The beautiful roof
of Westminster Abbey is made of chestnut wood.
"There are magnificent forests of Spanish chestnuts in the Apennines,
and it was the favorite tree of the great painter Salvator Rosa, who
spent much time studying the beautiful play of light and shade on its
foliage. The peasants make a gala-time of gathering and preparing the
nuts. A traveler, having penetrated the extensive forest which covers
the Vallombrosan Apennines for nearly five miles, came unexpectedly upon
those festive scenes, which are not unfrequent among the chestnut-range.
It was a holiday, and a group of peasants dressed in the gay and
picturesque attire of the neighborhood of the Arno were dancing in an
open and level space covered with smooth turf and surrounded with
magnificent chestnuts, while the inmost recesses of the forest resounded
with their mirth and minstrelsy. Some beat down the chestnuts with
sticks and filled baskets with them, which they emptied from time to
time; others, stretched listlessly upon the turf, picked out the
contents of the bristling capsules in which the kernels were entrenched,
for these, when newly gathered, are sweet and nutritious; others again,
and especially young peasant-girls, pelted their companions with
the fruit."
"Like snowballing," said Malcolm; "only the prickers must have stung.
What grand times they had with their chestnuting!"
"These gay, thoughtless people," replied his governess, "almost live in
the open air and enjoy the present moment.
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