126 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
Through the orchard here and there were 
mountain springs and their liquid voice in the 
still October sky dripped a tune no xylophone 
could equal and invited with singing voice to 
lean and drink from the limpid chalice. Over 
one spring a half-up-rooted apple tree burdened 
with apple fruit hung like the very noon of poetry, 
and apples floated in the spring like argosies of 
crimson. All and in all no poetry was adequate 
for that beautiful reminiscent day when the 
whole world of the apple orchard housed us in. 
I could hear wherever I was through the wide- 
spreading apple orchard the homely creak of the 
wagons burdened with apples. It was a homely 
and a happy sound. I loved it. 
The farmer’s wife was putting up tomatoes, 
and as a respite was picking up apples in her 
apron to make baked apples for the evening 
meal. Being bidden, I went to look at them 
and her. They looked so good. I dare not, as 
a married man, pass judgment on how she looked. 
I remember my training. But canned fruit and 
vegetables (in glass cans) are pictures. I should 
like to see more of them, and some time when 
I grow rich I am going to have a cellar shelf 
filled with all kinds of fruits the ground grows; 
pickles, and pears and plums, and pickled peaches 
and beets and beans, and apple butter in glass 
cans, and then I am going to go down in that 
cellar and sit and look and look at this art gallery. 
May the day hasten! It is said in the Beautiful 
