300 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



have their customers; for it is quite a cherished weak- 

 ness in some people to like them. 



The papaw, perhaps because of its puckery taste 

 when green, is always connected in my mind with per- 

 simmons, although the persimmon comes later, and is 

 best relished after Thanksgiving. I know of but one 

 wild persimmon-tree in this township (though there 

 are others in the county), but I will wager it has the 

 true metal to it. I have come upon groves of wild 

 persimmons in the woods of central Arkansas, where 

 the trees are thirty feet high and over, whose fruit 

 was nearly as large as a walnut, and as luscious and 

 sweet as sugar. We would gather tree huckleberries 

 with them, too, and a feast of these two wild fruits 

 of the forest was a rare treat indeed as we ate our 

 lunch at noon beside a brook. 



Papaws are also associated to me with the finding 

 of arrow-heads and the rising up of that spirit of rov- 

 ing and hunting which comes to us all at nutting-time. 

 A papaw-tree, with its graceful yellow foliage, seems 

 to me to be filled with the very spirit of the autumn 

 woods. A woods without papaws lacks something, or, 

 rather, would be more of a woods, would have more 

 of the true forest flavor, if there were only an occa- 

 sional clump of papaws on a ridgeside or in some pic- 

 turesque dingle beside a brook. The scent of a gray 

 squirrel or the whiff of a deer might then fill our nos- 

 trils, and the glimpse of a wigwam near the spring 

 would only complete the papaw thicket's native wild- 

 ness. 



It is entertaining to read the accounts of the pio- 

 neer botanists in this country, and of their enthusiasm 



