142 THE APPLE. 



iug more merry and unrestrained as soon as the bas- 

 ket of apples was passed round. When the cider 

 followed, the introduction and good understanding 

 were complete. Then those rural gatherings that en- 

 livened the autumn in the country, known as " apple 

 cuts," now, alas ! nearly obsolete, where so many 

 things were cut and dried besides apples ! The 

 larger and more loaded the orchard, the more fre- 

 quently the invitations went round and the higher 

 the social and convivial spirit ran. Ours is eminently 

 a country of the orchard. Horace Greeley said he 

 had seen no land in which the orchard formed such 

 a prominent feature in the rural and agricultural dis- 

 tricts. Nearly every farmhouse in the Eastern and 

 Northern States has its setting or its background of 

 apple-trees, which generally date back to the first 

 settlement of the farm. Indeed, the orchard, more 

 than almost any other thing, tends to soften and hu- 

 manize 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 summers, who have 

 blossomed till the air about them is sweeter than else- 



