APPLE ORCHARD IN FULL FRUIT 125 
set to melody. They seem to be singing what fall- 
ing leaves feel and have no voice to utter. 
Still the Indian-summer haze hangs over the 
apple orchard and the miles of trees soon to be 
appleless and leafless—just a vintage of empti- 
ness with fallen leaves and fallen snowflakes 
mingled with them. The wind was taking a 
holiday save on the mountain’s crest. In all my 
happy life of gypsying with the outdoors I do 
not know a day of sweeter cadences of sky and 
tree and misty hills and pathetic autumnal 
suggestion and voices. “The pathos of a fallen 
leaf,” Poet Aldrich has it. It cannot be better 
put. That lovely lonesome line will last as long 
as the fallen leaf hovers a little in the sky and 
then voicelessly settles to its slumber on the 
ground. My heart rested in the landscape. 
The house of hospitality, the lodge in the apple 
orchard, was visible, sitting silent in the dim 
sunlight as dozing and on the verge of winter 
solstice. The voice of the sweet hostess who 
loved this mountain quiet and solitude saturated 
with poetry could be heard (for she loved the 
pipe organ and was mistress of its sonorous 
melody), and she was singing hymns, holy hymns 
of holy hope and life everlasting; than which no 
music is sweeter nor any music so sweet; and her 
song and voice fitted into the silence and the 
scene and the sky and the cathedral aisle of the 
apple orchard in full fruit as though they had 
been the aisles of some stately minster. 
