i 



THE APPLE. 117 



feet deep in the ground send out roots and develop 

 into fine full-bearing trees by the third year. The peo- 

 ple know the value of the apple too. They make cider 

 and wine of it and then from the refuse a white and 

 finely flavored spirit ; then by another process a sweet 

 treacle is obtained called honey. The children and 

 pigs ate little or no other food. He does not add that 

 the people are healthy and temperate, but I have no 

 doubt they are. We knew the apple had many virtues, 

 but these Chilians have really opened a deep beneath 

 a deep. We had found out the cider and the spirits, 

 but who guessed the wine and the honey, except it 

 were the bees ? There is a variety in our orchards 

 called the winesap, a doubly liquid name that suggests 

 what might be done with this fruit. 



The apple is the commonest and yet the most varied 

 and beautiful of fruits. A dish of them is as becoming 

 to the centre-table in winter as was the vase of flowers 

 in the summer, — a bouquet of spitzenbergs and green- 

 ings and northern spies. A rose when it blooms, the 

 apple is a rose when it ripens. It pleases every sense 

 to which it can be addressed, the touch, the smell, the 

 sight, the taste ; and when it falls in the still October 

 days it pleases the ear. It is a call to a banquet, it is 

 a signal that the feast is ready. The bough would fain 

 hold it, but it can now assert its independence ; it can 

 now live a life of its own. 



Daily the stem relaxes its hold, till finally it lets go 

 completely and down comes the painted sphere with a 



