98 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



THE APPLE.— USES IN FAMILY, WAYS OF PREPARING, 

 PRESERVING AND SERVING IT.* 



BY MRS. A. L. HERSEY OF OXFORD. 



I venture to say that no one present would be willing to exchange 

 the apple for either the peach, the pear, the orange or the lemon, 

 the pineapple or the bannana, or, indeed, for any other tropical 

 fruit. I presume there is no fruit the New England house-keeper 

 would miss so much, especially in the culinary department, as the 

 apple, and certainly there is nothing that could supply its place. 

 Judging from my own obserA'ation, the good father of the house- 

 hold, too, would find it, if possible, still more difficult than would 

 his housekeeper to dispense with the apple in the bill of fare at the 

 family table. 



Only last month some of the convicts at Sing Sing rebelled 

 because they did not have their apple-sauce twice a week. Indeed, 

 I quite wonder it had not been Adam, instead of Eve, that yielded 

 to the temptation of the fair apples in the Garden of Eden ; and had 

 it not been that Eve was the quicker to appreciate, by sight and by 

 smell, the beauty and lusciousness of the fruit of the " Tree of 

 Life," I've no doubt but that the blame of our depraved natures 

 would have been laid at the door of man's frailtj', instead of being 

 borne by his young, impressible wife. I presume it was with Eve 

 as with the rest of us loyal wives. If anything new and nice is to 

 be had, it goes to our husbands ; and the sins we commit, first and 

 last, for his benefit, would ruin us all, were it not they were com- 

 mitted from a purely unselfish motive — our love and devotion to onr 

 "Adam." 



But,- to my subject — the apple, its uses in the famil}'. 



The same apple, uncooked, is a good digester, and is always a 

 welcome lunch. The tiny child, with only a half-dozen teeth, will 

 gnaw all around an apple, holding on to it with its little chubby hands 

 with the tenacity of a squirrel. The school boy or school girl will 

 eat more apples, ripe or green, than I should dare tell, and that 

 with impunity. The 3'oung miss and lad from twelve to sixteen 

 will fill their pockets with apples, and with book or paper and per- 



* Read at a Farmers' Institute in Oxford county. 



