s in it the flavor of daisies and clover picked on the
Vall; the sweetness of Dvina water; the richness of newly turned earth
which I moulded with bare feet and hands; the ripeness of red cherries
bought by the dipperful in the market place; the fragrance of all my
childhood's summers.

Abstinence, as I have mentioned, is one of the essential ingredients
in the phantom dish. I discovered this through a recent experience. It
was cherry time in the country, and the sight of the scarlet fruit
suddenly reminded me of a cherry season in Polotzk, I could not say
how many years ago. On that earlier occasion my Cousin Shimke, who,
like everybody else, was a storekeeper, had set a boy to watch her
store, and me to watch the boy, while she went home to make cherry
preserves. She gave us a basket of cherries for our trouble, and the
boy offered to eat them with the stones if I would give him my share.
But I was equal to that feat myself, so we sat down to a cherry-stone
contest. Who ate the most stones I could not remember as I stood under
the laden trees not long ago, but the transcendent flavor of the
historical cherries came back to me, and I needs must enjoy it once
more.

I climbed into the lowest boughs and hung there, eating cherries with
the stones, my whole mind concentrated on the sense of taste. Alas!
the fruit had no such flavor to yield as I sought. Excellent American
cherries were these, but not so fragrantly sweet as my cousin's
cherries. And if I should return to Polotzk, and buy me a measure of
cherries at a market stall, and pay for it with a Russian groschen,
would the market woman be generous enough to throw in that haunting
flavor? I fear I should find that the old species of cherry is extinct
in Polotzk.

Sometimes, when I am not trying to remember at all, I am more
fortunate in extracting the flavors of past feasts from my plain
American viands. I was eating strawberries the other day, ripe, red
American strawberries. Suddenly I experienced the very flavor and
aroma of some strawberries I ate perhaps twenty years ago. I started
as from a shock, and then sat still for I do not know how long,
breathless with amazement. In the brief interval of a gustatory
perception I became a child again, and I positively ached with the
pain of being so suddenly compressed to that small being. I wandered
about Polotzk once more, with large, questioning eyes; I rode the
Atlantic in an emigrant ship; I took possession of th