104 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOrTH. 



" So would I ; they are eagles in the air, and crows on 

 the ground," replied the Doctor. " They seem never to 

 move their wings, and yet how powerfully they fly, while 

 they watch every motion that is going on in the woods 

 below them." 



*'Do you want one of 'em?" said Mike, raising his 

 rifle from the ground. 



" No, no, Mike ; when God makes anything so beauti- 

 ful, let it live." 



" Dinnah's ready, gemens and ladies," called out Pom- 

 pey Duffield Sah, with a marked accent on the and^ 

 while Jackson's horn played the stave of a march that 

 made the dogs howl, and we turned away from the bank 

 to the dinner that was spread out on the grass. There 

 was cold wild turkey, and ham, and^ sherry wine, some 

 excellent hot coffee, and corn-bread and bacon. It 

 wouldn't have been a Florida dinner without the corn- 

 bread and bacon. Oh, what a blessed thing is hunger, 

 when one has the means to allay it, and how contented 

 and beneficent one is when the dinner is ended, and how 

 pleasant when seated, after a day of rough toil, at a 

 rude meal, to have the gentle presence of a woman mak- 

 ing the beauty to the rugged scene! Did it ever occur 

 to you, fair reader, that if that gentler grace that wins 

 and governs man's young love should accompany him to 

 his scenes of pleasure, his out-of-door pursuits, and natural 

 studies, it would always exercise the influence over him 

 that it did when he was a boy ? Do you not believe that 

 each would gain, the one a wider field of opportunity, 



