A Window in Arcady 
passing the mass through a strainer, the result was an oily 
liquid said to be as sweet and rich as cream. This was used 
as an ingredient in aboriginal corn cakes and hominy, and, 
on the authority of the immortal Captain John Smith of 
schoolboy memory, was called by the Virginia Indians 
pawcohiccora; whence, by our American fashion of making 
short work of long names, our modern word hickory. 
Perhaps the most neglected of our American nuts, yet 
certainly one of the choicest, is the beech nut. These nuts 
are borne at the branch tips in spiny little husks, which 
crack open in October and disclose within two triangular 
nuts, each about the size of a small chinquapin. Un¬ 
fortunately, in our neighborhood the nuts are very fre¬ 
quently either undeveloped or wormy, but the perfect ones 
are well worth looking for, as the meat is of delicious 
sweetness. In eating them one needs a knife to slice off 
one side of the angled shell, and then the kernel falls easily 
into the hand. 
By the wood’s edge, where the sunshine lies warm and 
mellow, the hazels have been lately dropping their nuts, 
and, strange to relate, preparing for another year by put¬ 
ting on their next spring’s catkins. They know enough 
about the weather, however, to keep their infantile mouths 
tight shut until winter is over, and so are preserved from 
death by freezing. The field violets over the fence are less 
prudent, and an occasional blue blossom nods jauntily at 
us as we pass, as though it knew all about the weather, and 
this were just as good a time to blossom as next May; but 
with the night will come a frost to nip its tender leaves 
of hope. 
[110] 
