any connection. It was in this thoroughfare that one saw now and then a
group of cavaliers strolling about under broad-brimmed hats, with big
spurs at their heels, accosting passers-by with hearty familiarity,
first names and hand-shakes, while their horses stood hitched to the
branches of roadside trees,--a typical Southern picture. Here, on a
Sunday afternoon, were two young fellows who had brought to town a
mother coon and three young ones, hoping to find a purchaser. The guests
at the hotels manifested no eagerness for such pets, but the colored
bell-boys and waiters gathered about, and after a little good-humored
dickering bought the entire lot, box and all, for a dollar and a half;
first having pulled the little ones out between the slats--not without
some risk to both parties--to look at them and pass them round. The
venders walked off with grins of ill-concealed triumph. The Fates had
been kind to them, and they had three silver half-dollars in their
pockets. I heard one of them say something about giving part of the
money to a third man who had told them where the nest was; but his
companion would listen to no such folly. "He wouldn't come with us," he
said, "and we won't tell him a damned thing." I fear there was nothing
distinctively Southern about _that_.

Here, too, in the heart of the town, was a magnificent cluster of
live-oaks, worth coming to Florida to see; far-spreading, full of ferns
and air plants, and heavy with hanging moss. Day after day I went out to
admire them. Under them was a neglected orange grove, and in one of the
orange-trees, amid the glossy foliage, appeared my first summer tanager.
It was a royal setting, and the splendid vermilion-red bird was worthy
of it. Among the oaks I walked in the evening, listening to the strange
low chant of the chuck-will's-widow,--a name which the owner himself
pronounces with a rest after the first syllable. Once, for two or three
days, the trees were amazingly full of blue yellow-backed warblers.