CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS 49 



Do you know what a persimmon, picked from a 

 particular tree along Cohansey Creek on Christmas 

 Day, tastes like ? especially when you have not had 

 a taste of persimmon for twenty years? No, you do 

 not because you are not twenty years old, perhaps, 

 and because you were not a boy along Cohansey 

 Creek, perhaps, and because, if you were, you did 

 not know those two particular persimmon trees, 

 maybe. 



Nobody ever seemed to know the perfection of 

 those persimmons, except myself and the 'possums. 

 Not one of the Luptons, who owned the pasture, the 

 pond, and the trees, had ever been a boy, so far as 

 I could remember, and certainly not one of them 

 had ever tasted the fruit of those two trees. There 

 were other persimmon trees up and down the town- 

 ship, others here along the pond ; but these two were 

 the only trees to hold their fruit until Christmas, 

 preserved with such richness of flavor, such a gummy, 

 candied, wild, woodsy quality, that it could not decay. 

 Those persimmons never decayed. They candied, 

 evaporated, wrinkled, fell, and vanished away. 



Or else the 'possums ate them those that I did 

 not eat. A 'possum had already been here this 

 Christmas morning before me. I had noted his fresh 

 tracks beneath the tree when I came up ; and now, 

 in the tree, I saw where the snow had been brushed 

 from several of the large limbs as the 'possum had 

 moved about in the top, eating his Christmas dinner. 



