I am not
sure but the boy would find it very irksome, though, if he were
obliged to work at nut-gathering in order to procure food for the
family. He is willing to make himself useful in his own way. The
Italian boy, who works day after day at a huge pile of pine-cones,
pounding and cracking them and taking out the long seeds, which are
sold and eaten as we eat nuts (and which are almost as good as
pumpkin-seeds, another favorite with the Italians), probably does not
see the fun of nutting. Indeed, if the farmer-boy here were set at
pounding off the walnut-shucks and opening the prickly chestnut-burs
as a task, he would think himself an ill-used boy. What a hardship
the prickles in his fingers would be! But now he digs them out with
his jack-knife, and enjoys the process, on the whole. The boy is
willing to do any amount of work if it is called play.
In nutting, the squirrel is not more nimble and industrious than the
boy. I like to see a crowd of boys swarm over a chestnut-grove; they
leave a desert behind them like the seventeen-year locusts.
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