aha!" This being the Scriptural method, I have done so. But I can 

 advise an apple orchard. It is better than investing in mines. You 

 never know what you will get by what you plant. A quartet of things 

 or a double quartet of things may happen to the tree. It may freeze 

 to death, or borers may probe it, or rabbits may girdle it, or your tenant 

 may drive plow or wagon over it, or hot winds may bake it, or your 

 neighbor's cattle may come uninvited into your field and eat it, or 

 out I desist. Enough has been said to show how delicious the uncer- 

 tainty, such as is attendant on either fishing or mining. If the tree 

 escapes all these snares of appleyouth it may come to applehood. This 

 also is uncertain. This process is as thrilling as reading a serial story 

 written by Mrs. Southworth. Aye, but it is bonnie! In winter, to look 

 across the tops of apple-trees is to warm both eyes and hands ; for the 

 branches have a half-crimson, half-purple glow, so that after looking at 

 them I feel as if I had warmed my hands and heart at a ruddy wood- 

 blaze. And some morning you will walk into your field, and suddenly 

 your spirit will sing, like happy music beside the conquering sea, when 

 long rows of apple-trees are in early spring bloom and the grass has 

 had courage to grow green, and the brown fields in which the trees 

 grow have hint of spring's coming; for the field will be pink as a 

 winter-evening sky, and the apple-blossoms, with their dainty fragrance, 

 and their exquisite form and delicacy of coloring make it so that resur- 

 rection seems not myth, but truth. An apple orchard is a success, you 

 know, when the apple-trees bloom. They may not come to crop, what 

 odds? They have done enough for one season. Let them bloom this 

 year and bear next year. A man must not be covetous. When apple- 

 branches flush with bloom heaven is no remote province, but nearer 

 than " Down to old Aunt Mary's." 



The pear-trees are beautiful specimens of arboreal life. The bark 

 is shiny and dainty, and in color like unto dregs of wine, and smooth as 

 polished hardwoods. God has taken pains with pear-trees. They grow 

 tall and graceful as a woman, and, like a woman, are winsome. The 

 blossoms are snow-white why, the almond is not whiter, nor may-apple 

 blossoms (than these, what could be more snow-white) ? And the cherry- 

 trees, their bark is smooth and polished, and blackberry and raspberry 

 vines have rare crimsons to cross their tangle of branch and color over 

 the little plot where they are sown. They are the ruddiest colors of the 

 winter, save those which glow in the skies when daylight shames into 

 the dusk. Peach-trees I love more in summer than in winter, for they 



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