ke wintergreen.

I think this no strange or unusual instinct, for I have seen many other
people doing it, especially farmers around here, who go through the
fields nipping the new oats, testing the red-top, or chewing a bit of
sassafras bark. I have in mind a clump of shrubbery in the town road,
where an old house once stood, of the kind called here by some the
"sweet-scented shrub," and the brandies of it nearest the road are quite
clipped and stunted I'm being nipped at by old ladies who pass that way
and take to it like cat to catnip.

For a long time this was a wholly unorganized, indeed all but
unconscious, pleasure, a true pattern of the childish way we take hold
of the earth; but when I began to come newly alive to all things as I
have already related--I chanced upon this curious, undeveloped instinct.

"What is it I have here?" I asked myself, for I thought this might be a
new handle for getting hold of nature.

Along one edge of my field is a natural hedge of wild cherry, young elms
and ashes, dogwood, black raspberry bushes and the like, which has long
been a pleasure to the eye, especially in the early morning when the
shadows of it lie long and cool upon the meadow. Many times I have
walked that way to admire it, or to listen for the catbirds that nest
there, or to steal upon a certain gray squirrel who comes out from his
home in the chestnut tree on a fine morning to inspect his premises.

It occurred to me one day that I would make the acquaintance of this
hedge in a new way; so I passed slowly along it where the branches of
the trees brushed my shoulder and picked a twig here and there and bit
it through. "This is cherry," I said; "this is elm, this is dogwood."
And it was a fine adventure to know old friends in new ways, for I had
never thought before to test the trees and shrubs by their taste and
smell. After that, whenever I passed that way, I closed my eyes and
tried for further identifications by taste, and was soon able to tell
quickly half a dozen other varieties of trees, shrubs, and smaller
plants along that bit of meadow.

Presently, as one who learns to navigate still water near shore longs
for more thrilling voyages, I tried the grassy old roads in the woods,
where young trees and other growths were to be found in great variety:
and had a joy of it I cannot describe, for old and familiar places were
thus made new and wonderful to me. And when I think of those places,
now, say in winter,