120 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 



the half-dozen well worn volumes scattered 

 about give a strange air to this woodland 

 bower. No farm or plantation is in sight. 

 If you can hear any sound of busy human life, 

 it is the singing of some merry negroes pro- 

 pelling a corn-boat down the river. Usually 

 these boats passed us in the night. They 

 were a kind of long, low keel craft with stern 

 paddle and oars. Midway of the boat were 

 heaped the white sacks of corn. The tall 

 dusky oarsmen swayed to and fro singing 

 meanwhile some outlandish but strangely fas- 

 cinating song. 



Here by the flaring light of burning pine- 

 knots we read Keats and Theocritus, Shelley 

 and Ovid in turn. Our concurrent studies 

 were not plainly congruous, rather conflict- 

 ing, one might think, for we studied Greek, 

 practised archery, collected birds-eggs, made 

 water-color drawings of plants and birds, 

 read poetry, boated, swam, practised taxi- 

 dermy, fenced with reed foils, fished for bass, 

 and cooked admirable dinners ! A little way 

 off stood our cabin, or rather, our hut, into 

 which a sudden shower of rain now and then 

 drove us. When the nights were clear we 

 hung our hammocks in the palace, and slept 

 suspended in the perfumed breeze. Often I 

 awoke in the small hours and heard the rac- 

 coons growling and chattering in the brake. 

 At such times the swash of the river had a 

 strangely soothing effect, a lullaby of fairy 

 land. 



Will had a nocturnal habit. He would slip 

 forth, when the moon shone, long after I had 

 gone to sleep, and the twang of his bowstring 

 would startle me from quiet dreams as he let 



