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:

"'Now wouldn't you think it was enough to have a strawberry tastin'
l