62 LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY 



crete of strolling and lounging about the June mead- 

 ows; of lying in pickle for half a day or more in 

 this pastoral sea, laved by the great tide, shone upon 

 by the virile sun, drenched to the very marrow of 

 your being with the warm and wooing influences 

 of the young summer! 



I was a famous berry-picker when a boy. It was 

 near enough to hunting and fishing to enlist me. 

 Mother would always send me in preference to any 

 of the rest of the boys. I got the biggest berries 

 and the most of them. There was something of the 

 excitement of the chase in the occupation, and some- 

 thing of the charm and preciousness of game about 

 the trophies. The pursuit had its surprises, its ex- 

 pectancies, its sudden disclosures, in fact, its un- 

 certainties. I went forth adventurously. I could 

 wander free as the wind. Then there were moments 

 of inspiration, for it always seemed a felicitous stroke 

 to light upon a particularly fine spot, as it does when 

 one takes an old and wary trout. You discovered 

 the game where it was hidden. Your genius 

 prompted you. Another had passed that way and 

 had missed the prize. Indeed, the successful berry- 

 picker, like Walton's angler, is born, not made. It 

 is only another kind of angling. In the same field 

 one boy gets big berries and plenty of them ; another 

 wanders up and down, and finds only a few little 

 ones. He cannot see them; he does not know how 

 to divine them where they lurk under the leaves and 

 vines. The berry-grower knows that in the culti- 

 vated patch his pickers are very unequal, the baskets 



