176 ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD. 
tine road my after-dinner sauntering-place. 
The morning was for a walk: to Lake Brad- 
ford, perhaps, in search of a mythical ivory- 
billed woodpecker, or westward on the rail- 
way for a few miles, with a view to rare 
migratory warblers. But in the afternoon I 
did not walk, — [ loitered ; and though I still 
minded the birds and flowers, I for the most 
part forgot my botany and ornithology. In 
the cool of the day, then (the phrase is an 
innocent euphemism), I climbed the hill, 
and after an hour or two on the plateau 
strolled back again, facing the sunset through 
a vista of moss-covered live-oaks and sweet 
gums. Those quiet, incurious hours are 
among the pleasantest of all my Florida 
memories. A cuckoo would be cooing, per- 
haps; or a quail, with cheerful ambiguity, — 
such as belongs to weather predictions in 
general, — would be prophesying ‘“ more 
wet” and “no more wet” in alternate 
breaths ; or two or three night-hawks would 
be sweeping back and forth high above the 
valley ; or a marsh hawk would be quartering 
over the big oatfield. The martins would be 
eackling, in any event, and the kingbirds 
practicing their aerial mock somersaults ; and 
