I could not select a single spot in the neighborhood, favorable to quiet study, without having it made desolate or turned into a thoroughfare. The loveliest place I found at all was a footpath passing for about fifty feet through a fringe of low cedar, sweet gum trees, and shrubs loaded with pink lily-of-the-valley shaped blossoms. Across the path ran a brooklet, a mere thread of water, so shallow that small birds stood in the middle to bathe, though it deepened into a pool below, where frogs croaked and plunged. It was cool; it was quiet, far from the everywhere present negro hut; there was no sound but the trickle of the streamlet as it fell into the pool, and the softened roar of the ocean beyond the wide salt marsh. To this nook I went every day, always trying to surprise the birds at their usual occupations, but never quite succeeding; for steal in quietly as I might I always heard low remarks, a slight flutter of wings, and usually saw a dark form or two departing near the ground behind some shrub. Slowly and quietly, however, I took my seat on a bank close under a thick bush,--while the silence around me was as profound as if no wing had ever fluttered there,--and became as motionless as circumstances would allow, for beside the birds there were other tenants not half so shy. After a few moments, when the ripple I caused had died away, sounds of life began again; unknown water creatures made queer noises in the pool below, low bird tones, unfamiliar scraps of song fell on the ear, ordinary ways were resumed. In this pleasant place I made acquaintance with the painted-finch, or nonpareil, who was least frightened of the small birds, and stood patiently on a cedar twig till I became quiet, then came down in plain sight, waded up to the tops of his firm little legs in the water, and deliberately took his bath before my very face. Here also I had a call from Bob White, who cautiously lifted a striped cap and a very bright eye above the grass tops to look at me. He did not introduce himself; indeed, after a moment's steady gaze his head dropped and I saw him no more, but I heard him rustle in the grass on the way to the strawberries, of which he demands--and gets--his share. Ruin fell upon this charming retreat in this wise. One day on my approach I saw commotion in the shrubs and two negroes at work chopping great branches out on each side of the path, letting in the sun to my bank, and turning it into a hideous wreck. I protested. "Why is this? What are you doing?" "Oh, we're just cuttin' some pea-poles!" they replied calmly. They had been too lazy or too indifferent to step ten feet on one side into the thicker copse, and leave the pretty path in its beauty, and the mischief was done, and after all it was not my business. I passed on.