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Show A WILD STRAWBERRY of sifted sunbeams and the breath of highland breezes and the song of many birds and the murmur of flowing strearns,-all in a wild strawberry. Do you remember, in The Compleat Angler, a remark which Isaak Walton quotes from a certain "Doctor Boteler" about strawberries? "DoUbtless," said that wise old man, "God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did." Well, the wild strawberry is the one that God made. I think it would have been pleasant to know a man who could sum up his reflections upon the important question of berries in such a pithy saying as that which Walton repeats. His tongue must have been in close communication with his heart. He must have had a fair sense of that sprightly humour without which piety itself is often insipid. I have often tried to find out more about him, and some day I hope I shall. But up to the present, all that the books have told me of this obscure sage is that his name was William Butler, and that he 89 |
