APPLE ORCHARD IN FULL FRUIT 127 
Book, “God hath made everything beautiful 
in his season.” I should know that now after 
these years of philandering with the out-of-doors 
though it were not said in the Holy Book. I 
entered the farmhouse, and in the “chimbley 
corner” sat an old, old man whom I had seen 
seated in the sunshine in the apple orchard 
taking the sun as if to ripen him as it was ripen- 
ing the apples, and now is he in the kitchen 
where the woman is wiping, with her apron, the 
two quart cans of newly put-up tomatoes and 
he near the stove, for his blood runs not very 
fast at his sunset hour and the chill of the evening 
must enter his blood. The boy comes somer- 
saulting into the kitchen. Life is in that homey 
kitchen—the old man, the blessed woman, the 
tumultuous boy. As I come out I hear an apple 
tired of waiting for the pickers falling to the 
ground, and I go and pocket it for company for 
it and me. It must not be lonesome and I must 
not. 
And I hear the car of my host coming up the 
long winding mountainside and his greeting for 
his wife, my hostess, and I see the blue smoke 
(blessed blue wood smoke) straying from the 
cook-stove chimney and am thinking we shall 
presently have supper in the midst of the apple 
orchard. Supper will be welcome, but it will 
be saddened by the sense that I must leave this 
orchard land and go down again where the 
orchard trees are not bending under their blessed 
