doubt he would have scratched
his head, if that useful organ had been accessible. He hesitated; but it
isn't like an uneducated man to confess ignorance. "'Cause it's a
desert," he said, "a thick _place_."

"Yes, yes," I answered, and he resumed his march.

The road was traveled mostly by negroes. On Sunday afternoons it looked
quite like a flower garden, it was so full of bright dresses coming home
from church. "Now'-days folks git religion so easy!" one young woman
said to another, as they passed me. She was a conservative. I did not
join the procession, but on other days I talked, first and last, with a
good many of the people; from the preacher, who carried a handsome cane
and made me a still handsomer bow, down to a serious little fellow of
six or seven years, whom I found standing at the foot of the hill,
beside a bundle of dead wood. He was carrying it home for the family
stove, and had set it down for a minute's rest. I said something about
his burden, and as I went on he called after me: "What kind of birds are
you hunting for? Ricebirds?" I answered that I was looking for birds of
all sorts. Had he seen any ricebirds lately? Yes, he said; he started a
flock the other day up on[1] the hill. "How did they look?" said I.
"They is red blackbirds," he returned. This was not the first time I had
heard the redwing called the ricebird. But how did the boy know me for a
bird-gazer? That was a mystery. It came over me all at once that
possibly I had become better known in the community than I had in the
least suspected; and then I remembered my field-glass. That, as I could
not help being aware, was an object of continual attention. Every day I
saw people, old and young, black and white, looking at it with
undisguised curiosity. Often they passed audible comments upon it among
themselves. "How far can you see through the spyglass?" a bolder spirit
would now and then venture to ask; and once, on the railway track out in
the pine lands, a barefooted, happy-faced urchin made a guess that was
really admirable for its ingenuity. "Looks like you're goin' over
inspectin' the wire," he remarked. On rare occasions, as an act of
special grace, I offered such an inquirer a peep through the magic
lenses,--an experiment that never failed to elicit exclamations of
wonder. Things were so near! And the observer looked comically
incredulous, on putting down the glass, to find how suddenly the
landscape had slipped away again. More than