174 ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. 



tonia grew here, as it did everywhere, in 

 small scattered patches. If there were vio- 

 lets as well, I can only say I have forgotten 

 them. 



Be it added, however, that at the time I 

 did not miss them. In a garden of roses 

 one does not begin by sighing for mignonette 

 and lilies of the valley. Violets or no violets, 

 there was no lack of beauty. The Southern 

 highway surveyor, if such a personage exists, 

 is evidently not consumed by that distressing 

 puritanical passion for " slicking up things " 

 which too often makes of his Northern 

 brother something scarcely better than a pub- 

 lic nuisance. At the South you will not find 

 a woman cultivating with pain a few exotics 

 beside the front door, while her husband is 

 mowing and burning the far more attractive 

 wild garden that nature has planted just out- 

 side the fence. The St. Augustine road, at 

 any rate, after climbing the hill and getting 

 beyond the wood, runs between natural 

 hedges, trees, vines, and shrubs carelessly 

 intermingled, not dense enough to con- 

 ceal the prospect or shut out the breeze 

 (" straight from the Gulf, " as the Tallahas- 

 sean is careful to inform you), but sufficient 



