In every June the red drops of pleasant savour will hang
among the scalloped leaves. The children of this world may wrangle
and give one another wounds that even my good ale cannot cure.
Nevertheless, the earth as God created it is a fair dwelling and
full of comfort for all who have a quiet mind and a thankful heart.
Doubtless God might have made a better world, but doubtless this is
the world He made for us; and in it He planted the strawberry."
Fine old doctor! Brave philosopher of cheerfulness! The Virginian
berry should have been brought to England sooner, or you should have
lived longer, at least to a hundred years, so that you might have
welcomed a score of strawberry-seasons with gratitude and an
epigram.
Since that time a great change has passed over the fruit which
Doctor Butler praised so well. That product of creative art which
Divine wisdom did not choose to surpass, human industry has laboured
to improve. It has grown immensely in size and substance. The
traveller from America who steams into Queenstown harbour in early
summer is presented (for a consideration) with a cabbage-leaf full
of pale-hued berries, sweet and juicy, any one of which would
outbulk a dozen of those that used to grow in Virginia when
Pocahontas was smitten with the charms of Captain John Smith.
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