THE APPLE. 
Lo! sweetened with the summer light, 
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, 
Drops in a silent autumn night.— TENNYSON. 
Nor a little of the sunshine of our northern win- 
ters is surely wrapped up in the apple. How could 
we winter over without it! How is life sweetened by 
its mild acids! A cellar well filled with apples is 
more valuable than a chamber filled with flax and 
wool. So much sound ruddy life to draw upon, to 
strike one’s roots down into, as it were. 
Especially to those whose soil of life is inclined to 
be a little clayey and heavy, is the apple a winter 
necessity. Itis the natural antidote of most of the 
ills the flesh is heir to. Full of vegetable acids and 
aromatics, qualities which act as refrigerants and an- 
tiseptics, what an enemy it is to jaundice, indigestion, 
torpidity of liver, ete. Itis a gentle spur and tonic 
to the whole biliary system. Then I have read that 
it has been found by analysis to contain more phos- 
phorus than any other vegetable. This makes it the 
proper food of the scholar and the sedentary man; it 
feeds his brain and it stimulates his liver. Neither 
is this all. Besides its hygienic properties, the apple 
is full of sugar and mucilage, which make it highly 
nutritious. It is said, “The operators of Cornwall, 
England, consider ripe apples nearly as nourishing as 
bread, and far more so than potatoes. In the year 
1801 — which was a year of much scarcity — apples, 
