nd them more palatable than
when cooked. I know not why, yet a country boy prefers the raw and wild
flavor far more than the condiments and seasonings of cookery. The chief
use of the spring cranberries was as a paint; the thin juice made a
pretty, pink color on white paper, or added an admirable touch to a
russet, red cheek, such as commonly beautified Bellingham boys and
girls, nurtured on milk, apples and brown bread, open air and unfinished
attic chambers.

I dwell much on the recollections of the doings of the day, but the
nights had also their joys, none greater than the rain on the roof and
the exquisite, semi-conscious moments when sleep began to overtake body
and soul, gently extinguishing them in a soothing, delicious languor.
The low country attic is the true house of dreams, where the good, the
strange or the fearful spirits play over the subjected and helpless
will. Long time I remembered some of those dreams which visited my
truckle bed, placed on rollers a foot from the floor and thrice as many
from the ridge pole. In winter, tightly tucked in by a loving mother,
the cold without only made me feel the more snug and warm within. The
snow sifted through the chinks in the loose shingles, making little
white hillocks on the floor, and often I found enough on my pillow in
the morning to press into a snowball and pelt my sister, who slept at
the other end of the attic.

I follow no order in my narrative: I wander; but how can one go far in
the small and circumscribed region of earliest memories, bound each to
each by some inwardly felt affinity, which neither time nor world
wanderings can dissever? One thing suggests another and the connection
must be found in the things themselves. Cranberry picking carried me
forward into springtime; now I return to the autumn, the harvest season,
when although not old enough to dig my mother's small patch of potatoes,
I could pick them up in a basket. She herself handled the hoe uncovering
the long reds and the white Chenangos. I liked better to shake down
apples than to gather things from the ground; for to climb trees is as
much a boy's as a monkey's instinct. That was my first thought when I
happened to observe any kind of tree, could I climb it? The wild grapes
which grew in profusion along the banks of our river clambering over the
tall grey birches gave me glorious opportunities for climbing, as the
sweetest and largest clusters were always at the very top of the tree