A Thousand-Mile Walk 
changed, and I could detect strange sounds in 
the winds. Now I began to feel myself “a 
stranger in a strange land.” 
But in Florida came the greatest change of 
all, for here grows the palmetto, and here blow 
the winds so strangely toned by them. These 
palms and these winds severed the last strands 
of the cord that united me with home. Now I 
was a stranger, indeed. I was delighted, aston- 
ished, confounded, and gazed in wonderment 
blank and overwhelming as if I had fallen upon 
another star. But in all of this long, complex 
series of changes, one of the greatest, and the 
last of all, was the change I found in the tone 
and language of the winds. They no longer 
came with the old home music gathered from 
open prairies and waving fields of oak, but 
they passed over many a strange string. The 
leaves of magnolia, smooth like polished steel, 
the immense inverted forests of tillandsia 
banks, and the princely crowns of palms — 
upon these the winds made strange music, 
and at the coming-on of night had overwhelm- 
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