ess or occupation. This man had brought seven or
eight miles a load of wood that might possibly be worth seventy-five
cents (I questioned the owner of what looked like just such a load
afterward, and found his asking price half a dollar), and for clothing
had on a pair of trousers and a blue cotton shirt, the latter full of
holes, through which the skin was visible; yet his father was a ---- and
had "owned niggers."

A still more picturesque figure in this procession of wood-carters was a
boy of perhaps ten or eleven. He rode his horse, and was barefooted and
barelegged; but he had a cigarette in his mouth, and to each brown heel
was fastened an enormous spur. Who was it that infected the world with
the foolish and disastrous notion that work and play are two different
things? And was it Emerson, or some other wise man, who said that a boy
was the true philosopher?

When it came time to think of returning to St. Augustine, for dinner, I
appreciated my cracker's friendly warning against losing my way; for
though I had hardly so much as entered the woods, and had taken, as I
thought, good heed to my steps, I was almost at once in a quandary as to
my road. There was no occasion for worry,--with the sun out, and my
general course perfectly plain; but here was a fork in the road, and
whether to bear to the left or to the right was a simple matter of
guess-work. I made the best guess I could, and guessed wrong, as was
apparent after a while, when I found the road under deep water for
several rods. I objected to wading, and there was no ready way of going
round, since the oak and palmetto scrub crowded close up to the
roadside, and just here was all but impenetrable. What was still more
conclusive, the road was the wrong one, as the inundation proved, and,
for aught I could tell, might carry me far out of my course. I turned
back, therefore, under the midday sun, and by good luck a second attempt
brought me out of the woods very near where I had entered them.

I visited this particular piece of country but once afterward, having in
the mean time discovered a better place of the same sort along the
railroad, in the direction of Palatka. There, on a Sunday morning, I
heard my first pine-wood sparrow. Time and tune could hardly have been
in truer accord. The hour was of the quietest, the strain was of the
simplest, and the bird sang as if he were dreaming. For a long time I
let him go on without attempting to make certain who h