Their delight
in each other was exuberant, effervescent, beatific,--what shall I
say?--quite beyond veiling or restraint. At first I bestowed upon them
sidewise and cornerwise glances only, hiding bashfully behind my
spectacles, as it were, and pretending to see nothing; but I soon
perceived that I was to them of no more consequence than a fly on the
wall. If they saw me, which sometimes seemed doubtful,--for love is
blind,--they evidently thought me too sensible, or too old, to mind a
little billing and cooing. And they were right in their opinion. What
was I in Florida for, if not for the study of natural history? And
truly, I have seldom seen, even among birds, a pair less sophisticated,
less cabined and confined by that disastrous knowledge of good and evil
which is commonly understood to have resulted from the eating of
forbidden fruit, and which among prudish people goes by the name of
modesty. It was refreshing. Charles Lamb himself would have enjoyed it,
and, I should hope, would have added some qualifying footnotes to a
certain unamiable essay of his concerning the behavior of married
people.
ON THE ST. AUGUSTINE ROAD.
One of my first inquiries at Tallahassee was for the easiest way to the
woods. The city is built on a hill, with other hills about it. These are
mostly under cultivation, and such woods as lay within sight seemed to
be pretty far off; and with the mercury at ninety in the shade, long
tramps were almost out of the question.
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