4. IN THE FLAT-WOODS. 
I thought.” And why not “sooner” as 
well as “earlier”? But when, on the same 
road, two white girls in an ox-cart hailed me 
with the question, “ What time ’t is?” I 
thought the interrogative idiom alittle queer ; 
almost as queer, shall we say, as “ How do 
you do?” may have sounded to the first 
man who heard it, —if the reader is able 
to imagine such a person. 
Meanwhile, let the morning be “ fine” or 
“ pretty,” it was all one to the birds. The 
woods were vocal with the cackling of robins, 
the warble of bluebirds, and the trills of 
pine warblers. Flickers were shouting — or 
laughing, if one pleased to hear it so — with 
true flickerish prolixity, and a single downy 
woodpecker called sharply again and again. 
A mocking-bird near me (there is always a 
mocking-bird near you, in Florida) added 
his voice for a time, but soon relapsed into 
silence. The fact was characteristic ; for, 
wherever I went, I found it true that the 
mocker grew less musical as the place grew 
wilder. By instinct he is a public performer ; 
he demands an audience; and it is only in 
cities, like St. Augustine and Tallahassee, 
that he is heard at his freest and best. A 
