34 THE APPLE. 



How the early settlers prized the apple ! When 

 their trees broke down or were split asunder by the 

 storms, the neighbors turned out, the divided tree was 

 put together again and fastened with iron bolts. In 

 some of the oldest orchards one may still occasionally 

 see a large dilapidated tree with the rusty iron bolt 

 yet visible. Poor, sour fruit, too, but sweet in those 

 early pioneer days. My grandfather, who was one of 

 these heroes of the stump, used every fall to make a 

 journey of forty miles for a few apples, which he 

 brought home in a bag on horseback. He frequently 

 started from home by two or three o'clock in the 

 morning, and at one time both he and his horse were 

 much frightened by the screaming of panthers in a 

 narrow pass in the mountains through which the road 

 led. 



Emerson, I believe, has spoken of the apple as the 

 social fruit of New England. Indeed, what a pro- 

 moter or abettor of social intercourse among our rural 

 population the apple has been, the company growing 

 more merry and unrestrained as soon as the basket cf 

 apples was passed round I When the cider followed, 

 the introduction and good understanding were com- 

 plete. Then those rural gatherings that enlivened 

 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 frequently the invita- 

 tions went round and the higher the social and con- 

 vivial 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 a2:ricultural districts. Nearly every 

 farmhouse in the Eastern and Northern States has its 



