16 LETTERS FROM FLORIDA.

centrating their charities, one family at least a year
may be placed in a fair way for independent support.
This can fever be done for those who go begging from
door to door, losing each day more and more of their
self-respect.. But if a family thus placed have courage
to accept with cheerfulness the early hardships for
the joy that is set before them, they have a prospect
of building up, slowly but surely, a respectable and
independent home.
 You are talking wildly I Suppose the land war-
rant, or homestead, secured-the log-house erected;
how is it to be furnished ? How provide their daily
food while clearing off the woods, preparing their land,
and waiting for their crops to grow, even with the
hundred dollars you speak of? You acknowledge
they may not always be able to find sufficient employ-
ment to help them to a trifle, weekly. How will you
answer this ?" W
 Well, a homestead of one hundred and fifty acres
will cost fourteen dollars and sixty cents. With the
sum named they will have eighty-six dollars left for
indispensable articles, even if many cast-off articles of
household stuff should not be given them when start-
ing. Then, if some neighbors would club together
and send several families of the worthy poor at the
ssme time-a kind of colony, but not on the communi-
ty plan-their money united would, by purchasing ar-
ticles at wholesale, provide better for the whole than
could be done for one family alone. If each of these
charitably disposed persons should, about the time this
oolony is starting, have "a clearing-up day," and empty