WHERE THERE IS NO APPLE-TREE 9 



The farm home with its commodious house, its 

 greensward, its great barn and soft fields and distant 

 woods, and the apple-tree by the wood-shed; the good 

 home at the end of the village with its sward and shrub- 

 bery, and apple roof-tree; the orchard, well kept, trim 

 and apple-green, yielding its wagon-loads of fruits; the 

 old tree on the hillside, in the pasture where genera- 

 tions of men have come and gone and where houses have 

 fallen to decay; the odor of the apples in the cellar in 

 the cold winter night; the feasts around the fireside, — I 

 think all these pictures conjure themselves in my mind 

 to tantalize me of home. 



And often in my wanderings I promise myself that 

 when I reach home I shall see the apple-tree as I had 

 never seen it before. Even its bark and its gnarly trunk 

 will hold converse with me, and its first tiny leaves of 

 the budding spring will herald me a welcome. Once 

 again I shall be a youth with the apple-tree, but feeling 

 more than the turbulent affection of transient youth can 

 understand. Life does not seem regular and established 

 when there is no apple-tree in the yard and about the 

 buildings, no orchards blooming in the May and laden 

 in the September, no baskets heaped with the crisp 

 smooth fruits ; without all these I am still a foreigner, 

 sojourning in a strange land. 



