202 Old Time Gardens 



charming little red-cheeked Apple of early autumn, 

 slightly larger than a healthy Crab-apple. The clear 

 red of its skin perfuses in coral-colored veins and 

 beautiful shadings to its very core. It has a con- 

 densed, spicy, aromatic flavor, not sharp like a Crab- 

 apple, but it makes a better jelly even than the 

 Crab-apple jelly of a ruby color with an almost 

 wine-like flavor, a true Sops-of-wine. This fruit is 

 deemed so choice that I have known the sale of a 

 farm to halt for some weeks until it could be 

 proved that certain Apple trees in the orchard bore 

 the esteemed Sapsyvines. 



Under New England and New York farm-houses 

 was a cellar filled with bins for vegetables and 

 apples. As the winter passed on there rose from 

 these cellars a curious, earthy, appley smell, which 

 always seemed most powerful in the best parlor, 

 the room least used. How Schiller, who loved 

 the scent of rotten' apples, would have rejoiced ! 

 The cellar also contained many barrels of cider ; 

 for the beauty of the Apple trees, and the use of 

 their fruit as food, were not the only factors which 

 influenced the planting of the many Apple orchards 

 of the new world; they afforded a universal drink 

 cider. I have written at length, in my books, 

 Home Life in Colonial Days and Stage-Coach and 

 Tavern Days, the history of the vogue and manu- 

 facture of cider in the new world. The cherished 

 Apple orchards of Endicott, Blackstone, Wolcott, 

 and Winthrop were so speedily multiplied that by 

 1670 cider was plentiful and cheap everywhere. By 

 the opening of the eighteenth century it had wholly 



