Bob White, is your wheat ripe?
Most birds have a song of but one season. The bluebird, for instance, sings only of spring; but in the two simple notes of the partridge there is the melody of falling water, a song of April's pale-green fields, a song of summer's golden grain, and another of autumn's scarlet leaf and frosty morning.
"That's a voice that won't be heard in the land much longer," remarked Aunt Jane; "and when it does stop, it'll be like missin' a voice from the church choir. The wild things are disappearin' one by one. The deer's all gone, and even squirrels are gittin' so skeerce the legislature'll have to pass a law to protect 'em. And I'm bound to say the first settlers is a good deal to blame for it all. Game was so plentiful in them early days that nobody thought about it ever givin' out. Every man was a hunter—he had to be to provide his family with meat—and I've heard father say that every boy in them days was born with a gun in his hand. Old Jonathan Petty, Silas's father, had nine sons, all of 'em sharpshooters. They used to shoot at squirrels for a mark, and if they hit the squirrel anywhere but in the head, old Jonathan'd give 'em a good whippin'. That sort o' trainin' was bound to make a boy a good marksman, but it was hard on the squirrels."
"I know the delicate differences and resemblances between the odors of individual roses"
Drawn by G. Patrick Nelson[ToList]
I had thought myself deeply learned in the lore of sweet odors. I know that the orient spells of sandal-wood can intoxicate like the opium-pipe or the draught of Indian hemp. I know the delicate differences and resemblances between the odors of individual roses. I know that when nature made the coarse hollyhock, she gave it the almond perfume that floats over the waves of the Hellespont from the petals of the patrician oleander growing on its banks. And I know that, in the same mood, she dowered the vulgar horseweed with the breath of the mignonette. Every odor is to me as a note of music, and I know the discords and harmonies in the long, long scale of perfume. I know that heliotrope and mignonette make a dissonance, and heliotrope and tea-roses a perfect third; that there is a chord of melody in heliotrope, tea-roses, and honeysuckle; and in the orange-blossom or tuberose a dominant note that is stronger than any symphony of perfume that can be composed from summer's garden-beds. There are perfumes as evanescent as the dreams of youth, and others as persistent as the memories of childhood. Go into the fields in February, gather the dead penny-royal that has stood through the rains and snows of a long winter, and you will find in its dry stems and shriveled leaves the same gracious scent the green plant has in June. A rose of last October is a poor deflowered thing; but turn to the ice-bound garden-walks where, a month before, the chrysanthemum stood in autumn splendor. The beautiful acanthus-like leaves and the once gorgeous blossoms hang in brown tatters, but still they hold the perfume of lavender and camphor, and from autumn to spring the plant stands embalmed in its own sweetness, like the body of a mummied Pharaoh wrapped in precious gums and spices. I know that the flowers called scentless have their hours when the spirit of perfume visits them and lends them, for a brief season, the charm without which a flower is only half a flower. I have found the fragrance of ripe cherries in the wood of the cherry parted a lifetime from the parent tree. I have marveled over the alchemy that gives to the bitter shriveled fruit of the wild crab-apple tree a fragrance as sweet as its blossom. The heart of a child beats in me at the scent of a green walnut or a handful of fresh hickory leaves; and I have cried out for words to express what I feel when the incense of the wild grape blossom rises from the woodland altars of late spring, and I stand, a lonely worshiper, at a shrine deserted "since the old Hellenic days." But what was that breath coming across the meadows on the sun-warmed air? Was it a lost breeze from the Indian Ocean, caught in some gulf-stream of the air and drifted down into the wind-currents that blow across Kentucky fields in May?
"Strawberries, strawberries, child," said Aunt Jane. "Didn't you ever smell strawberries when the evenin' sun's shinin' on 'em and ripenin' 'em, and the wind's blowin' over 'em like it's blowin' now? There's a ten-acre patch o' strawberries jest across that medder."
It was impossible to go on while that perfume came and went like a far-off, exquisite voice, and even Aunt Jane forgot her hurry to get to town, as we sat with our faces eagerly turned toward the unseen field of strawberries.
"I've heard folks say," said Aunt Jane, "that Kentucky is the natural home o' the strawberry, and I reckon it's so, for I ricollect how, when I was a child, the strawberries grew wild in the pastures, and the cows'd come home at night with their hoofs dyed red with the juice o' the berries they'd been treadin' on all day. Parson Page used to say there was some things that showed the goodness of the Lord, and some things, such as strawberries and grapes and apples and peaches, that showed the exceeding great goodness of the Lord. He'd never eat a strawberry without first holdin' it up and lookin' at it and smellin' it, and he'd say: