174 ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. 
tonia grew here, as it did everywhere, in 
small scattered patches. If there were vio- 
lets as well, I can only say I have forgotten 
them. 
Be it added, however, that at the time I 
did not miss them. In a garden of roses 
one does not begin by sighing for mignonette 
and lilies of the valley. Violets or no violets, 
there was no lack of beauty. The Southern 
highway surveyor, if such a personage exists, 
is evidently not consumed by that distressing 
puritanical passion for “ slicking up things ” 
which too often makes of his Northern 
brother something scarcely better than a pub- 
lic nuisance. At the South you will not find 
a woman cultivating with pain a few exotics 
beside the front door, while her husband is 
mowing and burning the far more attractive 
wild garden that nature has planted just out- 
side the fence. The St. Augustine road, at 
any rate, after climbing the hill and getting 
beyond the wood, runs between natural 
hedges, — trees, vines, and shrubs carelessly 
intermingled, — not dense enough to con- 
ceal the prospect or shut out the breeze 
(“ straight from the Gulf,” as the Tallahas- 
sean is careful to inform you), but sufficient 
