148 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 



sunshine has passed into them, and dis 

 tended their purple skins almost to 

 bursting. Such heavy clusters! such 

 bloom ! such sweetness ! such meat and 

 drink in their round globes! What a 

 fine fellow Bacchus would have been, if 

 he had only signed the pledge when he 

 was a young man! I have taken off 

 clusters that were as compact and al 

 most as large as the Black Hamburgs. 

 It is slow work picking them. I do not 

 see how the gatherers for the vintage 

 ever get off enough. It takes so long 

 to disentangle the bunches from the 

 leaves, and the interlacing vines, and the 

 supporting tendrils ; and then I like to 

 hold up each bunch and look at it in the 

 sunlight, and get the fragrance tmd the 

 bloom of it, and show it to Polly, who is 

 making herself useful, as taster and com 

 panion, at the foot of the ladder, before 

 dropping it into the basket. But we 



