Deposition of Howard Franklin Temple
taken at the Sheriff’s office in
St. Augustine, January 28, 1892.
I never did see a light from Julie Ann’s room after she left the dinner table when the Reverend was shouting, so I figured she was sitting in her room, in the dark, crying or something. Made me really mad. I started to go up to the door and speak to the Reverend, but I felt kind of funny, angry like. Not at the Reverend mind you because he and me get along real good, but because Julie Ann was hurting and I knew who did it to her, that Connors and his books about Europe and poetry.
I started to go on home, but when I got almost to St. Francis Street, I turned and walked down to the bay. I just felt like walking. I walked all the way to the fort along the seawall, along Bay Street, thinking. I was thinking about how Julie Ann was crying about something that she did not even know about a month ago. And how this guy had just sailed into St. Augustine one day and dropped anchor and got a room at the Ponce. Lots of rich folks do stuff like that. I mean the Ponce is filled with rich folks. Most come by train. I see them. But this guy came by boat. Him and his big boat.
But this fellow started talking to Julie Ann. That made him different from all the other rich people. And lent her a book about Spain. Then that’s all she could talk about, Connors and Spain. She even mentioned that he had given, given mind you, a book of poetry. Now you tell me, was that proper? A strange man giving a young girl a book of poetry? He didn’t even know her.