one colored man wanted to
know its price, and expressed a fervent desire to possess one like it;
and probably, if I had ever been assaulted and robbed in all my solitary
wanderings through the flat-woods and other lonesome places, my
"spyglass" rather than my purse--the "lust of the eye" rather than the
"pride of life"--would have been to thank.

[Footnote 1: He did not say "upon" any more than Northern white boys
do.]

Here, however, there could be no thought of such a contingency. Here
were no vagabonds (one inoffensive Yankee specimen excepted), but
hard-working people going into the city or out again, each on his own
lawful business. Scarcely one of them, man or woman, but greeted me
kindly. One, a white man on horseback, invited, and even urged me, to
mount his horse, and let him walk a piece. I must be fatigued, he was
sure,--how could I help it?--and he would as soon walk as not. Finding
me obstinate, he walked his horse at my side, chatting about the
country, the trees, and the crops. He it was who called my particular
attention to the abundance of blackberry vines. "Are the berries sweet?"
I asked. He smacked his lips. "Sweet as honey, and big as that,"
measuring off a liberal portion of his thumb. I spoke of them half an
hour later to a middle-aged colored man. Yes, he said, the blackberries
were plenty enough and sweet enough; but, for his part, he didn't
trouble them a great deal. The vines (and he pointed at them, fringing
the roadside indefinitely) were great places for rattlesnakes. He liked
the berries, but he liked somebody else to pick them. He was awfully
afraid of snakes; they were so dangerous. "Yes, sir" (this in answer to
an inquiry), "there are plenty of rattlesnakes here clean up to
Christmas." I liked him for his frank avowal of cowardice, and still
more for his quiet bearing. He remembered the days of slavery,--"before
the surrender," as the current Southern phrase is,--and his face beamed
when I spoke of my joy in thinking that his people were free, no matter
what might befall them. He, too, raised cotton on hired land, and was
bringing up his children--there were eight of them, he said--to habits
of industry.

My second stroll toward St. Augustine carried me perhaps three
miles,--say one sixty-sixth of the entire distance,--and none of my
subsequent excursions took me any farther; and having just now commended
a negro for his candor, I am moved to acknowledge that, between the sand
unde