may grasp them by the young fragrant twigs and the bright green
leaves, will recoil and burst away; but there is a pleasure even in
that: so on we go, scrambling and gathering with all our might and
all our glee. Oh, what an enjoyment! All my life long I have had a
passion for that sort of seeking which implies finding (the secret,
I believe, of the love of field-sports, which is in man's mind a
natural impulse)--therefore I love violeting,--therefore, when we
had a fine garden, I used to love to gather strawberries, and cut
asparagus, and above all, to collect the filberts from the
shrubberies: but this hedgerow nutting beats that sport all to
nothing. That was a make-believe thing, compared with this; there
was no surprise, no suspense, no unexpectedness--it was as inferior
to this wild nutting, as the turning out of a bag-fox is to
unearthing the fellow, in the eyes of a staunch foxhunter.

Oh, what enjoyment this nut-gathering is! They are in such
abundance, that it seems as if there were not a boy in the parish,
nor a young man, nor a young woman,--for a basket of nuts is the
universal tribute of country gallantry; our pretty damsel Harriet
has had at least half a dozen this season; but no one has found out
these. And they are so full too, we lose half of them from
over-ripeness; they drop from the socket at the slightest motion.
If we lose, there is one who finds. May is as fond of nuts as a
squirrel, and cracks the shell and extracts the kernel with equal
dexterity. Her white glossy head is upturned now to watch them as
they fall. See how her neck is thrown back like that of a swan, and
how beautifully her folded ears quiver with expectation, and how her
quick eye follows the rustling noise, and her light feet dance and
pat the ground, and leap up with eagerness, seeming almost sustained
in the air, just as I have seen her when Brush is beating a