A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open

On June 7, 1915, I was the guest of my friend John M. Parker, of New Orleans, at his house at Pass Christian, Mississippi. For many miles west, and especially east, of Pass Christian, there are small towns where the low, comfortable, singularly picturesque and attractive houses are owned, some by Mississippi planters, some by city folk who come hither from the great Southern cities, and more and more in wintertime from the great Northern cities also, to pass a few months. The houses, those that are isolated and those in the little towns, stand in what is really one long row; a row broken by vacant reaches, but as a whole stretching for sixty miles, with the bright waters of the Gulf lapping the beach in front of them, and behind them leagues of pine forest. Between the Gulf and the waters lies a low ridge or beach of white sand. It is hard to make anything grow in this sand; but the owners of the houses have succeeded, using dead leaves and what manure is available; and in this leaf-mould the trees and grasses and flowers grow in profusion. Long, flimsy wooden docks stretch out into the waters of the Gulf; there is not much bad weather, as a rule, but every few years there comes a terrible storm which wrecks buildings and bridges, destroys human lives by the thousand, washes the small Gulf sailing craft ashore, and sweeps away all the docks.

Our host's house was cool and airy, with broad, covered verandas, and mosquito screens on the doors and the big windows. The trees in front were live-oaks, and others of his own planting -- magnolias, pecans, palms, and a beautiful mimosa. The blooming oleanders and hydrangeas were a delight to the eye. Behind, the place stretched like a long ribbon to the edge of the fragrant pine forest, where the long-leaved and loblolly pines rose like tall columns out of the needle-covered sand. Five pairs of mockingbirds and one pair of thrashers had just finished nesting; at dawn, when the crescent of the dying moon had risen above the growing light in the east, the mockers sang wonderfully, and after a while the thrasher chimed in. Only the singing of nightingales where they are plentiful, as in some Italian woods, can compare in strength and ecstasy and passion, in volume and intricate change and continuity, with the challenging love-songs of many mockers, rivalling one another, as they perch and balance and spring upward and float downward through the branches of live-oak or magnolia, after sunset and before sunrise, and in the warm, still, brilliant moonlight of spring and early summer.