cult to eat it without making faces. But wait till toward the end of the season, after the plant gets over its hurry and takes time to ripen its fruit. Out of its crabbedness and spitefulness come the finest, choicest flavors.

It is an astonishing berry. It lays hold of the taste in a way that the aristocratic berries, like the Jecunda or Triumph, cannot approximate to. A quart of these rareripes I venture to say contains more of the peculiar virtue and excellence of the strawberry kind than can be had in twice the same quantity of any other cultivated variety.

7. Take these berries in a bowl of rich milk with some bread, — ah, what a dish, — too good to set before a king! I suspect this was the food of Adam in Paradise, only Adam did not have the Wilson strawberry; he had the wild strawberry that Eve plucked in their hill-meadow and "hulled" with her own hands; and that, take it all in all, even surpasses the late-ripened Wilson.

8. When I was a lad, and went afield with my hoe or with the cows, during the strawberry season, I was sure to return at meal-time with a lining of berries in the top of my straw hat. They were my daily food, and I could taste. the liquid and gurgling notes of the bobolink in every spoonful of them; and at this day to make a dinner or supper off a bowl of milk with bread and strawberries, plenty of strawberries, — well, is as near to being a boy again as I ever expect to come.

Indeed, I think, if ever that much-abused servant, the stomach, says Amen, or those faithful handmaidens, the liver and spleen, nudge each other delightedly, it must be when one on a torrid summer day passes by the solid and carnal dinner for this simple Arcadian dish.

9. The wild strawberry, like the wild apple, is spicy and high-flavored, but, unlike the apple, it is also mild and delicious. It has the true rustic sweetness and piquancy. What it lacks in size, when compared with the garden berry, it makes up in intensity.

The favorite haunt of the wild strawberry is an up-lying meadow that has been exempt from the plow for five or six years, and that has little timothy and much daisy. When you go a-berrying turn your steps toward the milkwhite meadows. The slightly bitter odor of the daisies is very agreeable to the smell, and affords a good background for the perfume of the fruit.

10. I was a famous berry-picker when a boy. It was near enough to hunting and fishing to enlist me. Mother would always send me in preference to any of the rest of the boys. I got the biggest berries and the most of them. There was something of the excitement of the chase in the occupation, and something of the charm and preciousness of game about the trophies. The pursuit had its surprises, its expectancies, its sudden disclosures, in fact, its uncertainties. It is only another kind of angling.

11. The strawberry is always the hope of the invalid, and sometimes, no doubt, his salvation. It is the first and finest relish among fruits, and well merits Dr. Boteler's memorable saying, that "doubtless God might have made a better berry than the strawberry, but doubtless God never did."

JOHN BORROUGHS.

1. Nor a little of the sunshine of our northern winters is surely wrapped up in the apple. How could we winter over without it! How is life sweetened by its mild acids! a cellar well filled with apples is more valuable than a chamber filled with flax and wool. So much sound ruddy life to draw upon, to strike one's roots down into, as it

were.

2. The apple is full of sugar and mucilage, which make it highly nutritious. It is said "The operators of Cornwall, England, consider ripe apples nearly as nourishing as bread, and far more so than potatoes. In the year 1801 which was a year of much scarcity-apples, instead of being converted into cider, were sold to the poor, and the laborers asserted that they could stand their work' on baked apples without meat; whereas a potato diet required either meat or some other substantial nutriment. The French and Germans use apples extensively, so do the inhabitants of all European nations. The laborers depend upon them as an article of food, and frequently make a dinner of sliced apples and bread."

3. Yet the English apple is a tame and insipid affair, compared with the intense, sun-colored and sun-steeped

fruit our orchards yield. The best thing I know about Chili is this fact which I learn from Darwin's "Voyage," namely, that the apple thrives well there. Darwin saw a town there so completely buried in a wood of apple-trees, that its streets were merely paths in an orchard. The tree indeed thrives so well, that large branches cut off in the spring and planted two or three feet deep in the ground send out roots and develop into fine full-bearing trees by the third year. The people know the value of the apple too. They make cider and wine of it and then from the refuse a white and finely flavored spirit; then by another process a sweet treacle is obtained called honey. The children and pigs ate little or no other food. He does not add that the people are healthy and temperate, but I have no doubt they are.

4. The apple is the commonest and yet the most varied and beautiful of fruits. A dish of them is as becoming to the center-table in winter as was the vase of flowers in the summer, a bouquet of spitzenbergs and greenings and northern spies. A rose when it blooms, the apple is a rose when it ripens. It pleases every sense to which it can be addressed, the touch, the smell, the sight, the taste; and when it falls in the still October days it pleases the ear. It is a call to a banquet, it is a signal that the feast is ready.

5. How they resist the cold! holding out almost as long as the red cheeks of the boys do. A frost that destroys the potatoes and other roots only makes the apple more crisp and vigorous; they peep out from the chance November snows unscathed. When I see the fruit vender on the street corner stamping his feet and beating his hands to keep them warm, and his naked apples lying exposed to

the blasts, I wonder if they do not ache, too, to clap their hands and enliven their circulation. But they can stand

it nearly as long as the vender can.

6. The boy is indeed the true apple-eater, and is not to be questioned how he came by the fruit with which his pockets are filled. It belongs to him, and he may steal it. if it cannot be had in any other way. His own juicy flesh craves the juicy flesh of the apple. Sap draws sap. His fruit-eating has little reference to the state of his appetite. Whether he be full of meat or empty of meat he wants the apple just the same. Before meal or after meal it never comes amiss. The farm-boy munches apples all day long. He has nests of them in the hay-mow, mellowing, to which he makes frequent visits. Sometimes old Brindle, having access through the open door, smells them out and makes short work of them.

7. In northern mythology the giants eat apples to keep off old age. The apple is indeed the fruit of youth. As we grow old we crave apples less. It is an ominous sign. When you are ashamed to be seen eating them on the street; when you can carry them in your pocket and your hand not constantly find its way to them; when your lunchbasket is without them and you can pass a winter's night by the fireside with no thought of the fruit at your elbow: then be assured you are no longer a boy, either in heart or years.

8. The genuine apple-eater comforts himself with an apple in their season as others with a pipe or cigar. When he has nothing else to do, or is bored, he eats an apple. While he is waiting for the train he eats an apple, sometimes several of them. When he takes a walk he arms himself with apples. His travelling-bag is full of apples.