92 ALONG THE UILLSBOROUGH. 



feminine ministrations. What they were 

 there for I never made out. They fished, 

 I think, but whether by way of amusement 

 or as a serious occupation I did not learn. 

 Perhaps, like the Indians of old, they had 

 come to the river for the oyster season. 

 They might have done worse. They never 

 paid the slightest attention to me, nor once 

 gave me any decent excuse for engaging 

 them in talk. The best thing I remember 

 about them was a tableau caught in passing. 

 A " norther " had descended upon us unex- 

 pectedly (Florida is not a whit behind the 

 rest of the world in sudden changes of tem- 

 perature), and while hastening homeward, 

 toward nightfall, hugging myself to keep 

 warm, I saw, in the woods, this group of 

 campers disposed about a lively blaze. 



Let us be thankful, say I, that memory 

 is so little the servant of the will. Chance 

 impressions of this kind, unforeseen, invol- 

 untary, and inexplicable, make one of the 

 chief delights of traveling, or rather of hav- 

 ing traveled. In the present case, indeed, 

 the permanence of the impression is perhaps 

 not altogether beyond the reach of a plau- 

 sible coujecture. We have not always lived 



