APPLE ORCHARD IN FULL FRUIT 129 
the gloaming and the mists hover a little closer 
about us; and supper ended, with its voices and 
edibles of hospitality, we dip down into the 
valley and along the river, and this day de luxe 
is bound with sunup and sunset and stars are 
sprinkled on the book’s back, and the volume of 
the day is glad with the poem of an apple plucked 
from a day when the world was an apple orchard 
in full fruit. 
And now with the apple orchard far behind, 
and the apple trees standing to catch the wild 
music of the winter’s wind, and the mountain- 
side having lost its splendor, but not its music, 
I consider the apple orchard and the wonder of 
its life. In the spring that wide-spreading orchard 
was a bouquet which God might wear on his 
bosom and was perfumed with ecstasy of fra- 
grance. Spring is gone and far passed though 
not forgotten, and the fragrance of the apple 
blossoms is inherited by the apple fruit. The 
apple orchard began in fragrance and in fragrance 
concludes. What a poet God is, and what a 
poem it will be to spend eternal life with him! 
Laus Deo. 
