dron thicket.

But how seldom we put a cup of pleasure to our lips without a dash of
bitters, a touch of faultfinding. My drop of discontent, that day, was
the thought that the northern woodland, at least in June, yielded no
fruit to match its beauty and its fragrance.

There is good browsing among the leaves of the wood and the grasses of
the meadow, as every well-instructed angler knows. The bright emerald
tips that break from the hemlock and the balsam like verdant flames have
a pleasant savour to the tongue. The leaves of the sassafras are full
of spice, and the bark of the black-birch twigs holds a fine cordial.
Crinkle-root is spicy, but you must partake of it delicately, or it will
bite your tongue. Spearmint and peppermint never lose their charm for
the palate that still remembers the delights of youth. Wild sorrel has
an agreeable, sour, shivery flavour. Even the tender stalk of a young
blade of grass is a thing that can be chewed by a person of childlike
mind with much contentment.

But, after all, these are only relishes. They whet the appetite more
than they appease it. There should be something to eat, in the June
woods, as perfect in its kind, as satisfying to the sense of taste, as
the birds and the flowers are to the senses of sight and hearing and
smell. Blueberries are good, but they are far away in July. Blackberries
are luscious when they are fully ripe, but that will not be until
August. Then the fishing will be over, and the angler's hour of need
will be past. The one thing that is lacking now beside this mountain
stream is some fruit more luscious and dainty than grows in the tropics,
to melt upon the lips and fill the mouth with pleasure.

But that is what these cold northern woods will not offer. They are too
reserved, too lofty, too puritanical to make provision for the grosser
wants of humanity. They are not friendly to luxury.

Just then, as I shifted my head to find a softer pillow of moss after
this philosophic and immoral reflection, Nature gave me her silent
answer. Three wild strawberries, nodding on their long stems, hung over
my face. It was an invitation to taste and see that they were good.

The berries were not the round and rosy ones of the meadow, but the
long, slender, dark crimson ones of the forest. One, two, three; no more
on that vine; but each one as it touched my lips was a drop of nectar
and a crumb of ambrosia, a concentrated essence of all the pungent
sweetness of