was welcome
to visit it as often as I wished. He himself was very fond of natural
history, and often regretted that he had not given time to it in his
youth. As it was, he protected the birds on his plantation, and the
place was full of them. I should find his woods interesting, he felt
sure. Florida was extremely rich in birds; he believed there were some
that had never been classified. "We have orioles here," he added; and so
far, at any rate, he was right; I had seen perhaps twenty that day
(orchard orioles, that is), and one sat in a tree before us at the
moment. His whole manner was most kindly and hospitable,--as was that of
every Tallahassean with whom I had occasion to speak,--and I told him
with sincere gratitude that I should certainly avail myself of his
courtesy and stroll through his woods.

I approached them, two mornings afterward, from the opposite side,
where, finding no other place of entrance, I climbed a six-barred,
tightly locked gate--feeling all the while like "a thief and a
robber"--in front of a deserted cabin. Then I had only to cross a grassy
field, in which meadow larks were singing, and I was in the woods. I
wandered through them without finding anything more unusual or
interesting than summer tanagers and yellow-throated warblers, which
were in song there, as they were in every such place, and after a while
came out into a pleasant glade, from which different parts of the
plantation could be seen, and through which ran a plantation road. Here
was a wooden fence,--a most unusual thing,--and I lost no time in
mounting it, to rest and look about me. It is one of the marks of a true
Yankee, I suspect, to like such a perch. My own weakness in that
direction is a frequent subject of mirth with chance fellow travelers.
The attitude is comfortable and conducive to meditation; and now that I
was seated and at my ease, I felt that this was one of the New England
luxuries which, almost without knowing it, I had missed ever since I
left home.

Of my meditations on this particular occasion I remember nothing; but
that is no sign they were valueless; as it is no sign that yesterday's
dinner did me no good because I have forgotten what it was. In the
latter case, indeed, and perhaps in the former as well, it would seem
more reasonable to draw an exactly opposite inference. But, quibbles
apart, one thing I do remember: I sat for some time on the fence, in the
shade of a tree, with an eye upon the cane-s