A FEAST OF WILD STRAWBERRIES 



our array — how vast ! — of gold plate, then are we 

 kings indeed. 



I'll give you joy of all your hot-house fruit, if you'll 

 leave me to my Wild Strawberries. I'll wish you pleasure 

 of Signor What's-his-name, the violin player, if you'll 

 but listen to my choir of thrushes. What do you care 

 to eat ? Here's nothing over substantial, I'll admit ; 

 but there's good wine in the brook, and food for a day 

 in the fields and hedges. Nuts, Blackberries, Wortle- 

 berries, Wild Raspberries, Mushrooms, Crabs and Sloes, 

 and Samphire for preserving ; Elderberries to make 

 into a cordial ; and Wild Strawberries, that's my 

 chiefest dish at this season — food for princesses. 



Come to the cliffs with your leaf of Wild Straw- 

 berries, and I can show you blue Flax, and Sea Pinks, 

 yellow Sea-Cabbage, and Sea Convolvulus, and Golden 

 Samphire ; you shall have Sandwort, and Viper's 

 Bugloss, and Ploughman's Spikenard, and Horned 

 Poppies, and Thyme, in plenty. We will choose a 

 fanciful flower for the table, the yellow Elecampane 

 that gave a cosmetic to Helen of Troy. And the men- 

 tion of her who set Olympus and Earth in a blaze of 

 discord makes me remember how Hermes, of the golden 

 wand, gave to Odysseus the plant he had plucked from 

 the ground, black at the root, and with a flower like to 

 milk — " Moly the Gods call it, but it is hard for mortal 

 men to dig ; hoiybeit with the Gods all things are 

 possible." 



Any manner of imaginings may come to those who 

 make a feast of 'Wild Strawberries. We may follow 

 our Classic idea and discuss the Hydromel, or cider of 

 the Greeks ; the syrup of squills they drank to aid their 

 digestion, or the absinthe they took to promote appetite. 

 We might even try to make one of their sweet wines of 

 Rose leaves and honey, such a thing would go well 



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