THE APPLE. 



apple and its tree are under obligation. His chapter 

 on Wild Apples is one of the most delicious pieces of 

 writing in our literature. It has a " tang and smack " 

 like the fruit it celebrates, and is dashed and streaked 

 with color in the same manner. It has the hue and per- 

 fume of the crab, and the richness and raciness of the 

 pippin. But Thoreau loved other apples than the wild 

 sorts, and was obliged 8 to confess that his favorites could 

 not be eaten in doors. Late in November he found a 

 blue-pearmain tree growing within the edge of a swamp, 

 almost as good as wild. " You would not suppose," he 

 says, " that there was any fruit left there on the first 

 survey, but you must look according to system. Those 

 which lie exposed are quite brown and rotten now, or 

 perchance a few still show one blooming cheek here 

 and there amid the wet leaves. Nevertheless, with ex- 

 perienced eyes I explore amid the bare alders, and the 

 huckle-berry bushes, and the withered sedge, and in the 

 crevices of the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry 

 under the fallen and decayed ferns which, with apple 

 and alder leaves, thickly strew the ground. For I 

 know that they lie concealed, fallen into hollows long 

 since, and covered up by the leaves of the tree itself — 

 a proper kind of packing. From these lurking places, 

 everywhere within the circumference of the tree, I draw 

 forth the fruit, all wet and glossy, may be nibbled by 

 rabbits and hollowed out by crickets, and perhaps a 

 leaf or two cemented to it (as Curzon an old manu- 

 script from a monastery's mouldy cellar)^ but still with 



