Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/184

166 ing on my present beat, and to give it a place here in my collection of Minor Prophets.

How little the two (Leucothoë and blueberry) resemble each other at this time of the year may be seen by comparing the stem I have been talking about with the one lying next to it—a short twig, every branchlet of which ends in a very bright, extremely handsome (if one stops to regard it) pinkish globe. This is the high-bush blueberry in its best winter estate. Every bud is like a jewel.

Only one branch remains to be spoken of, for I took but a small handful: a dark green—blackish-green—tarnished stem, the two branches of which bear each a terminal bud of the size of a pea. This specimen you will know at once by its odor, if you were ever happy enough to dig sassafras roots, or to eat sassafras lozenges, such as used to come—perhaps they do still—rolled up in paper, as bankers roll up coins. "Sassafras lossengers," we called them, and the shopkeeper (who is living yet, and still "tending store" at ninety-odd) seemed never in doubt as to what we meant. Each kind of lozenge,