so much attention in current literature is that her scenery is yet wild, novel and fresh. The stated sameness of civilization has not shaped it into rectangular monotony; and the romance of Spanish possessions and Indian warfare still lingers, leaving footsteps on her mounds.

I wonder what he'd say about the present "rectangular monotony?!!?" I guess we caught up with our Louisiana cousins . . .

*He refers to Harriet Beecher Stow and her family, who had recently relocated to Florida.