claytoniana, regalis_, and _cinnamomea_)
and the sensitive and ostrich ferns.
Early in summer we feasted on strawberries, that grew in rich beds
beneath the meadow grasses and sedges as well as in the dry sunny
woods. And in different bogs and marshes, and around their borders on
our own farm and along the Fox River, we found dewberries and
cranberries, and a glorious profusion of huckleberries, the
fountain-heads of pies of wondrous taste and size, colored in the
heart like sunsets. Nor were we slow to discover the value of the
hickory trees yielding both sugar and nuts. We carefully counted the
different kinds on our farm, and every morning when we could steal a
few minutes before breakfast after doing the chores, we visited the
trees that had been wounded by the axe, to scrape off and enjoy the
thick white delicious syrup that exuded from them, and gathered the
nuts as they fell in the mellow Indian summer, making haste to get a
fair share with the sapsuckers and squirrels. The hickory makes fine
masses of color in the fall, every leaf a flower, but it was the sweet
sap and sweet nuts that first interested us.
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