Yet they
were a merry crew, those national gamesters. Their patriotism was of the
noblest type,--the unconscious. They had no thought of being heroes, nor
dreamed of bounties or pensions. They quarreled with the umpire, of
course, but not with Fate; and I hope I profited by their example. My
errand in Sanford was to see something of the river in its narrower and
better part; and having done that, I did not regret what otherwise might
have seemed a profitless week.
First, however, I walked about the city. Here, as already at St.
Augustine, and afterward at Tallahassee, I found the mocking-birds in
free song. They are birds of the town. And the same is true of the
loggerhead shrikes, a pair of which had built a nest in a small
water-oak at the edge of the sidewalk, on a street corner, just beyond
the reach of passers-by. In the roadside trees--all freshly planted,
like the city--were myrtle warblers, prairie warblers, and blue
yellowbacks, the two latter in song. Once, after a shower, I watched a
myrtle bird bathing on a branch among the wet leaves. The street gutters
were running with sulphur water, but he had waited for rain. I commended
his taste, being myself one of those to whom water and brimstone is a
combination as malodorous as it seems unscriptural. Noisy boat-tailed
grackles, or "jackdaws," were plentiful about the lakeside, monstrously
long in the tail, and almost as large as the fish crows, which were
often there with them.
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