gone, saw us on this same old road bound for one of the places where we thought ourselves most likely to find a few (possibly a pint or two, but more probably a handful or two) of these humble but spicy fruits. Not that the plants were not plentiful enough in all directions, but it was only in certain spots (or rather in very uncertain spots, since these were continually shifting) that they were ever in good bearing condition. We came after a while to understand that the best crops were produced for two or three years after the cutting off of the wood in suitable localities. Letting in the sunlight seems to have the effect of starting into sudden fruitfulness this hardy, persistent little plant, although I never could discover that it thrived better for growing permanently in an open, sunny field. Perhaps it requires an unexpected change of condition, a providential nudge, as it were, to jog it into activity, like some poets. Whatever the explanation, we used now and then in recent clearings (and nowhere else) to find the ground fairly red with berries. Those were red-letter days in our calendar. How handsome such a
patch of rose-color was (though we made haste to despoil it), circling an old stump or a bowlder! The berries were pleasant to the eye and good for food; but after all, their principal attractiveness lay in the fact that they came right upon the heels of winter. They were the first-fruits of the new year (ripened the year before, to be sure), and to our thinking were fit to be offered upon any altar, no matter how sacred.
I have called the subject of my loving meditations a by-road. Formerly it was the main thoroughfare between two villages, but shortly after my acquaintance with it began a new and more direct one was laid out. Yet the old road, half deserted as it is, has not altogether escaped the ruthless hand of the improver. Within my time it has been widened throughout, and in one place a new section has been built to cut off a curve. Fortunately, however, the discarded portion still remains, well grown up to grass, and closely encroached upon by willows, alders, sumachs, barberries, dogwoods, smilax, clethra, azalea, button-bush, birches, and what not, yet still passable even for carriages,
and more inviting than ever to lazy pedestrians like myself. On this cast-off section is a cosy, grassy nook, shaded by a cluster of red cedars. This was one of our favorite way-stations on summer noons. It gives me a comfortable, restful feeling to look into it even now, as if my weary limbs had reminiscences of their own connected with the place.
Right at this point stands an ancient russet-apple tree, which seems no older and brings forth no smaller apples now than it did when I first knew it. How natural it looks in every knot and branch! Strange, too, that it should be so, since I do not recall its ever contributing the first mouthful to my pleasures as a schoolboy gastronomer. In those times I judged a tree solely by the New Testament standard, very literally interpreted,—"By their fruits ye shall know them." Now I have other tests, and can value an old acquaintance of this kind for its picturesqueness, though its apples be bitter as wormwood.
I am making too much of the food question, and will therefore say nothing of strawberries, raspberries, thimbleberries, cranberries
(which last were delicious, as we took them out of their icy ovens in the spring), pig-nuts, hazel-nuts, acorns, and the rest. Yet I will not pass by a small clump of dangleberry bushes (a September luxury not common in our neighborhood) and a lofty pear-tree. The latter, in truth, hardly belongs under this head; for though it bore superabundant crops of pears, not even a child was ever known to eat one. We called them iron pears, perhaps because nothing but the hottest fire could be expected to reduce them to a condition of softness. My mouth is all in a pucker at the mere thought of the rusty-green bullets. It did seem a pity they should be so outrageously hard, so absolutely untoothsome; for the tree, as I say, was a big one and provokingly prolific, and, moreover, stood squarely upon the roadside. What a godsend we should have found it, had its fruit been a few degrees less stony! Such incongruities and disappointments go far to convince me that the creation is indeed, as some theologians have taught, under a curse.
My appetite for wild fruits has grown dull with age, but meanwhile my affection
for the old road has not lessened, but rather increased. In itself the place is nowise remarkable, a common country back road (its very name is Back Street); but all the same I "take pleasure in its stones, and favor the dust thereof." There are none of us so matter-of-fact and unsentimental, I hope, as never to have experienced the force of old associations in gilding the most ordinary objects. For my own part, I protest, I would give more for a single stunted cluster of orange-red berries from a certain small vine of Roxbury wax-work, near the entrance to Millstone Pasture aforesaid, than for a bushel of larger and handsomer specimens from some alien source. This old vine still holds on, I am happy to see, though it appears to have made no growth in twenty years. Long may it be spared! It was within a few rods of it, beside the path that runs into the pasture, that I shot my first bird. Newly armed with a shotgun, and on murder bent, I turned in here; and as luck would have it, there sat the innocent creature in a birch. The temptation was too great. There followed a moment of excitement, a nervous aim, a bang, and
a catbird's song was hushed forever. A mean and cruel act, which I confess with shame, and have done my best to atone for by speaking here and there a good word for this poorly appreciated member of our native choir. I should be glad to believe that the schoolboys of the present day are more tender-hearted than those with whom I mixed; but I am not without my doubts. As Darwin showed, all animals in the embryonic stage tend to reproduce ancestral characteristics; and our Anglo-Saxon ancestors (how easy it seems to believe it!) were barbarians.