ly associated. Nature fills her
dish with the berries, then covers them with the white and yellow of
milk and cream, thus suggesting a combination we are quick to follow.
Milk alone, after it loses its animal heat, is a clod, and begets
torpidity of the brain; the berries lighten it, give wings to it, and
one is fed as by the air he breathes or the water he drinks.

Then the delight of "picking" the wild berries! It is one of the
fragrant memories of boyhood. Indeed, for boy or man to go a-berrying
in a certain pastoral country I know of, where a passer-by along the
highway is often regaled by a breeze loaded with a perfume of the
o'er-ripe fruit, is to get nearer to June than by almost any course I
know of. Your errand is so private and confidential! You stoop low.
You part away the grass and the daisies, and would lay bare the
inmost secrets of the meadow. Everything is yet tender and succulent;
the very air is bright and new; the warm breath of the meadow comes
up in your face; to your knees you are in a sea of daisies and
clover; from your knees up, you are in a sea of solar light and
warmth. Now you are prostrate like a swimmer, or like a surf-bather
reaching for pebbles or shells, the white and green spray breaks
above you; then, like a devotee before a shrine or naming his beads,
your rosary strung with luscious berries; anon you are a grazing
Nebuchadnezzar, or an artist taking an inverted view of the landscape.

The birds are alarmed by your close scrutiny of their domain. They
hardly know whether to sing or to cry, and do a little of both. The
bobolink follows you and circles above and in advance of you, and is
ready to give you a triumphal exit from the field, if you will only
depart.

"Ye boys that gather flowers and strawberries,
Lo, hid within the grass, an adder lies,"

Warton makes Virgil sing; and Montaigne, in his "Journey to Italy,"
says: "The children very often are afraid, on account of the snakes, to
go and pick the strawberries that grow in quantities on the mountains
and among bushes." But there is no serpent here,--at worst, only a
bumblebee's or yellow-jacket's nest. You soon find out the spring in
the corner of the field under the beechen tree. While you wipe your
brow and thank the Lord for spring water, you glance at the initials in
the bark, some of them so old that they seem runic and legendary. You
find out, also, how gregarious the strawberry is,--that the different
var