“Horrible!” you say, sighing upon the balmy air.  Then, with the sweetly resigned philosophy of Palm Beach, you add: 

“Oh, well, what does it matter? I’m in Florida anyhow.  After all it is a pretty good old world!”

CHAPTER LIV

ASSORTED AND RESORTED FLORIDA

    “Some year or more ago, I s’pose,
      I roamed from Maine to Floridy,
    And,—­see where them Palmettoes grows? 
      I bought that little key....”

    —­SIDNEY LANIER ("A FLORIDA GHOST.”)

Florida in winter comes near to being all things to all men.  To all she offers amusement plus her climate, and in no one section is the contrast in what amusement constitutes, and costs, set forth more sharply than where, on the west coast of the State, Belleair and St. Petersburg are situated, side by side.

The Hotel Belleview at Belleair compares favorably with any in the State, and is peopled, during the cold months, with affluent golf maniacs, for whom two fine courses have been laid out.

When the pipes supplying water for the greens of his home course, at Brook, Indiana, freeze, annually, George Ade, for instance, knows that, instead of hibernating, it is time for him to take his white flannel suits, hang them on the clothesline in the back yard until the fragrance of the moth-ball has departed, pack them in his wardrobe trunk, and take his winter flight to the Belleview.  He knows that, at the Belleview, he will meet hundreds of men and women who are suffering from the malady with which he is afflicted.

The conversation at Belleair is, so far as my companion and I could learn, confined entirely to comparisons between different courses, different kinds of clubs and balls, and different scores.  Belleair turns up its nose at Palm Beach.  It considers the game of golf as played at Palm Beach a trifling game, and it feels that the winter population of Palm Beach wastes a lot of time talking about clothes and the stock market when it might be discussing cleeks, midirons, and mashies.  The woman who thinks it essential to be blond whether she is blond or not, and who regards Forty-second Street as the axle upon which the universe turns, would be likely to die of ennui in a week at Belleair, whereas, in Palm Beach, if she died in that time, it would probably be of delight—­with a possibility of alcoholism as a contributing cause.  And likewise, though Belleair has plutocrats in abundance, they are not starred for their wealth, as are the Palm Beach millionaires, nor yet for their social position, but are rated strictly according to their club handicap.  Hence it happens that if, speaking of a Palm Beach millionaire, you ask:  “How did he make it?” you will be told the story of some combine of trusts, some political grafting, or some widely advertised patent medicine; but if you ask in Belleair:  “How did he make it?” the answer is likely to be:  “He made it in 4, with a cleek.”