o tabernacle. All
things are in harmony. A crow in the distance says _caw, caw_ in a
meditative voice, as if he, too, were thinking of days past; and not
even the scream of a hen-hawk, off in the pine-woods, breaks the spell
that is upon us. A quail whistles,--a true Yankee Bob White, to judge
him by his voice,--and the white-eyed chewink (he is _not_ a Yankee)
whistles and sings by turns. The bluebird's warble and the pine
warbler's trill could never be disturbing to the quietest mood. Only one
voice seems out of tune: the white-eyed vireo, even to-day, cannot
forget his saucy accent. But he soon falls silent. Perhaps, after all,
he feels himself an intruder.

The morning is cloudless and warm, till suddenly, as if a door had been
opened eastward, the sea breeze strikes me. Henceforth the temperature
is perfect as I sit in the shadow. I think neither of heat nor of cold.
I catch a glimpse of a beautiful leaf-green lizard on the gray trunk of
an orange-tree, but it is gone (I wonder where) almost before I can say
I saw it. Presently a brown one, with light-colored stripes and a bluish
tail, is seen traveling over the crumbling wall, running into crannies
and out again. Now it stops to look at me with its jewel of an eye. And
there, on the rustic arbor, is a third one, matching the unpainted wood
in hue. Its throat is white, but when it is inflated, as happens every
few seconds, it turns to the loveliest rose color. This inflated
membrane should be a vocal sac, I think, but I hear no sound. Perhaps
the chameleon's voice is too fine for dull human sense.

On two sides of me, beyond the orange-trees, is a thicket of small oaks
and cabbage palmettos,--hammock, I suppose it is called. In all other
directions are the pine-woods, with their undergrowth of saw palmetto.
The cardinal sings from the hammock, and so does the Carolina wren. The
chewinks, the blackbirds (a grackle just now flies over, and a
fish-hawk, also), with the bluebirds and the pine warblers, are in the
pinery. From the same place comes the song of a Maryland yellow-throat.
There, too, the hen-hawks are screaming.

At my feet are blue violets and white houstonia. Vines, thinly covered
with fresh leaves, straggle over the walls,--Virginia creeper, poison
ivy, grapevine, and at least one other, the name of which I do not know.
A clump of tall blackberry vines is full of white blossoms, "bramble
roses faint and pale," and in one corner is a tuft of scarlet
bl