Page:Thoreau - As remembered by a young friend.djvu/28

 and pumpkin, handsome but fragrant flageolets of onion tops, but chiefly of the golden willow-shoot, when the rising sap in spring loosens the bark. As the children grew older, he led them to choice huckleberry hills, swamps where the great high-bush blueberries grew, guided to the land of the chestnut and barberry, and more than all, opened that land of enchantment into which, among dark hemlocks, blood-red maples, and yellowing birches, we floated in his boat, and freighted it with leaves and blue gentians and fragrant grapes from the festooning vines.

A little later, he opened another romantic door to boys full of Robin Hood; made us know for ourselves that nothing was truer than

'T is merry! 't is merry in the good green wood

When mavis and merle are singing!"—