Consider on the other hand, St. Petersburg, with its cheap hotels, its boarding houses, its lunch rooms and cafeterias, and its winter population of farmers and their wives from the North.  The people you see in St. Petersburg are identical with those you might see on market day in a county town of Ohio or Indiana.  Several thousands of them come annually from several dozen States, and many a family of them lives through the winter comfortably on less than some other families spend at Belleair in a week, or at Palm Beach in a day.

If I am any judge of the signs of happiness, there is plenty of it in the hearts of those who winter at St. Petersburg.  The city park is full of contented people, most of them middle-aged or old.  The women listen to the band, and the men play checkers under the palmetto-thatched shelter, or toss horseshoes on the greensward, at the sign of the Sunshine Pleasure Club—­an occupation which is St. Petersburg’s equivalent for Palm Beach’s game of tossing chips on the green-topped tables of a gambling house.  And yet—­

Is it always pleasant to be virtuous?  Is it always delightful to be where pious people, naive people, people who love simple pastimes, are enjoying themselves?  I am reminded of a talk I had with a negro whose strong legs turned the pedals of a wheel chair in which my companion and I rode one day through the Palm Beach jungle trail.  It is a wonderful place, that jungle, with its tangled trunks and vines and its green foliage swimming in sifted sunlight; with its palms, palmettoes, ferns, and climbing morning-glories, its banana trees, gnarled rubber banyans, and wild mangoes—­which are like trees growing upside down, digging their spreading branches into the ground.  For a time we forgot the pedaling negro behind us, but a faint puffing sound on a slight up-grade reminded us, presently, that our party was not of two, but three.  When the chair was running free again, one of us inquired of the chairman: 

“What would you do if you had a million dollars?”

“Well, boss,” replied the negro seriously, “Ah knows one thing Ah’d do.  No mattuh how much o’ dis worl’s goods Ah haid, Ah’d allus get mah exuhcize.”

“That’s wise,” my companion replied.  “What kind of exercise would you take?”

“Ah ain’t nevvuh jest stedied dat out, boss,” returned the man.  “But it sho’ would be some kind o’ exuhcize besides pushin’ one o’ dese-heah chaihs.”

“When you weren’t exercising would you go and have a good time?”

“No, boss.”

“Why not?”

“Well, boss, y’ see Ah’s a ’ligious man, Ah is.”

“But can’t people who are religious have a good time?”