8 THE APPLE-TREE 



There are strange fruits in the carts, on the donkeys 

 that move down the hillsides from distant plantations in 

 the heart of the jungle, on the trees by winding road and 

 thatched cottage, in the great crowded markets in the 

 city. I recognize coconuts and mangoes, star-apples and 

 custard-apples and cherimoyas, papayas, guavas, ma- 

 mones, pomegranates, figs, christophines, and the varied 

 range of citrus fruits. There are also great polished 

 apples in the markets, coming from cooler regions, tied 

 by their stems, good to look at but impossible to relish; 

 and I understand how these people of the tropics think 

 the apple an inferior fruit, so successfully do the poor 

 varieties stop the desire for more. There are vegetables 

 I have never seen before. 



I am conscious of a slowly moving landscape with 

 people and birds and beasts of burden and windy vegeta- 

 tion, of prospects in which there are no broad smooth 

 farm fields with fences dividing them, of scenery full of 

 herbage, in which every lineament and action incite me 

 and stimulate my desire for more, of days that end sud- 

 denly in the blackness of night. 



Yet, somehow, I look forward to the time when I may 

 go to a more accustomed place. Either from long asso- 

 ciation with other scenes or because of some inexpres- 

 sible deficiency in this tropic splendor, I am not satisfied 

 even though I am exuberantly entertained. Something 

 I miss. For weeks I wondered what single element I 

 missed most. Out of the numberless associations of 

 childhood and youth and eager manhood it is difificult to 

 choose one that is missed more than another. Yet one 

 day it came over me startlingly that I missed the apple- 

 tree, — the apple-tree, the sheep, and the milch cattle ! 



