with a relishing gulp not inferior to Dr. Johnson's. He feels and
freely exercises his right of eminent domain. His is the earliest mess
of green peas; his all the mulberries I had fancied mine. But if he
get also the lion's share of the raspberries, he is a great planter, and
sows those wild ones in the woods that solace the pedestrian, and
give a momentary calm even to the jaded victims of the White Hills.
he keeps a strict eye over one's fruit, and knows to a shade of
purple when your grapes have cooked long enough in the sun.
During the severe drought a few years ago the robins wholly
vanished from my garden. I neither saw nor heard one for three
weeks. meanwhile a small foreign grape-vine, rather shy of bearing,
seemed to find the dusty air congenial, and, dreaming, perhaps of its
sweet Argos across the sea, decked itself with a score or so of fair
bunches. I watched them from day to day till they should have
secreted sugar enough from the sunbeams, and at last made up my
mind that I would celebrate my vintage the next morning. But the
robins, too, had somehow kept note of them. They must have sent
out spies, as did the Jews into the promised land, before I was
stirring. When I went with my basket at least a dozen of these
winged vintagers bustled out from among the leaves, and alighting
on the nearest trees interchanged some shrill remarks about me of a
derogatory nature. They had fairly sacked the vine. Not
Wellington's veterans made cleaner work of a Spanish town; not
Federals or Confederates were ever more impartial in the
confiscation of neutral chickens. I was keeping my grapes a secret
to surprise the fair Fidele with, but the robins made them a
profounder secret to her than I had meant. The tattered remnant of
a single bunch was all my harvest-home. How paltry it looked at
the bottom of my basket,--as if a humming-bird had laid her egg in
an eagle's nest! I could not help laughing; and the robins seemed to