170 ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. 
too, were a pair of bluebirds, noticeable for 
their rarity, and for the wonderful color — 
a shade deeper than is ever seen at the 
North, I think —of the male’s blue coat. 
In a small thicket in the hollow beside the 
road were noisy white-eyed vireos, a ruby- 
crowned kinglet, — a tiny thing that within 
a month would be singing in Canada, or 
beyond, — an unseen wood pewee, and (also 
unseen) a hermit thrush, one of perhaps 
twenty solitary individuals that I found 
scattered about the woods in the course of 
my journeyings. Not one of them sang a 
note. Probably they did not know that 
there was a Yankee in Florida who—in 
some moods, at least— would have given 
more for a dozen bars of hermit thrush mu- 
sic than for a day and a night of the mock- 
ing-bird’s medley. Not that I mean to dis- 
parage the great Southern performer; as a 
vocalist he is so far beyond the hermit thrush 
as to render a comparison absurd ; but what 
I love is a singer, a voice to reach the soul. 
An old Tallahassee negro, near the ‘ white 
Norman school,’ — so he ealled it, — hit off 
the mocking-bird pretty well. I had called 
his attention to one singing in an adjacent 
