. I had the severest sort of a time. I ran away
from it twice to a deer-hunt." And he, in his turn, recited:--

"Who hails each present hour with zest
Hates fretting what may be the rest,
Makes bitter sweet with lazy jest;
Naught is in every portion blest."

I complimented him, in spite of my slight annoyance at being deprived by
him of the chance to declaim Latin poetry, which is an exercise that
I approve and enjoy; but of course, to go on with it, after he had
intervened with his translation, would have been flat.

"You have written good English, and very close to the Latin, too," I
told him, "particularly in the last line." And I picked up from the
bridge which we were crossing, an oyster-shell, and sent it skimming
over the smooth water that stretched between the low shores, wide, blue,
and vacant.

"I suppose you wonder why we call this the 'New Bridge,'" he remarked.

"I did wonder when I first came," I replied.

He smiled. "You're getting used to us!"

This long structure wore, in truth, no appearance of yesterday. It was
newer than the "New Bridge" which it had replaced some fifteen years
ago, and which for forty years had borne the same title. Spanning
the broad river upon a legion of piles, this wooden causeway lies
low against the face of the water, joining the town with a serene and
pensive country of pines and live oaks and level opens, where glimpses
of cabin and plantation serve to increase the silence and the soft,
mysterious loneliness. Into this the road from the bridge goes straight
and among the purple vagueness gently dissolves away.

We watched a slow, deep-laden boat sliding down toward the draw, across
which we made our way, and drew near the further end of the bridge. The
straight avenue of the road in front of us took my eyes down its quiet
vista, until they were fixed suddenly by an alien object, a growing
dot, accompanied by dust, whence came the small, distorted honks of
an automobile. These fat, importunate sounds redoubled as the machine
rushed toward the bridge, growing up to its full staring, brazen
dimensions. Six or seven figures sat in it, all of the same dusty,
shrouded likeness, their big glass eyes and their masked mouths
suggesting some fabled, unearthly race, a family of replete and bilious
ogres; so that as they flew honking by us I called out to John:--

"Behold the yellow rich!" and then remembered that his Hortense probably