BERRY-TIME FELICITIES 163 



ate so much of an ordinary dinner that out 

 of sheer physical necessity he was compelled 

 to forego his favorite dessert. Alas, and 

 alas ! A wasted appetite is like wasted time, 

 a loss irreparable. You may have another, 

 no doubt, on another day, but never the one 

 you sated upon inferior fruit. 



Why should berries be so many, and a 

 man's digestive capacity so near to nothing? 

 The very bushes reproached me ; like a jeal- 

 ous housewife who finds her choicest dainties 

 discarded on the plate. " We have piped 

 unto you and ye have not danced," they 

 seemed to mutter. I grew shame-faced and 

 looked the other way : at the splendid ro- 

 settes of red bunchberries ; at a bush full of 

 red (another red) mountain-holly berries, 

 red with a most exquisite purplish bloom, the 

 handsomest berries in the world, I am ready 

 to believe. Or I stopped to consider a clus- 

 ter of varnished baneberries, or a few mod- 

 est, drooping, leaf-hidden jewels of the 

 twisted stalk. In truth, and in short, it was 

 berry-time in Franconia. What a strait a 

 man would have been in if all kinds had 

 been humanly edible ! 



