As the weather got colder in November 1919, an article described how some folks were making their annual pilgrimage to live down in Florida for a few months — in far more flowery language than would ever be used now:

Whatever in the Spring the young man’s fancy lightly turns to, and just as surely as the sap in that season of etherial madness rises in the tree trunks, there comes in the Fall to all Northern mankind and birdkind the urge of the migratory instinct southward. It isn’t only the plutocrats and society lovers that go to have their pictures taken for the illustrated papers at Palm Beach in their Winter splendor of Summer raiment. It is likewise those who though neither one nor another are both. And even in this spendthrift season, when a world’s ransom is being lavished on the pomp and circumstance of peace, there are still thrifty tourists, as well as the other sort.

Many go down south during the cold months nowadays as well. My recent GovTrack Insider article about the Canadian Snowbirds Act describes a congressional bill that would increase the duration Canadian retirees could spend in the U.S., often in Florida, from six months to eight months.

Southward With the Coffee-Pot Tourist: It Is Not Only the Spendthrifts but the Thrifty Also Who Migrate to Florida for the Summer of Their Wintertime

Published: Sunday, November 9, 1919