A Window in Arcady 
make an excellent food for hogs and have helped to fatten 
many a porker in South Jersey, where the little tree is very 
common. Between pigs and acorns, indeed, a sort of 
natural affinity has existed from time immemorial. Are 
they not associated in popular proverb, and did not Gurth, 
the swineherd, feed the refractory herd of Cedric, the 
Saxon, on the oak-mast of Sherwood Forest as long ago as 
Ivanhoe’s day? 
Man, too, has found acorns a food not to be despised, 
for, if only the bitterness can be nullified, there is much 
nutriment in them. The Indians discovered that by shel¬ 
ling and peeling them, then pounding them into a meal, 
washing this thoroughly in water and then boiling it, the 
result was a very passable mush, practically free from acrid¬ 
ity. The bitterness may also be partially removed by bury¬ 
ing the nuts for a time in the earth. 
September 25. —Of a still autumnal afternoon, when 
the descending sun is flinging the shadows of the riverside 
trees far into the placid depths of the stream, to walk along 
the banks of our rivers is to participate in a scene of rare 
rural loveliness. It is such a scene as duplicates in kind 
the classic reaches of the English River Lea, where Father 
Walton was wont to angle and contemplate, and whither 
to this day his disciples love to repair. Our river has its 
anglers, too, patient, hopeful men who come out from the 
turmoil of the city’s forging and trafficking to sit on the 
bank with rod and pipe and luncheon done up in a bit of 
newspaper, and, chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy, 
silently bide their luck. Tradition has it that a fish is 
sometimes caught, but eye witnesses to the fact are not 
numerous. 
”%! . 
[100] 
