With trifles like these I was entertaining the time when a man on a buckboard reined in his horse and invited me to ride. He was going down the Gale River road a piece, he said, and as this was my course also I thankfully accepted the lift. I would go farther than I had intended, and would spend the forenoon in loitering back. My host had two or three tin pails between his feet, and I was not surprised when he told me that he was “going berrying.” What did surprise me was to find, fifteen minutes later, when I got on my legs again, that with no such conscious purpose, and with no tin pail, I had myself come out on the same errand. “It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” The simple truth was that the raspberries would not take no for an answer. If I passed one clump of bushes, another waylaid me. “Raspberries, all ripe,” they said. It was not quite true: that would have been a misfortune unspeakable; but the ripe ones were enough. Softly they dropped into the fingers--softly in spite of their asperous name--and sweetly, three or four together for goodness’ sake, they melted upon the tongue. They were so many that a man could have his pick, taking only those of a deep color (ten minutes of experience would teach him the precise shade) and a worthy plumpness, passing a bushel to select a gill. No raspberry should be pulled upon ever so little; it should fall at the touch; and the teeth should have nothing to do with it, more than with honey or cream. So I meditated, and so with all daintiness I practiced, finishing my banquet again and again as a fresh cluster beguiled me; for raspberry-eating, like woman’s work, is never done. If the apple in Eden was as pleasant to the eyes and half as good to eat, then I have no reflections to cast upon the mistress of the garden. In fact, it seems to me not unlikely that the Edenic apple may have been nothing more nor less than a Franconian raspberry. Small wonder, say I, that one taste of its “sciential sap” “gave elocution to the mute.” So I came up out of the Gale River woods into the bushy lane--a step or two and a mouthful of berries--and thence into the level grassy field by the grove of pines; a favorite place, with a world of mountains in sight--Moosilauke, Kinsman, Cannon, Lafayette, Haystack, the Twins, and the whole Mount Washington range. A pile of timbers, the bones of an old barn, offered me a seat, and there I rested, facing the mountains, while a company of merry barn swallows, loquacious as ever, went skimming over the grass. Moving clouds dappled the mountain-sides with shadows, the sun was good, a rare thing in August, and I was happy.