A Window in Arcady 
carried as we walk exhales a warm, aromatic perfume, 
very grateful to the system tired of winter provender and 
craving freshness, and to our surprise, though we detest 
the taste, we find ourselves again and again burying our 
noses in the plebeian posy. Field garlic, by the way, is not 
native to America, though the wild leek is, but is said to 
have been first introduced into Pennsylvania by the early 
Welsh settlers, who thought it would make a pleasant 
sort of spring pasture—certainly a characteristic idea of 
a people from the land where the leek was a national 
emblem. 
We had a severe sleet storm in February and of all the 
trees that suffered by it the river birches appear to have 
taken it hardest. They have literally been shedding tears 
as a result, so that people passing under their boughs during 
the last few weeks have been treated to shower baths of 
sap which has been issuing from the broken branches and 
falling pattering to the ground beneath. The river birch 
is, indeed, a fountain of refreshment in March when the 
sap is running, and refuses no thirsty wayfarer who taps 
it. Thrust your knife into the bark, insert a splinter at 
a declining angle, hold a cup to catch the drippings, and 
you have in a few minutes a mouthful of a beverage as clear 
and cool as spring water, with the faintest possible sug¬ 
gestion of sugar in it. 
[28] 
