54 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



Let me not be afraid of overpraising it, but probe 

 and probe for words to hint its surprising virtues. 

 We may well celebrate it with festivals and music. 

 It has that indescribable quality of all first things, 

 that shy, uncloying, provoking barbed sweetness. 

 It is eager and sanguine as youth. It is born of the 

 copious dews, the fragrant nights, the tender skies, 

 the plentiful rains of the early season. The singing 

 of birds is in it, and the health and frolic of lusty 

 Nature. It is the product of liquid May touched by 

 the June sun. It has the tartness, the briskness, 

 the unruliness of spring, and the aroma and intensity 

 of summer. 



Oh the strawberry days ! how vividly they come 

 back to one! The smell of clover in the fields, of 

 blooming rye on the hills, of the wild grape beside 

 the woods, and of the sweet honeysuckle and spira?a 

 about the house. The first hot, moist days. The 

 daisies and buttercups; the songs of the birds, their 

 first reckless jollity and love-making over; the full 

 tender foliage of the trees; the bees swarming, and 

 the air strung with resonant musical chords. The 

 time of the sweetest and most succulent grass, when 

 the cows come home with aching udders. Indeed, 

 the strawberry belongs to the juciest time of the 

 year. 



What a challenge it is to the taste ! how it bites 

 back again! and is there any other sound like the 

 snap and crackle with which it salutes the ear on 

 being plucked from the stems 1 It is a threat to 

 one sense that the other is soon to verify. It snaps 



