ish excitement. Here was a new bird, a bird
about which I had felt fifteen years of curiosity; and, more than that,
a bird which here and now was quite unexpected, since it was not
included in either of the two Florida lists that I had brought with me
from home. For perhaps five seconds I had my opera-glass on the blue
head and the thick-set, dark bill, with its lighter-colored under
mandible. Then I heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs, and lifted my
eyes. My friend the owner of the plantation was coming down the road at
a gallop, straight upon me. If I was to see the grosbeak and make sure
of him, it must be done at once. I moved to bring him fully into view,
and he flew into the thick of a pine-tree out of sight. But the tree was
not far off, and if Mr. ---- would pass me with a nod, the case was
still far from hopeless. A bright thought came to me. I ran from the
path with a great show of eager absorption, leveled my glass upon the
pine-tree, and stood fixed. Perhaps Mr. ---- would take the hint. Alas!
he had too much courtesy to pass his own guest without speaking. "Still
after the birds?" he said, as he checked his horse. I responded, as I
hope, without any symptom of annoyance. Then, of course, he wished to
know what I was looking at, and I told him that a blue grosbeak had just
flown into that pine-tree, and that I was most distressingly anxious to
see more of him. He looked at the pine-tree. "I can't see him," he said.
No more could I. "It wasn't a blue jay, was it?" he asked. And then we
talked of one thing and another, I have no idea what, till he rode away
to another part of the plantation where a gang of women were at work. By
this time the grosbeak had disappeared utterly. Possibly he had gone to
a bit of wood on the opposite side of the cane-swamp. I scaled a
barbed-wire fence and made in that direction, but to no purpose. The
grosbeak was gone for good. Probably I should never see another. Could
the planter have read my thoughts just then he would perhaps have been
angry with himself, and pretty certainly he would have been angry with
me. That a Yankee should accept his hospitality, and then load him with
curses and call him all manner of names! How should he know that I was
so insane a hobbyist as to care more for the sight of a new bird than
for all the laws and customs of ordinary politeness? As my feelings
cooled, I saw that I was stepping over hills or rows of some
strange-looking plants just out of t