We were so thorough as children.

We knew the underneath of every laurel-bush, the shape of its bunches of darkling branches, the green dust that our small restless bodies rubbed off from its under twigs.

We see now as strangers those little hanging horse-tails of pink, which sad-faced elders call _ribes_; but once long ago, when the world was young, we knew them eye to eye, and the compact little black insects on them, and the quaint taste of them, and the clean, clean smell of them.
Everything had a taste in those days, and was submitted to that test, just as until it had been licked the real color of any object of interest was not ascertained.

There was a certain scarlet berry, very red without and very white within, which we were warned was deadly poison.

How well, after a quarter of a century, we remember the bitter taste of it; how much better than many other forbidden fruits duly essayed in later years.