246 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



had enough of acid in them to give a rare delicacy to 

 the taste. I have hid many a one away in the hay to 

 give it time to ripen, gathering them a httle early, 

 perhaps, to be sure of them ; and then right royal was 

 the feast upon the big mellow globes. I see the teeth 

 marks in them still; the rich pulp yields like flakes of 

 snow, and melts as easily; one by one they disappear. 

 The old tree has suckers all over it, and has been neg- 

 lected, but it still bears, in my judgment, the finest 

 apples in the orchard. 



Some kinds of apples, like the Ben Davis, have a 

 thick, leathery skin, almost a hide, to them; others, 

 and most of them, have quite a thin skin, which 

 crackles and tears apart easily as we bite it with our 

 teeth. Some are greasy and sticky, like the Greenings, 

 while others are almost slippery to the touch. 



I like best the kind of trees that were grafted low, 

 where the branches start to spread not over three feet 

 from the ground. It is a pleasure to climb into such 

 trees, and the apples at the ends of the boughs can be 

 reached without great difficulty by single ladders, in- 

 stead of necessitating a double ladder, and even then 

 towering above us, as they frequently do in the older 

 orchards, nodding away in derision, far up in the 

 clouds. The older the trees get, in these orchards of 

 our forefathers, the more inaccessible does the fruit 

 become, until, as the lower limbs decay and are one by 

 one lopped off, the only resort by which to obtain those 

 great shining yellow orbs yonder on the tips is to make 

 use of stones and clubs. It is said that some of the 

 orchards until recently in existence hereabouts were 

 planted by the redoubtable Johnny Appleseed, one of 



