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On the north bank of the river, only a few hundred rods from the stream, was the log-cabin of Younkins. It was built on the edge of a fine bit of timber land, in which oaks and hickories were mingled with less valuable trees.
But soon we drew out of the hot sunshine into the old orchard with its paltry display of deformed, green, runt apples, and its magnificent columns and canopies of poison ivy that most beautiful and least amiable of our indigenous plants; and then we got among scale-bark hickories, and there was one that had been fluted from top to bottom by a stroke of lightning; and here the little red squirrels were most unusually abundant and indignant; and there was a catbird that miauled exactly like a cat; and there was a spring among the roots of one great tree, and a broken teacup half buried in the sand at the bottom.
A noisy bunch of crows cawed unceasingly amidst the treetops as a large, lumbering old automobile passed along the country road, the same filled with lively boys, and also a number of sacks stuffed to their utmost capacity with what appeared to be black walnuts, shell-bark hickories, butternuts, and even splendid large chestnuts.
We were present for the hawthorn day; saw the ineffable dogwoods at their highest best; the brief bloom of the hickories when they put on their orchids and seemed displeased to be caught in such glory by human eyes.
The Timber-trees are, of the Oaks, Quercus alba, Quercus macrocarpa, Quercus tinctoria, Quercus imbricaria, Hard and Soft Maples, and of the Hickories, Carya alba, Carya tomentosa, and Carya amara. Of Medicinal Plants, we find Cassia Marilandica, Polygala Senega, Sanguinaria Canadensis, Lobelia inflata, Phytolacca decandra, Podophyllum peliatum, Sassafras officinale.
The bitternut, with seven, nine or eleven small, narrow, serrated leaves, small fruit with long, prominent seams, bitter and thin-shelled nuts and very yellow buds. "The shellbark is often called 'shagbark, and it is the finest of the hickories and one that is seldom mistaken for any of the others.
The nuthatches, who also stayed all winter with us, were favorites with us boys. We loved to watch them as they traced the bark-furrows of the oaks and hickories head downward, deftly flicking off loose scales and splinters in search of insects, and braving the coldest weather as if their little sparks of life were as safely warm in winter as in summer, unquenchable by the severest frost.
Whistling gaily, and without suspicion, I won the hilltop by what I think they called Ship Lane. Glad to be over Schuylkill and out of the way of risks, I sat down by the roadside at the top of the ascent. The forest was dense with underbrush on either side, and the hickories, and below them the sumachs, were already rich with the red and gold of autumn.
It stood on a rise upon the bank of the river in a grove of oaks and hickories, with a big persimmon tree in front of the door. It was in the shade of this tree that Polly Ann sat watching Tom and me through the mild spring days as we barked the roof, and none ever felt greater joy and pride in a home than she.
One of these falling soon after the frosts had opened the burrs of the chestnut trees and the shells of the hickories, Fleda seized upon it for a nutting frolic. They took Philetus and went up to the fine group of trees on the mountain, the most difficult to reach and the best worth reaching of all their nut wood.
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