IN THE FLAT-WOODS. 11 
as a specimen, that I quite forgot my man- 
ners till it was too late. One thing I learned: 
that it is not prudent, in these days, to judge 
a Southern man’s blood, in either sense of 
the word, by his dress or occupation. This 
man had brought seven or eight miles a load 
of wood that might possibly be worth sev- 
enty-five cents (I questioned the owner of 
what looked like just such a load afterward, 
and found his asking price half a dollar), and 
for clothing had on a pair of trousers and a 
blue cotton shirt, the latter full of holes, 
through which the skin was visible ; yet his 
father was a and had “ owned niggers.” 
A still more picturesque figure in this pro- 
cession of wood-carters was a boy of perhaps 
ten or eleven. He rode his horse, and was 
barefooted and barelegged; but he had a 
cigarette in his mouth, and to each brown 
heel was fastened an enormous spur. Who 
was it that infected the world with the fool- 
ish and disastrous notion that work and play 
are two different things? And was it Em- 
erson, or some other wise man, who said that 
a boy was the true philosopher ? 
When it came time to think of returning 
to St. Augustine for dinner, I appreciated 
