DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 59 



that had blossomed freely in the summer. 

 The house has been gone for these thirty 

 years or more (alas! my sun must be rap- 

 idly declining when memory casts so long 

 a shadow), but the bushes seem likely to 

 hold their own for at least a century. They 

 might have prompted a wise man to some 

 wise reflections ; but for myself, it must be 

 acknowledged, I fell instead to thinking how 

 many half days I had fished and caught 

 nothing, or next to nothing along this 

 same pleasant, willow-bordered shore. 



In Norton pasture, an hour or two later, 

 I made myself young again by putting a few 

 checkerberries into my mouth; and in a 

 small new clearing just over the brook 

 ("Dyer's Run," this used to be called, but 

 I fear the name is falling into forgetfulness) 

 I stumbled upon a patch of some handsome 

 evergreen shrub, which I saw at once to be 

 a novelty. I took it for a member of the 

 heath family, but it proved to belong with 

 the hollies, Ilex glabra, or ink-berry, a 

 plant not to be found in the county where it 

 is my present lot to botanize. So, even on 



lowed a pronunciation " traditional in many old English 

 families." 



