H Swamp Beauty 



A short tramp brings them within ear- 

 range, so that I know just how soon to 

 expect an orange-grove or a fig-orchard. 

 It is good to blow out of me all the swamp- 

 whiffs I have inhaled, and let them give 

 place to fruity wafts and bloomy puffs 

 borne along by a saltish sea-breeze. And 

 when I meet a jolly-looking negro boy, who 

 gazes interrogatively at my dangling snake- 

 bird and says, "Gwine to eat 'im, boss?" 

 — when that happens, a good laugh rounds 

 up a right pleasant incident ; and presently, 

 emerging from the wood, I look seaward 

 over a flat waste to where, on the water's 

 rim, glitters the crescent outline of the 

 town, with its slender church-spires, its 

 variegated roofs, and its gardens of massed 

 and wind-tossed foliage. I take off my 

 cap and serenely mop a flushed face, while 

 all the beauty, all the charm, and all the 

 subtle and inexplicable strangeness of the 

 drowsy South steal through me like a 

 succession of gentle yet thrilling waves — 

 a flood of inspiration for which a poet or 

 a painter would sell his birthright and 

 become a glorious outcast. 

 200 



