Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/339

 Rh beads of light and life, through these long, long years! Ah, save, oh good fathers of my old home town, save us the Lynde's Woods, where we so often went a-berrying, for our own time-long burying. What a life-pleasure a boy bred in the country has over the city lad who only visits it on vacation! It is a joy and strength, all his days none the less so, if his after-iife is passed among brick walls and stone pavements which give scarce a glimpse of either earth or heaven.

This high blue-berry bush on this high Mexic mountain has set me off on a high horse that is in danger of throwing me; for sentiment is the last thing any body allows in any body else but themselves. Balance is restored by the venerable nopal, better known as cactus, that stands stiff and changeless among these Northern reminders. No cactus is found by New England roadsides and country lanes. This is tropical and new. It is of yesterday to the land, but of to-day to the traveler. He can not shed imaginary tears over its earlier suggestions. The laurel is also here, beginning to put forth those pinky-white buddings that shall soon burst into complete blossomings. So the North country again appears, though this crown of poets and favorite of Apollo is a Greek rather than a Yankee.

The bottom of the hill brings us to a cluster of huts perched on the steep side of the opposite mountain. We pace along its base for some distance, enjoying the odor of its flowers, cultivated and wild, and especially the bloom and balm of its apple-trees. These are bursting into flower, not the broad, grand, full blossom of the North, where it really belongs, but still of the old blush and bloom. They are scattered all along the river's edge, where only wild trees besides are found; and, amidst the flowerless and odorless boughs of ash and birch and oak and nopal, one feels more than ever the force of that compliment and comparison which the love-lorn wife pays her husband, in the song of songs which is Solomon's, "As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons." One sees the exquisite beauty of that compliment in these gorges of the Cordilleras, where the apple-tree stands