Along about the same time, the boys come home with a ring of mud
around their mouths, and exhaling spicy breaths like those which
blow o'er Ceylon's isle in the hymn-book. They bear a bundle of
roots, whose thick, pink hide mother whittles off with the
butcher-knife and sets to steep. Put away the store tea and coffee.
To-night as we drink the reddish aromatic brew we return, not only
to our own young days, but to the young days of the nation when our
folks moved to the West in a covered wagon; when grandpap, only a
little boy then, about as big as Charley there, got down the rifle
and killed the bear that had climbed into the hog-pen; when they
found old Cherry out in the timber with her calf between her legs,
and two wolves lying where she had horned them to death - we return
to-night to the high, heroic days of old, when our forefathers
conquered the wilderness and our foremothers reared the families
that peopled it. This cup of sassafras to-night in their loving
memory! Earth, rest easy on their moldering bones!
Some there be that still take stock in the groundhog. I don't
believe he knows anything about it. And I believe that any animal
that had the sense that he is reputed to have would not have
remained a mere ground-hog all these years. At least not in this
country.
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