122 In Touch with Nature. 



a tempting seat ; but our rumination was strictly 

 physical. We were lost, for the time, to nature's 

 beauties, and vigorously chewed sweet cicely. 



It may seem to many a sad fall to quit the 

 higher pleasures of contemplation and seek com- 

 fort in eating weeds, but the merit of sweet cicely 

 lies hidden in the aromatic root rather than in its 

 inconspicuous white flowers, which, as yet, had 

 not appeared. Why not, then, if the weed be 

 mentioned, tell the whole truth ? It is good to 

 eat, and good for nothing else ; and its merit as 

 food is not merely that it is pleasantly aromatic ; 

 it has, too, the magic charm of recalling other 

 days. He who chewed sweet cicely forty years 

 ago, and had no other care than the fear that the 

 supply might some day be exhausted, will know 

 what joy in after-years lies in reclining on a rock 

 in the woods, and while listening to birds and 

 rippling waters, chewing sweet cicely again. It is 

 worth a small fortune, after weeks of worry, to be 

 able, if but for a brief hour, to be a boy once 

 more. 



The goal was not yet reached. On through 

 the tangled underbrush and over hill-side brooks 



