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PICTURE
AND SONG WHAT seek
we in Florida? The same that we seek everywhere — sensations. Life is made of
them. In proportion as they are lively and pleasurable we find it good. The
higher their quality, the nobler the part that feels them, the less physical
they are, the less they have to do with eating and drinking and being clothed,
the more truly we are alive and not dead. Most of
the people that we meet in Florida are vacationers like ourselves. At home they
may be in the wool business, in shoes, or in dyestuffs; here they have no
occupation but to amuse themselves. In the daytime they fish, play golf, drive,
or lounge upon the hotel piazza. In the evening they sit in the lobby, listen
(possibly) to the music, admire (or not) the gowns and jewels of the ladies
(the self-sacrificing creatures are all on parade, like so many Queens of
Sheba), take a hand at cards, or gossip about something or nothing with a
traveling companion or a chance acquaintance. At the worst they dawdle over a
newspaper or a novel, and consume the hour in smoke. To judge by appearances
their sensations are not poignant, though the anglers and the golfers, and even
the shuffle-board players, no doubt have their exciting moments; but on the
whole the winter passes rather quickly. When there is nothing else to do, and
the time drags, one can always cheer one’s self by thinking how intemperate the
season is at home. The most refreshing parts of the Northern newspapers are
their reports of snowstorms and blizzards. For my own
part, I admire the ladies’ gowns (in one sense or other of the word, who could
help it?), but what my untutored mind is most taken with is the beauty of the
natural world, the world as God made it, rather than as man, even the
man-milliner, has improved it. I love to look up or down the moss-hung vista of
the river road (I am still at Ormond), or, turning my head, to gaze across the
smooth water at the freshly green, happy-looking oak woods and the overtopping
pines. These are pictures that I hope never to forget. The other
day an old friend, a settler in these parts, rowed me down the river a few
miles. There we took an untraveled road through the forest, and by and by came
suddenly to a clearing, in the middle of which stood an abandoned house. The
place had once been an orange orchard, I suppose; and even now, although there
was hardly so much as a stump left to tell the tale, it remained in its own way
a paradise of beauty. From end to end the five or six sandy acres were thickly
overgrown with Drummond’s phlox, all in fullest bloom, a rosy wilderness. It was a
pretty show. We exclaimed over it, and gathered handfuls of the lovely flowers,
but as we rowed homeward we were favored with a spectacle to which it would be
a profanation to apply such epithets. The afternoon, which began doubtfully,
had turned out a marvel of perfection. The wind had gone down, the river was
like glass, and the level rays of the sun touched all the shore woods to an
almost unearthly beauty. And withal, the sky was full of the softest, most
exquisitely shaded, finely broken clouds. It was an hour such as comes once and
is never repeated. In my mind the memory of it has already taken its place
beside the memory of a sunset seen many years ago from a Massachusetts
mountain-top. These are some of the “sensations” of which I spoke. They are the
sufficient rewards of travel, though now and then, the Fates favoring, we may
have them at home also, without money and without price. The next
day, or the next but one, I strolled about two miles up the river northward, to
the house where, on my first day at Ormond, I had seen a Cherokee rosebush just
breaking into flower. This time it was at the top of its glory, such a glory as
I have no hope of describing. At a moderate calculation the mound of leafy
stems must have borne four or five thousand roses, every one the very image of
purity and sweetness. Those who are familiar with the Cherokee rose will
perhaps be able to imagine the picture of loveliness here presented; and such
readers will be glad to know that a lover of beauty (not an idle, time-killing
tourist, but a man at home and at work), having heard my report of the bush,
walked four or five miles on purpose to see it, and declared himself amply
repaid for his labor. “The poetry of earth is never dead;” and there is never
wanting some poet’s soul to enjoy it, and so to make it twice alive. Though it
is near the end of March there is comparatively little sign of bird migration.
Chuck-will’s-widows — Southern whippoorwills, if one chooses to call them so —
have arrived and are abundantly in voice. The nights are scarcely long enough
for all they have to say. I hear of a cottager who is awakened by one so
persistently and so early in the morning that he is devising means to kill it.
I hope he will not succeed, although if the bird is close to his open window
and begins to unburden himself at half-past two, as one does within hearing
from my bed, I cannot very seriously blame him for the attempt. He goes out in
his night-clothes, I am told, and tries to “shoo” it away; but the bird has a
message, as truly as Poe’s raven, and is bound to deliver it, whether men will hear
or forbear. On the
morning of March 26, in an ante-breakfast stroll, I found among the pines
immediately in the rear of the hotel the first summer tanager of the season.
The splendid creature, bright red throughout, was flitting from tree to tree,
singing a measure or two from each. He acted as if he were happy to be back in
Ormond, and I did not wonder. A red-eyed vireo was singing on the 15th, and
since then birds of the same kind have become moderately common. Considering
that the red-eye is not supposed to winter anywhere in the United States (I saw
nothing of it at Miami), and arrives so late in New England, it seems to have
reached Ormond surprisingly early. For some
time the woods have been alive in spots with busy crowds of warblers. Parulas especially
have been present in enormous force, and have sung literally in chorus. I have
seen many yellow-throated warblers also, and many myrtles, with a fair
sprinkling of prairies and black-and-white creepers. But the birds that have
sung best — after the mocker and the thrasher, perhaps — are not spring comers,
but our faithful winter friends, the cardinal grosbeak and the Carolina wren.
Indeed, of all Southern songsters I believe that the cardinal stands first in
my affections. Sweetness, tenderness, affectionateness, and variety, these are
his gifts, and they are good ones, even if they are not the highest. Out in the
flatwoods, a few days ago, we suddenly heard, coming from a thicket of dwarf
palmetto on the edge of water, a quite unexpected strain, a loud, short trill.
“What was that?” asked my companions, as we looked at one another; for there
were three pairs of field-glasses in the carriage. “It sounded like a swamp
sparrow,” said I, with doubt in my voice. At that moment the measure was given
out again, prefaced this time by a peculiar indrawn whistle. Then the truth
flashed upon me. It was the song of a pine-wood sparrow. I had not heard it for
many years. In the same place meadow larks were in tune, bluebirds warbled, and
pine warblers and brown-headed nuthatches were in voice among the pine trees.
Here, too, I was glad to hear, for the first time in Florida, the caw of a real
crow, a bird with a roof to his mouth and a voice that sounded like home. Such are
some of a bird-loving man’s early spring pleasures in this Southern country. I
do not mean to praise the season unduly. New England can beat it when the time
comes; at least, I know one New Englander who thinks so; but not in March. |
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