Comfort Me with Apples 207 



cut, an Apple paring, or an Apple bee. The cheer- 

 ful kitchen of the farm-house was set out with its 

 entire array of empty pans, pails, tubs, and baskets. 

 Heaped-up barrels of apples stood in the centre of 

 the room. The many skilful hands of willing 

 neighbors emptied the barrels, and with sharp knives 

 or an occasional Apple parer, filled the empty 

 vessels with cleanly pared and quartered apples. 



When the work was finished, divinations with 

 Apple parings and Apple seeds were tried, simple 

 country games were played; occasionally there was 

 a fiddler and a dance. An autumnal supper was 

 served from the three zones of the farm-house : 

 nuts from the attic, Apples from the pantry, and 

 cider from the cellar. The apple-quarters intended 

 for drying were strung on homespun linen thread 

 and hung out of doors on clear drying days. A 

 humble hillside home in New Hampshire thus 

 quaintly festooned is shown in the illustration oppo- 

 site page 208 — a characteristic New Hampshire 

 landscape. When thoroughly dried in sun and 

 wind, these sliced apples were stored for the winter 

 by being hung from rafter to rafter of various living 

 rooms, and remained thus for months (gathering 

 vast accumulations of dust and germs for our bliss- 

 fully ignorant and unsqueamish grandparents) until 

 the early days of spring, when Apple sauce, Apple 

 butter, and the stores of Apple bin and Apple pit 

 were exhausted, and they then afforded, after proper 

 baths and soakings, the wherewithal for that domes- 

 tic comestible — dried Apple pie. The Swedish 

 parson, Dr. Acrelius, writing home to Sweden in 



