AN UNPROGRESSIVE FARM 15 



old apple trees, old lilac bushes, old rocks, 

 and old associations and, to be sure, the 

 old red house. But the old rocks, piled on the 

 hillsides, are unfailingly picturesque, whether 

 dark and dripping in the summer rains or 

 silver gray in the summer suns. The lilacs 

 are delightful, too. In June they send wave 

 upon wave of fragrance in through the little 

 windows, penetrating even to the remotest 

 corners of the dim old attic, while all day long 

 about their pale lavender sprays the great 

 yellow and black butterflies hang flutteringly. 

 Best of all is the orchard; the old apple trees 

 blossom prodigally for a brief season in May, 

 blossom in rosy-white, in cream-white, in 

 pure white, in green-white, transforming the 

 lane and the hill-slopes into a bower, smother 

 ing the old house in beauty, brooding over it, 

 on still moonlight nights, in pale clouds of 

 sweetness. And then comes a wind, with a 

 drenching rain, and tears away all the pretty 

 petals and buries them in the grass below. 

 But there are seldom any apples; all this 

 exuberance of beauty is but a dream of youth, 

 not a promise of fruitage. Jonathan, indeed, 

 tells me that if we want the trees to bear we 



