We found even the summer climate very agreeable the location very attractive, and the general prospects for a northern colony there quite promising.  We wandered through the woods far and wide, shooting quail, an occasional wild turkey, caught fish from the numerous beautiful lakes, sleeping sometimes under the pines, then in houses, whose owners were away visiting with no thought of locking their doors in this land where thieving was unknown.  We led a real Bohemian life in Arcady, quietly bonding hundreds of acres of land, and having located a hotel and townsite between two charming lakes, leaving a Mr. G——­ W——­ a friend of the F——­ brothers, as superintendent, to secure more lands and to cut avenues, we went home, where we formed a syndicate stock company of which I was elected general manager, with full powers to sell $50,000 of stock with which to pay for the bonded lands and the building of a hotel.

I sold the stock at $100 per share, giving one acre of land with each share of said stock.  This would have been a very successful enterprise had it not been for the cunning duplicity and greed of our superintendent, who proceeded diligently to “feather his own nest” at our expense.  I accomplished my task of raising funds very successfully, and the next winter moved with my family to A——­, taking with us a competent engineer, a Mr. H——­, to survey and stake the lands.

Here I unearthed the rascality of the superintendent, who, beside taking our salary and commission for buying lands, had extorted large commissions and bonuses from the sellers, which came out of our funds in increasing the prices for which the lands were charged to our company.  In addition to this he had hired a large force of negroes at high wages, on which he drew a secret commission, opened a store, selling so called canned peaches,—­which really contained much whiskey and few peaches—­to his workmen, and thus getting all their wages.

I at once discharged all the superfluous negroes, built a fine hotel which was soon filled with a superior class of people from the north, set out orange groves for non-resident stockholders, and all would have been well, had it not been for the extraordinary action at the annual meeting of the stockholders.

While I was engrossed with my many duties, the superintendent cunningly went north and secured proxies in his name, and returning, beat me by two votes, secured for himself my position as general manager, and then proceeded to wreck the whole enterprise, much to his own pecuniary benefit, while my friends who had invested on my representations, blamed me for their losses though I was entirely innocent of any wrong whatever.