A VISIT TO MOUNT AGASSIZ 233 



just breaking through a bed of last year's 

 needles, while a bumblebee, a capable eco- 

 nomic botanist, visits them one by one. 

 Then, as I emerge from the grove on its 

 sunny edge, I catch a sudden pungent odor 

 of balsam. It rises from the dry leaves, 

 the sunlight having somehow set it free. In 

 the shade of the wood nothing of the kind 

 was perceptible. The fact strikes me curi- 

 ously as one that I have often been half 

 consciously aware of, but now for the first 

 time really notice. On the instant I am 

 taken far back. It is a July noon ; I am 

 trudging homeward, and in my proud boyish 

 hand is a basket of shining black huckle- 

 berries carefully rounded over. The sense 

 of smell is naturally a sentimentalist; or 

 perhaps the olfactory nerves have some oc- 

 cult connection with the seat of memory. 



Here is one of my favorite spots : a level 

 grassy field, with a ruined house and barn 

 behind me, between the road and a swampy 

 patch, and in front " all the mountains," 

 from Moosilauke to Adams. How many 

 times I have stopped here to admire them ! 

 I look at them now, and then fall to watch- 



