14 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 



up its holes, and put a burlap petticoat on it, all be- 

 cause of the gruesome gypsy moths that infest my 

 trees. Oh, yes, that would make it bear better ap- 

 ples, but what then would become of its birds and 

 beasts? Everybody ought to have one apple tree 

 that bears birds and beasts and Baldwin apples, 

 too, of course, if the three sorts of fruit can be 

 made to grow on the same tree. But only the birds 

 and beasts grow well on the untrimmed, unscraped, 

 unplastered, unpetticoated old tree yonder between 

 the pastures. His heart is wide open to every small 

 traveler passing by. 



Whenever I look over toward the old tree, I think 

 of the old vine-covered, weather-beaten house in 

 which my grandfather lived, where many a traveler 

 put up over night to get a plate of grandmother's 

 buckwheat cakes, I think, and a taste of her keen 

 wit. The old house sat in under a grove of pin oak 

 and pine, "Underwood" we called it, a shel- 

 tered, sheltering spot ; with a peddler's stall in the 

 barn, a peddler's place at the table, a peddler's bed 

 in the herby garret, a boundless, fathomless feather- 

 bed, of a piece with the house and the hospitality. 

 There were larger houses and newer, in the neigh- 

 borhood ; but no other house in all the region, not 

 even the tavern, two miles farther down the pike, 

 was half so central, or so homelike, or so full of 

 sweet and juicy gossip. The old apple tree yonder 

 between the woods and the meadow is as central, as 



