122 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
rubies, howbeit edible rubies. A ruby is a costly 
stone and very beautiful, but as a matter of diet 
it is a trifle indigestible and hard on store teeth. 
When mine host of this apple vineyard had to 
go down to town at the foot of the mountain 
on business matters pertaining to orcharding, I 
loitered along any apple road that invited, and 
they all invited. An apple orchard is always 
hospitable—fragrant hospitality. Every tree 
beckoned as to say: “Sample my apples. How 
do you like the kind of apple I am?” What a 
thing it was to hear an apple orchard grow 
colloquial! People think apples are dumb, and 
know no vocabulary and cannot frame fine 
phrases. Such people are ignoramuses and should 
attend an apple orchard school with an apple 
tree in fruit for a staid school-teacher. Truly 
this was a haunted land. Sometimes I could 
glimpse a stretch of road down in the valley 
climbing over the hills and a far-seen glory of 
landscape, the mist floating away and the Indian- 
summer haze lying calmly to the remotest sky 
and veiling the hills with its veil of unspeakable 
loveliness. And as I went onward I would lie 
down betimes under an apple tree, invited thereto 
by the apple tree’s shadow and perfume and 
hospitality and wearied a little by my climbing 
down and up, and my excess of gladness in this 
apple world in which I found myself a vagabond 
of the hills. How sweet it was to lie flat on the 
back with the apples burning crimson above me 
