124 WINTER SUNSHINE 



growing more merry and unrestrained as soon as the 

 basket of apples was passed round! When the 

 cider followed, the introduction and good under- 

 standing were complete. 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 invitations went round and the higher 

 the social and convivial spirit ran. Ours is emi- 

 nently 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 

 agricultural districts. Nearly every farmhouse in 

 the Eastern and Northern States has its setting or 

 its background of apple-trees, which generally 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 give the 

 place of which it is an adjunct a settled, domestic 

 look. The apple-tree takes the rawness and wild- 

 ness 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, tvliat 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 win- 

 ters and summers, who have blossomed till the air 

 about them is sweeter than elsewhere, and borne 



