12 SYLVAN SECRETS. 



lars ; nor was there much left to remind one 

 of the agricultural wealth, formerly the 

 largest of this broad area now given over to 

 a thrifty growth of strong young trees and to 

 a wild, musical mob of birds. A considerable 

 marsh, once drained by a rude wind-mill and 

 cultivated in sea-island cotton, had been re- 

 claimed by the tide- water (which now crept 

 in rhythmically through many breaks in the 

 little dyke) and had become a home of the 

 herons and bitterns. Remnants, more pa- 

 thetic than picturesque, of the tall shaft and 

 pumping apparatus belonging to the mill lay 

 in a mouldering and rusting heap beside the 

 water. 



My gin-house was a poor shelter if it should 

 rain, but I could supplement it with my 

 waterproof blanket; and then the climate 

 was very kind at worst. How, indeed, could 

 a climate be more tender in its concessions to 

 one's preferences ? A breeze from the gulf, 

 salty and exhilarating, or a waft from the 

 pine-woods, fragrantly heavy with terebinth 

 and balm, was blowing day and night, and 

 the medley of bird songs was accompanied 

 with the effective counterpoint of the distant 

 sea-moan.. There was romance in the atmos- 

 pheric perspective on both water and land as 

 well as in the story suggested by the ruins all 

 around me, and a few of my readers will 

 readily recall from experience of their own 

 how sweet an auxiliary to realistic study is 

 this influence of romance. Science, through 

 which realism works its only wonders (for 

 realism in fiction is a fraudulent pretence), 

 science, I say, is itself most charming when 

 its light flickers on the filmy and misty verge 

 of Nature's romance, and your genuine, lover 

 of science is far from averse to making his 

 dryest studies under circumstances of the 



