STRAWBERRIES 61 



before a shrine, or naming his beads, your rosary 



strung with luscious berries; anon you are a grazing 



Nebuchadnezzar, or an artist taking an inverted view 



of the landscape. 



The birds are alarmed by your close scrutiny of 



their domain. They hardly know whether to sing 



or to cry, and do a little of both. The bobolink 



follows you and circles above and in advance of you^ 



and is ready to give you a triumphal exit from th^ 



field, if you will only depart. 



"Ye boys that gather flowers and strawberries, 

 Lo, hid within the grass, an adder lies," 



Warton makes Virgil sing; and Montaigne, in his 

 "Journey to Italy,'' says: "The children very often 

 are afraid, on account of the snakes, to go and pick 

 the strawberries that grow in quantities on the moun- 

 tains and among the bushes." But there is no ser- 

 pent here, — at worst, only a bumblebee's or yellow- 

 jacket's nest. You soon find out the spring in the 

 corner of the field under the beechen tree. Whilo 

 you wipe your brow and thank the Lord for spring 

 water, you glance at the initials m the bark, some 

 of them so old that they seem runic and legendary. 

 You find out, also, how gregarious the strawberry is, 

 — that the different varieties exist in little colonies 

 about the field. When you strike the outskirts of 

 one of these plantations, how quickly you work to- 

 ward the centre of it, and then from the centre out, 

 then circumnavigate it, and follow up all its branch- 

 ings and windings ! 



Then the delight in the abstract and in the con- 



