CHRISTMAS MISTLETOE 179 
catch and then the fire; and the precious perfume 
of leaf and branch fills all the air and the blue 
smoke lifts its fitful, shifting cloud and blue as 
the blue sky is into which it climbs. Then I 
piled more dead branches and hunted a forked 
stick and impaled the steak and proceeded to be 
a sybarite of the woodland. Talk about cooking!. 
I am a chef for a Cesaric household. Then I 
ate my own cooking—a thing which few cooks 
dare to do, or if they do, do not survive. I ate my 
dinner from the stick till there was left only the 
stick, which, I being no gormand, did not eat. Then 
I sat and looked at the wood coals and the still 
rising smoke and heard the south wind blowing 
north, and the lotus nepenthe of the wind and the 
wood smoke and the dinner-eating-under-the-sky 
all but overcame my sense of duty and my spirit 
of adventure. For, whatever others think, I 
vow I came to gather Christmas mistletoe. 
So I arose like a knight of the grail and went 
back to the aggravating and impertinent and 
un-Christian cottonwood trunk where the mistle- 
toe was jesting at me and covertly giggling 
at my many mishaps in ascent and equally 
many successes in descent. Conclusion: I climbed 
the tree. Can’t you hear me do it? The beef- 
steak and bread accentuated by the salt had 
done business. My heavy artillery and infantry 
had done what my cavalry charge had failed to 
do. I ascended. The mistletoe quit giggling, 
but the cottonwood was madder than ever. 
