226 OUR COMMON F1UJITS. 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 



THE MULBEERY. 



WHEtf every other tree in garden, wood, or wold has 

 donned the green vesture of spring, one still remains in 

 "naked majesty," an Adam of the Eden. The cold night 

 winds, nipping so many tender buds which had been too 

 easily lured forth by transitory noontide sunshine, beat 

 harmlessly upon the Mulberry's sapless bark, and not till 

 the last spring frost is over, and cold has finally yielded 

 to the mild persuasions of approaching summer, does it 

 abandon its bare-branched security and suffer its young 

 leaves to venture forth, gladdening the watchful gardener 

 with an unerring token that his hitherto sheltered nurs- 

 lings may now be safely trusted in the open parterre. 

 Nor has this peculiarity escaped the poet's observant eye, 

 for Cowley describes at length how 



"Cautiously the Mulberry did move, 

 And first tbe temper of the skies would prove, 

 What sign the sun was in, and if she might 

 Give credit yet to winter's seeming flight. 

 She dares not venture on his first retreat, 

 Nor trusts her fruit and leaves to doubtful heat ; 

 Her ready sap within her bark confines 

 Till she of settled warmth has certain signs ; 

 Then making rich amends for the delay, 

 With sudden haste she dons her green array." 



But though the leaves display such singular reticence as 

 regards appearing in spring, they might make the same 

 kind of apology which was tendered by Charles Lamb, 

 when, on being remonstrated with for coming to business 

 so late in the morning, he replied, " But then remember 

 how early I go away in the afternoon ! " for though the 

 last to put forth in spring, they are the first to leave 

 in autumn, the least frost bringing them all to the 

 ground. 



Its cautiousness earning for it from the ancients the 

 title of the wisest of trees, the mulberry was dedicated 

 by the Greeks to Minerva, while, to account for the fact 

 of there being both a white and a black-fruited species, 



