A Window in Arcady 
April io. —Now is the time of year when the fancy 
of many a country-born citizen of slender purse turns to 
thoughts of his inherited rights in Nature’s great kitchen 
garden, and he promises himself the first fine Sunday off 
to hunt “greens” in the fields. Of these unquestionably 
the most gathered—probably because the most abundant 
—are the tender new leaves of the dandelion, which have 
long done duty on old-fashioned country tables as a pleas¬ 
ant and wholesome salad. The sprouts of the plebeian 
poke, however, make a good second in popular favor, and 
a mess of these boiled as cabbage would be, with a bit of 
juicy ham, livened up with a dash of vinegar, makes for 
some palates just the acme of good eating—a continuing 
delicacy to be enjoyed, too, in reminiscence like a cud for 
memory to chew. 
The first shoots of the common chicory, the plant whose 
blue stars of bloom adorn every August wayside, have some 
devotees, and doubtless would have more, but for the fact 
that comparatively few Americans know the plant in its 
first appearances. It is only a tramp here, but in Europe 
it has for centuries been cultivated as a crop, and latterly 
in our West, some farmers have taken to cultivating it in 
a small way. 
In the swamps and along the meadow streams the red 
maples are in full bloom at last, their flaming masses 
of color making the pallid cheek of earth ruddy again 
with the hue of abounding life. Like the flush in the sky 
at dawn which heralds the sun, the red maple’s blossoming 
is herald of a greater glory shortly to be—the bursting 
into leaf of all the forest fellowship. When we see it 
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