chewinks, the blackbirds (a grackle just now flies over, and a
fish-hawk, also), with the bluebirds and the pine warblers, are in the
pinery. From the same place comes the song of a Maryland yellow-throat.
There, too, the hen-hawks are screaming.

At my feet are blue violets and white houstonia. Vines, thinly covered
with fresh leaves, straggle over the walls,--Virginia creeper, poison
ivy, grapevine, and at least one other, the name of which I do not know.
A clump of tall blackberry vines is full of white blossoms, "bramble
roses faint and pale," and in one corner is a tuft of scarlet
blooms,--sage, perhaps, or something akin to it. For the moment I feel
no curiosity. But withal the place is unkempt, as becomes a ruin.
"Winter's ragged hand" has been rather heavy upon it. Withered palmetto
leaves and leaf-stalks litter the ground, and of course, being in
Florida, there is no lack of orange-peel lying about. Ever since I
entered the State a new Scrip-ture text has been running in my head: In
the place where the orange-peel falleth, there shall it lie.

The mill, as I said, is now the centre of an orange grove. There must be
hundreds of trees. All of them are small, but the greater part are
already dead, and the rest are dying. Those nearest the walls are
fullest of leaves, as if the walls somehow gave them protection. The
forest is creeping into the inclosure. Here and there the graceful
palm-like tassel of a young long-leaved pine rises above the tall
winter-killed grass. It is not the worst thing about the world that it
tends to run wild.

Now the quail sings again, this time in two notes, and now the hummer is
again in the orange-tree. And all the while the redbird whistles in the
shrubbery. He feels the beauty of the day. If I were a bird, I would