But the mill was built more
than a hundred years ago, and serves well enough the principal use of
abandoned and decaying things,--to touch the imagination. For myself, I
am bound to say, it was a precious two hours that I passed beside it,
seated on a crumbling stone in the shade of a dying orange-tree.
Behind me a redbird was whistling (cardinal grosbeak, I have been
accustomed to call him, but I like the Southern name better, in spite of
its ambiguity), now in eager, rapid tones, now slowly and with a dying
fall. Now his voice fell almost to a whisper, now it rang out again; but
always it was sweet and golden, and always the bird was out of sight in
the shrubbery. The orange-trees were in bloom; the air was full of their
fragrance, full also of the murmur of bees. All at once a deeper note
struck in, and I turned to look. A humming-bird was hovering amid the
white blossoms and glossy leaves. I saw his flaming throat, and the next
instant he was gone, like a flash of light,--the first hummer of the
year. I was far from home, and expectant of new things. That, I dare
say, was the reason why I took the sound at first for the boom of a
bumble-bee; some strange Floridian bee, with a deeper and more melodious
bass than any Northern insect is master of.
It is good to be here, I say to myself, and we need no tabernacle. All
things are in harmony. A crow in the distance says _caw, caw_ in a
meditative voice, as if he, too, were thinking of days past; and not
even the scream of a hen-hawk, off in the pine-woods, breaks the spell
that is upon us.
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