players do; as if, in the practice of his art, he had learned to
appreciate, consciously or unconsciously (and practice naturally goes
before theory), the expressive value of what I believe is called musical
dynamics.

I spent many half-days in the pine lands (how gladly now would I spend
another!), but never got far into them. ("Into their depths," my pen was
on the point of making me say; but that would have been a false note.
The flat-woods have no "depths.") Whether I followed the railway,--in
many respects a pretty satisfactory method,--or some roundabout, aimless
carriage road, a mile or two was generally enough. The country offers no
temptation to pedestrian feats, nor does the imagination find its
account in going farther and farther. For the reader is not to think of
the flat-woods as in the least resembling a Northern forest, which at
every turn opens before the visitor and beckons him forward. Beyond and
behind, and on either side, the pine-woods are ever the same. It is this
monotony, by the bye, this utter absence of landmarks, that makes it so
unsafe for the stranger to wander far from the beaten track. The sand is
deep, the sun is hot; one place is as good as another. What use, then,
to tire yourself? And so, unless the traveler is going somewhere, as I
seldom was, he is continually stopping by the way. Now a shady spot
entices him to put down his umbrella,--for there _is_ a shady spot, here
and there, even in a Florida pine-wood; or blossoms are to be plucked;
or a butterfly, some gorgeous and nameless creature, brightens the wood
as it passes; or a bird is singing; or an eagle is soaring far overhead,
and must be watched out of sight; or a buzzard, with upturned wings,
floats suspiciously near the wanderer, as if with sinister intent
(buzzard shadows are a regular feature of the flat-wood landscape, just
as cloud shadows are in a mountainous country); or a snake lies
stretched out in the sun,--a "whip snake," perhaps, that frightens the