WALKS ABOUT TALLAHASSEE. 207 



lost at once all their attractiveness. So 

 ineffaceable (oftenest for good, but this time 

 for ill) is an early impression upon the least 

 honorably esteemed of the five senses ! As 

 a boy, it was one of my tasks to keep down 

 with a scythe the weeds and bushes in a 

 rocky, thin-soiled cattle pasture. In that 

 task, which, at the best, was a little too 

 much like work my most troublesome 

 enemy was the common wild indigo (Bapti- 

 sia tinctoricf), partly from the wicked perti- 

 nacity with which it sprang up again after 

 every mowing, but especially from the fact 

 that the cut or bruised stalk exhaled what 

 in my nostrils was a most abominable odor. 

 Other people do not find it so offensive, I 

 suspect, but to me it was, and is, ten times 

 worse than the more pungent but compara- 

 tively salubrious perfume which a certain 

 handsome little black-and-white quadruped 

 - handsome, but impolite is given to 

 scattering upon the nocturnal breeze in mo- 

 ments of extreme perturbation. 



Somewhere beyond the Suwanee River 

 (at which I looked as long as it remained in 

 sight and thought of Christine Nilsson) 

 there came a sudden change in the aspect of 



