THE EDGE OF NIGHT 



eyond the meadow, nearly half a 

 mile away, yet in sight from my 

 window, stands an apple tree, the 

 last of an ancient line that once 

 marked the boundary between the 

 upper and lower pastures. For an apple tree it is 

 unspeakably woeful, and bent, and hoary, and 

 grizzled, with suckers from feet to crown. Un- 

 kempt and unesteemed, it attracts only the cattle 

 for its shade, and gives to them alone its gnarly, 

 bitter fruit. 



But that old tree is hollow, trunk and limb ; 

 and if its apples are of Sodom, there is still no 

 tree in the Garden of the Hesperides, none even 

 in my own private Eden, carefully kept as they 

 are, that is half as interesting — I had almost 

 said, as useful. Among the trees of the Lord, an 

 apple tree that bears good Baldwins or greenings 

 or rambos comes first for usefulness ; but when 

 one has thirty-five of such trees, which the town 

 has compelled one to trim and scrape and plas- 



