THE APPLE. 27 
develop into fine full-bearing trees by the third year. 
The people know the value of the apple too. They 
make cider and wine of it and then from the refuse a 
white and finely flavored spirit; then by another pro- 
cess a sweet treacle is obtained called honey. The .- 
children and pigs eat little or no other food. He 
does not add that the people are healthy and temper- 
ate, but I have no doubt they are. We knew the 
apple had many virtues, but these Chilians have really 
opened a deep beneath a deep. We had found out 
the cider and the spirits, but who guessed the wine 
and the honey, except it were the bees? ‘There isa 
variety in our orchards called the winesap, a doubly 
liquid name that suggests what might be done with 
this fruit. 
The apple is the commonest and yet the most varied 
and beautiful of fruits. A dish of them is as becom- 
ing to the centre-table in winter as was the vase of 
flowers in the summer, —a bouquet of spitzenbergs 
and greenings and northern spies. A rose when it 
blooms, the apple is a rose when it ripens. It pleases 
every sense to which it can be addressed, the touch, 
the smell, the sight, the taste ; and when it falls in the 
still October days it pleases the ear. It isa call toa 
banquet, it isa signal that the feast is ready. The 
bough would fain hold it, but it can now assert its in- 
dependence ; it can now live a life of its own. 
Daily the stem relaxes its hold, till finally it lets go 
completely, and down comes the painted sphere with a 
mellow thump to the earth, toward which it has been 
nodding so long. It bounds away to seek its bed, to 
hide under a leaf, or in a tuft of grass. It will now 
take time to meditate and ripen! What delicious 
_ thoughts it has there nestled with its fellows under 
