snarl,
heedlessly measuring them by the bushel and the dollar only, and sells
the spoils of the meads to Boston and New York; destined to be jammed,
to satisfy the tastes of lovers of Nature there. So butchers rake the
tongues of bison out of the prairie grass, regardless of the torn and
drooping plant. The barberry's brilliant fruit was likewise food for my
eyes merely; but I collected a small store of wild apples for coddling,
which the proprietor and travellers had overlooked. When chestnuts were
ripe I laid up half a bushel for winter. It was very exciting at that
season to roam the then boundless chestnut woods of Lincoln--they now
sleep their long sleep under the railroad--with a bag on my shoulder,
and a stick to open burs with in my hand, for I did not always wait for
the frost, amid the rustling of leaves and the loud reproofs of the red
squirrels and the jays, whose half-consumed nuts I sometimes stole,
for the burs which they had selected were sure to contain sound ones.
Occasionally I climbed and shook the trees. They grew also behind my
house, and one large tree, which almost overshadowed it, was, when
in flower, a bouquet which scented the whole neighborhood, but the
squirrels and the jays got most of its fruit; the last coming in flocks
early in the morning and picking the nuts out of the burs before they
fell, I relinquished these trees to them and visited the more distant
woods composed wholly of chestnut. These nuts, as far as they went, were
a good substitute for bread. Many other substitutes might, perhaps, be
found. Digging one day for fishworms, I discovered the ground-nut
(Apios tuberosa) on its string, the potato of the aborigines, a sort of
fabulous fruit, which I had begun to doubt if I had ever dug and eaten
in childhood, as I had told, and had not dreamed it. I had often since
seen its crumpled red velvety blossom supported by the stems of other
plants without knowing it to be the same. Cultivation has well-nigh
exterminated it. It has a sweetish taste, much like that of a
frost-bitten potato, and I found it better boiled than roasted. This
tuber seemed like a faint promise of Nature to rear her own children
and feed them simply here at some future period. In these days of fatted
cattle and waving grain-fields this humble root, which was once the
totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its
flowering vine; but let wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender
and luxu