128 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE, 



chicken and the fried pork, the boiled rice and the 

 hominy, the buttered waffles and the Indian bread. A 

 little negro-boy is continually waving a large fan of 

 peacock's feathers over the food and over every part of 

 the table. Breakfast once over, Philip Gosse seizes the 

 butterfly-net which stands in the corner of the room, and 

 which he always carries, as other sportsmen do their gun, 

 and he sallies forth, startling the mocking-bird that is 

 hopping and bobbing on the rails of the fence. He 

 gives himself plenty of time to chase the zebra swallow- 

 tails across the broad discs of the passion-flowers, to lie in 

 wait for hairstreaks on the odorous beds of blossoming 

 horehound, or to watch the scarlet cardinal grosbeak, with 

 his negro face and his mountain crest, leap whistling up 

 and up in the branches of the pines like an ascending 

 flame of fire. He reaches school, however, in time to open 

 that ''^ alma mater',' as he laughingly styles it, by eight 

 o'clock ; and for no less than nine hours of desultory 

 education, mingled with play and idleness, he is responsible 

 for the troop of urchins. 



But five o'clock comes at last, even in the soundless 

 depths of an Alabama forest, and he dismisses his wild 

 covey of shouting boys, following more sedately in their 

 wake. Twilight falls apace, and in a little hollow where 

 the oaks and hickories meet overhead, a barred owl flits 

 like a ghost across the path, and the air begins to ring 

 with the long mellow resounding whoops of the negroes 

 on the plantations, calling home the hogs at sunset It 

 may be that two or three of these pachydermatous grey- 

 hounds, with their thin backs and tall legs, are rooting 

 and grazing close to the path. From a mile off will be 

 faintly heard the continual unbroken shout of the distant 

 negro. Each hog will instantly pause, snout in air, and 

 then all is bustle ; and, each anxious to be first at home, 



