162 ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. 



pected ; and then I remembered my field- 

 glass. That, as I could not help being 

 aware, was an object of continual attention. 

 Every day I saw people, old and young, 

 black and white, looking at it with undis- 

 guised curiosity. Often they passed audible 

 comments upon it among themselves. " How 

 far can you see through the spyglass ? " a 

 bolder spirit would now and then venture to 

 ask ; and once, on the railway track out in 

 the pine lands, a barefooted, happy-faced 

 urchin made a guess that was really admira- 

 ble for its ingenuity. "Looks like you're 

 goin' over inspectin' the wire," he remarked. 

 On rare occasions, as an act of special grace, 

 I offered such an inquirer a peep through the 

 magic lenses, an experiment that never 

 failed to elicit exclamations of wonder. 

 Things were so near ! And the observer 

 looked comically incredulous, on putting 

 down the glass, to find how suddenly the 

 landscape had slipped away again. More 

 than one colored man wanted to know its 

 price, and expressed a fervent desire to 

 possess one like it ; and probably, if I had 

 ever been assaulted and robbed in all my 

 solitary wanderings through the flat-woods 



