OLD OECHAEDS. 



SATJNTEKING from the town into solitary field-paths, and 

 passing by rustic cottages with their pleasant array of 

 haystacks, unornamented barns, and simple gardens full 

 of roses and sunflowers, and wending our way over 

 pebbly hills and plashy hollows, we enter a recent growth 

 of wood that has come up spontaneously upon an old 

 neglected farm. We follow a wood-path, shaded by a 

 stunted growth of pines and white birches, and bordered 

 with wild-flowers, and, leaving the ruins of an old 

 cider-mill, reach an opening, enclosed by a dilapidated 

 stone-wall, half concealed by tall shrubs and vines and 

 by trees that have encroached upon its boundaries. 

 Emerging into this open space we find ourselves in an 

 old orchard that still bears meagre crops of fruit, which 

 was an appendage to a farm long neglected and abandoned, 

 now half restored to its original condition as a forest. 



I have often called the attention of lovers of nature 

 to the peculiar beauty which is apparent in an old or- 

 chard. I know it is not much admired by improvers. It 

 has neither trimness nor elegance. There is nothing in 

 the style of the trees or the character of the ground that 

 awakens any ideas of aristocratic dignity. The old stone- 

 walls that enclose it, loose and dilapidated, betray no ex- 

 travagant outlay of money. They remind you only of 

 the simple labor of hard hands and the rude husbandry 

 of toiling men. The ideas associated with the old or- 

 chard are those of rustic simplicity, of apple-gathering 

 by rural swains; of golden, russet, and crimson fruit, 



