A WILD STRAWBERRY
"Such is the story of the Boblink; once spiritual, musical, admired,
the joy of the meadows, and the favourite bird of spring; finally a
gross little sensualist who expiates his sensuality in the larder.
His story contains a moral, worthy the attention of all little birds
and little boys; warning them to keep to those refined and
intellectual pursuits which raised him to so high a pitch of
popularity during the early part of his career; but to eschew all
tendency to that gross and dissipated indulgence, which brought this
mistaken little bird to an untimely end."--WASHINGTON IRVING:
Wolfert's Roost.
The Swiftwater brook was laughing softly to itself as it ran through
a strip of hemlock forest on the edge of the Woodlings' farm. Among
the evergreen branches overhead the gayly-dressed warblers,--little
friends of the forest,--were flitting to and fro, lisping their June
songs of contented love: milder, slower, lazier notes than those in
which they voiced the amourous raptures of May. Prince's Pine and
golden loose-strife and pink laurel and blue hare-bells and purple-
fringed orchids, and a score of lovely flowers were all abloom. The
late spring had hindered some; the sudden heats of early summer had
hastened others; and now they seemed to come out all together, as if
Nature had suddenly tilted up her cornucopia and poured forth her
treasures in spendthrift joy.
I lay on a mossy bank at the foot of a tree, filling my pipe after a
frugal lunch, and thinking how hard it would be to find in any
quarter of the globe a place more fair and fragrant than this hidden
vale among the Alleghany Mountains. The perfume of the flowers of
the forest is more sweet and subtle than the heavy scent of tropical
blossoms. No lily-field in Bermuda could give a fragrance half so
magical as the fairy-like odour of these woodland slopes, soft
carpeted with the green of glossy vines above whose tiny leaves, in
delicate profusion,
"The slight Linnaea hangs its twin-born heads."
Nor are there any birds in Africa, or among the Indian Isles, more
exquisite in colour than these miniature warblers, showing their
gold and green, their orange and black, their blue and white,
against the dark background of the rhododendron 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.