STRAWBERRIES 57 



Adam did not have the Wilson strawberry ; he had 

 the wild strawberry that Eve plucked in their hill- 

 meadow and "hulled " with her own hands, and that, 

 take it all in all, even surpasses the late-ripened 

 Wilson. 



Adam is still extant in the taste and appetite of 

 most country boys; lives there a country boy who 

 does not like wild strawberries and milk, — yea, pre- 

 fers it to any other known dish ? I am not think- 

 ing of a dessert of strawberries and cream; this the 

 city boy may have, too, after a sort; but bread-and- 

 milk, with the addition of wild strawberries, is pe- 

 culiarly a country dish, and is to the taste what a 

 wild bird's song is to the ear. When I was a lad, 

 and went afield with my hoe or with the cows, dur- 

 ing the strawberry season, I was sure to return at 

 meal-time with a lining of berries in the top of my 

 straw hat. They were my daily food, and I could 

 taste the liquid and gurgling notes of the bobolink 

 in every spoonful of them ; and at this day, to make 

 a dinner or supper off a bowl of milk with bread 

 and strawberries, — plenty of strawberries, — well, 

 is as near to being a boy again as I ever expect to 

 come. The golden age draws sensibly near. Ap- 

 petite becomes a kind of delicious thirst, — a gentle 

 and subtle craving of all parts of the mouth and 

 throat, — and those nerves of taste that occupy, as 

 it were, a back seat, and take little cognizance of 

 grosser foods, come forth, and are played upon and 

 set vibrating. Indeed, I think, if there is ever re- 

 )oicing throughout one's alimentary household, — • 



