THE APPLE. 85 



^Kitting or its background of apple-trees, which gener- 

 ally date back to the first settlement of the farm. 

 Indeed, the orchard, more than almost any other 

 thing, tends to soften and humanize the country, and 

 to 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 sum- 

 mers, who have blossomed till the air about them is 

 sweeter than elsewhere, and borne fruit till the grass 

 beneath them has become thick and soft from human 

 contact, and who have nourished robins and finches in 

 their branches till they have a tender, brooding look. 

 The ground, the turf, the atmosphere of an old 

 orchard, seem several stages nearer to man than that 

 of the adjoining field, as if the trees had given back 

 to the soil more than they had taken from it ; as if 

 they had tempered the elements and attracted all the 

 genial and beneficent influences in the landscape 

 around. 



An apple orchard is sure to bear you several crops 

 beside the apple. There is the crop of sweet and ten- 

 der reminiscences dating from childhood and spanning 

 the seasons from May to October, and making the 

 orchard a sort of outlying part of the household. You 

 have played there as a child, mused there as a youth 

 or lover, strolled there as a thoughtful, sad-eyed man. 

 Your father, perhaps, planted the trees, or reared them 



