BOB THE VAGABOND 



fact way that his bobohnk forefathers had spoken, back 

 through all the j^ears when they, too, had taken this 

 same flight over sea in the course of their vagabond 

 journey. 



From Venezuela to Paraguay there was no more ocean 

 to cross, and there were frequent places for rest when 

 Bob and his band desired. Groves there were, strange 

 groves — some where Brazil nuts grew, and some where 

 oranges were as common as apples in New England. 

 There we're chocolate trees and banana palms. There 

 were pepper bushes, gay as our holly trees at Christ- 

 mastime. Great flowering trees held out their blossom 

 cups to brilliant hummingbirds hovering by hundreds 

 all about them. Was there one among them with a 

 ruby throat, like that of the hummingbird who feasted 

 in the Cardinal-Flower Path near Peter Piper's home? 

 Maybe 't was the self-same bird — who knows? And 

 let's see — Peter Piper himself would be coming soon^ 

 would he not, to teeter and picnic along some pleasant 

 Brazilian shore? 



Perhaps Bob and Peter and the hummingbird, who 

 had been summer neighbors in North America, would 

 meet again now and then in that far south country. But 

 I do not think they would know each other if they did. 

 They had all seemed too busy with their own afl'airs to 

 get acquainted. 



191 



