ever a chirrup. But two unfortunates in the bow of the boat
developed symptoms which I could not suppress; so, putting in at a
picket station, with some risk I dumped them in mud knee-deep, and
embarked a substitute, who after the first five minutes absolutely
coughed louder than both the others united. Handkerchiefs, blankets,
over-coats, suffocation in its direst forms, were tried in vain, but
apparently the Rebel pickets slept through it all, and we exploded the
wreck in safety. I think they were asleep, for certainly across the
level marshes there came a nasal sound, as of the "Con-thieveracy" in
its slumbers. It may have been a bull-frog, but it sounded like a human
snore.

Picket life was of course the place to feel the charm of natural beauty
on the Sea Islands. We had a world of profuse and tangled vegetation
around us, such as would have been a dream of delight to me, but for the
constant sense of responsibility and care which came between. Amid
this preoccupation, Nature seemed but a mirage, and not the close and
intimate associate I had before known. I pressed no flowers, collected
no insects or birds' eggs, made no notes on natural objects, reversing
in these respects all previous habits. Yet now, in the retrospect, there
seems to have been infused into me through every pore the voluptuous
charm of the season and the place; and the slightest corresponding
sound or odor now calls back the memory of those delicious days. Being
afterwards on picket at almost every season, I tasted the sensations of
all; and though I hardly then thought of such a result, the associations
of beauty will remain forever.

In February, for instance,--though this was during a later period of
picket service,--the woods were usually draped with that "net of shining
haze" which marks our Northern May; and the house was embowered in
wild-plum-blossoms, small, white, profuse, and tenanted by murmuring
bees. There were peach-blossoms, too, and the yellow jasmine was opening
its multitudinous buds, climbing over tall trees, and waving from bough
to bough. There were fresh young ferns and white bloodroot in the edges
of woods, matched by snowdrops in the garden, beneath budded myrtle
and _Petisporum_. In this wilderness the birds were busy; the two
main songsters being the mocking-bird and the cardinal-grosbeak, which
monopolized all the parts of our more varied Northern orchestra save
the tender and liquid notes, which in South Carolina se