I was telling that story down in the Basin Circle Park at Eureka Springs one day. When I got through one of the old-timers asked me if I had ever heard of the big kettle the blacksmiths built at Eureka Springs in the year 1901. I told him that I had never heard of it. “Well,” he said, “it was some kettle. It was so big that the men working on one side couldn’t hear the men hammering on the opposite side.” I pretended to be astonished and asked him what on earth they wanted with such a big kettle. “Why,” he said, solemn like, “to stew them Hog Scald pumpkins in.” [Illustration: Stafford Photo Hog Scald Falls below the pits where the pioneers did the scalding] XXIV BOUNTIES OF NATURE “Never have I found a place, or a season, without beauty,” wrote the poet, Charles Erskine Scott Wood. The scenic charm of Eureka Springs is a challenge to the poet’s pen and the artist’s brush. Each season has its own style of beauty that helps erase monotony from man’s benighted world. Spring comes with myriad flowers. The lilac and the honey suckle spill their perfumes lavishly on the hill and in the valley. Early summer spreads a carpet of sweet peas that have escaped from gardens in years past. A little later the white clematis appears and wraps the whole town in beauty. Hundreds of varieties of flowers, reflecting all the varied hues of Nature’s prism, are here from early March until late November. The tree lover in Eureka Springs has a wealth of beauty for his enjoyment. The elms and maples are the first heralds of spring to coax the bees into action and open Nature’s wooing season. Then comes the sarvis, wild plum, redbud, and dogwood to add perfume and color to the fantasia of spring. In early May the long, purple, bell-shaped flowers of the Paulownia trees hang from bare branches. The Paulownia or Princess tree is a native of Russia and named for the Princess Paulownia, daughter of the Czar, Paul I, who died in 1801. Its fruit is a green pod as large as a walnut which ripens in autumn and bursts open in winter to loosen the feathery seeds for the wind’s dispersal. The broken pods cling to the tree until pushed off by new growths the following season. The Ginkgo is one of our rarest trees. We have four of them in Eureka Springs, three on the Post Office grounds and one, a “female” tree producing fruit, on the property adjacent to the Sweet Spring park. This tree, of Chinese origin, is said to be the oldest tree in history. Botanists tell us that the fern is older than the tree. The Ginkgo with its fern-like leaves appears to be a link between the two. The fruit matures in late summer and has an offensive odor. The seed is bitter, but it is said that the Chinese roast them as we do peanuts and use them for food.