34 THE APPLE. 
How the early settlers prized the apple! When 
their trees broke down or were split asunder by the 
storms, the neighbors turned out, the divided tree was 
put together again and fastened with iron bolts. In 
some of the oldest orchards one may still occasionally 
see a large dilapidated tree with the rusty iron bolt 
yet visible. Poor, sour fruit, too, but sweet in those 
early pioneer days. My grandfather, who was one of 
these heroes of the stump, used every fall to make a 
journey of forty miles for a few apples, which he 
brought home in a bag on horseback. He frequently 
started from home by two or three o’clock in the 
morning, and at one time both himself and horse were 
much frightened by the screaming of panthers in a 
narrow pass in the mountains through which the road 
led. 
Emerson, I believe, has spoken of the apple as the 
social fruit of New England. Indeed, what a pro- 
moter or abettor of social intercourse among our rural 
population the apple has been, the company growing 
more merry and unrestrained as soon as the basket of 
apples was passed round! When the cider followed, 
the introduction and good understanding were com- 
plete. Then those rural gatherings that enlivened 
the autumn in the country, known as “apple cuts,” 
now, alas! nearly obsolete, where so many things were 
cut and dried besides apples! The larger and more 
loaded the orchard, the more frequently the invita- 
tions went round and the higher the social and con- 
vivial spirit ran. Ours is eminently a country of the 
orchard. Horace Greeley said he had seen no land in 
which the orchard formed such a prominent feature 
in the rural and agricultural districts. Nearly every 
farmhouse in the Eastern and Northern States has its 
; 

