ty, of course, and went
to the South Beach, on St. Anastasia Island; then I wished to see the
pine lands. They were to be found, I was told, on the other side of the
San Sebastian. The sun was hot (or so it seemed to a man fresh from the
rigors of a New England winter), and the sand was deep; but I sauntered
through New Augustine, and pushed on up the road toward Moultrie (I
believe it was), till the last houses were passed and I came to the edge
of the pine-woods. Here, presently, the roads began to fork in a very
confusing manner. The first man I met--a kindly cracker--cautioned me
against getting lost; but I had no thought of taking the slightest risk
of that kind. I was not going to _explore_ the woods, but only to enter
them, sit down, look about me, and listen. The difficulty was to get
into them. As I advanced, they receded. It was still only the beginning
of a wood; the trees far apart and comparatively small, the ground
covered thickly with saw palmetto, interspersed here and there with
patches of brown grass or sedge.

In many places the roads were under water, and as I seemed to be making
little progress, I pretty soon sat down in a pleasantly shaded spot.
Wagons came along at intervals, all going toward the city, most of them
with loads of wood; ridiculously small loads, such as a Yankee boy would
put upon a wheelbarrow. "A fine day," said I to the driver of such a
cart. "Yes, sir," he answered, "it's a _pretty_ day." He spoke with an
emphasis which seemed to imply that he accepted my remark as well meant,
but hardly adequate to the occasion. Perhaps, if the day had been a few
shades brighter, he would have called it "handsome," or even "good
looking." Expressions of this kind, however, are matters of local or
individual taste, and as such are not to be disputed about. Thus, a man
stopped me in Tallahassee to inquire what time it was. I told him, and
he said, "Ah, a little sooner than I thought." And why not "sooner" as
well as "earlier"? But when, on the same road, two white girls in an
ox-cart hailed me with the question, "What time 't is?" I thought the
interrogative idiom a little queer; almost as queer, shall we say, as
"How do you do?" may have sounded to the first man who heard it,--if the
reader is able to imagine such a person.

Meanwhile, let the morning be "fine" or "pretty," it was all one to the
birds. The woods were vocal with the cackling of robins, the warble of
bluebirds, and the trills of