
THE APPLE. 35 
setting or its background of apple-trees, which gener- 
ally date back to the first settlement of the farm. 
Indeed, the orchard, more than almost any other 
thing, tends to soften and humanize the country, and 
give the place of which it is an adjunct, a settled, 
domestic look. The apple-tree takes the rawness and 
wildness off any scene. On the top of a mountain, or 
in remote pastures, it sheds the sentiment of home. 
It never loses its domestic air, or lapses into a wild 
state. And in planting a homestead, or in choosing 
a building site for the new house, what.a help it is to 
have a few old, maternal apple-trees near by; regular 
old grandmothers, who have seen trouble, who have 
been sad and glad through so many winters and sum- 
mers, who have blossomed till the air about them is 
sweeter than elsewhere, and borne fruit till the grass 
beneath them has become thick and soft from human 
contact, and who have nourished robins and finches in 
their branches till they have a tender, brooding look. 
The ground, the turf, the atmosphere of an old 
orchard, seem several stages nearer to man than that 
of the adjoining field, as if the trees had given back 
to the soil more than they had taken from it; as if 
they had tempered the elements and attracted all the 
genial and beneficent influences in the landscape 
around. 
An apple orchard is sure to bear you several crops 
beside the apple. There is the crop of sweet and ten- 
uer reminiscences dating from childhood and spanning 
the seasons from May to October, and making the 
orchard a sort of outlying part of the household. You 
have played there as a child, mused there as a youth 
or lover, strolled there as a thoughtful, sad-eyed man, 
Your father, perhaps, planted the trees, or reared them 
