fifteen years of curiosity; and, more than that, a bird which here and now was quite unexpected, since it was not included in either of the two Florida lists that I had brought with me from home.  For perhaps five seconds I had my opera-glass on the blue head and the thick-set, dark bill, with its lighter-colored under mandible.  Then I heard the clatter of a horse’s hoofs, and lifted my eyes.  My friend the owner of the plantation was coming down the road at a gallop, straight upon me.  If I was to see the grosbeak and make sure of him, it must be done at once.  I moved to bring him fully into view, and he flew into the thick of a pine-tree out of sight.  But the tree was not far off, and if Mr. ——­ would pass me with a nod, the case was still far from hopeless.  A bright thought came to me.  I ran from the path with a great show of eager absorption, leveled my glass upon the pine-tree, and stood fixed.  Perhaps Mr. ——­ would take the hint.  Alas! he had too much courtesy to pass his own guest without speaking.  “Still after the birds?” he said, as he checked his horse.  I responded, as I hope, without any symptom of annoyance.  Then, of course, he wished to know what I was looking at, and I told him that a blue grosbeak had just flown into that pine-tree, and that I was most distressingly anxious to see more of him.  He looked at the pine-tree.  “I can’t see him,” he said.  No more could I.  “It wasn’t a blue jay, was it?” he asked.  And then we talked of one thing and another, I have no idea what, till he rode away to another part of the plantation where a gang of women were at work.  By this time the grosbeak had disappeared utterly.  Possibly he had gone to a bit of wood on the opposite side of the cane-swamp.  I scaled a barbed-wire fence and made in that direction, but to no purpose.  The grosbeak was gone for good.  Probably I should never see another.  Could the planter have read my thoughts just then he would perhaps have been angry with himself, and pretty certainly he would have been angry with me.  That a Yankee should accept his hospitality, and then load him with curses and call him all manner of names!  How should he know that I was so insane a hobbyist as to care more for the sight of a new bird than for all the laws and customs of ordinary politeness?  As my feelings cooled, I saw that I was stepping over hills or rows of some strange-looking plants just out of the ground.  Peanuts, I guessed; but to make sure I called to a colored woman who was hoeing not far off.  “What are these?” “Pinders,” she answered.  I knew she meant peanuts,—­otherwise “ground-peas” and “goobers,”—­and now that I once more have a dictionary at my elbow I learn that the word, like “goober,” is, or is supposed to be, of African origin.