HOUSE-WARMING. 
257 
wait for the frost, amid the rustling of leaves and the 
loud reproofs of the red-squirrels and the jays, whose 
half-consumed nuts I sometimes stole, for the burrs which 
they had selected were sure to contain sound ones. 
Occasionally I climbed and shook the trees. They 
grew also behind my house, and one large tree which 
almost overshadowed it, was, when in flower, a bouquet 
which scented the whole neighborhood, but the squirrels 
and the jays got most of its fruit; the last coming in 
flocks early in the morning and picking the nuts out of 
the burrs before they fell. I relinquished these trees to 
them and visited the more distant woods composed 
wholly of chestnut. These nuts, as far as they went, 
were a good substitute for bread. Many other substi¬ 
tutes might, perhaps, be found. Digging one day for 
fish-worms I discovered the ground-nut (Apios tube - 
roso ) on its string, the potato of the aborigines, a sort 
of fabulous fruit, which I had begun to doubt if I had 
ever dug and eaten in childhood, as I had told, and had 
not dreamed it. I had often since seen its crimpled red 
velvety blossom supported by the stems of other plants 
without knowing it to be the same. Cultivation has well 
nigh exterminated it. It has a sweetish taste, much 
like that of a frostbitten potato, and I found it better 
boiled than roasted. This tuber seemed like a faint 
promise of Nature to rear her own children and feed 
them simply here at some future period. In these days 
of fatted cattle and waving grain-fields, this humble 
root, which was once the totem of an Indian tribe, is 
quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine; 
but let wild Nature reign here once more, and the ten¬ 
der and luxurious English grains will probably disap¬ 
pear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of 
17 
