THE APPLE. 



125 



or abettor of social intercourse among our rural pop- 

 ulation the apple has been, the company growing more 

 merry and unrestrained as soon as the basket of ap- 

 ples was passed round. When the cider, followed, the 

 introduction and good understanding were complete. 

 Then those rural gatherings that enlivened the autumn 

 in the country, known as " apple cuts," now, alas! 

 nearly obsolete, where so many things were cut and 

 dried besides apples! The larger and more loaded 

 the orchard, the more frequently the invitations went 

 round and the higher the social and convivial spirit 

 ran. Ours is eminently a country of the orchard. 

 Horace Greeley said he had seen no land in which 

 the orchard formed such a prominent feature in the 

 rural and agricultural districts. Nearly every farm- 

 house in the Eastern and Northern States has its set- 

 ting or its back ground of apple-trees, which generally 

 date back to the first settlement of the farm. Indeed the 

 orchard, more than almost any other thing, tends to 

 soften and humanize the country, and give the place 

 of which it is an adjunct, a settled domestic look. The 

 apple-tree takes the rawness and wildness off any 

 scene. On the top of a mountain, or in remote pas- 

 tures, it sheds the sentiment of home. It never loses 

 its domestic air, or lapses into a wild state. And m 

 planting a homestead, or in choosing a building site 

 for the new house, what a help it is to have a few 

 old, maternal apple-trees near by ; regular old grand- 

 mothers, who have seen trouble, who have been sad 



