Comfort Me with Apples 195 
At White Hall, the old home of Bishop Berkeley 
in the island of Rhode Island, still stand the Apple 
trees of his day. A picture of them is shown on 
page 194. 
The sedate and comfortable motherliness of old 
Apple trees is felt by all Apple lovers. John Bur- 
roughs speaks of u maternal old Apple trees, regu- 
lar old grandmothers, who have seen trouble." 
James Lane Allen, amid his apostrophes to the 
Hemp plant, has given us some beautiful glimpses 
of Apple trees and his love for them. He tells of 
“ provident old tree mothers on the orchard slope, 
whose red-cheeked children are autumn Apples." 
It is this motherliness, this domesticity, this home- 
liness that makes the Apple tree so cherished, so 
beloved. No scene of life in the country ever seems 
to me homelike if it lacks an Apple orchard — this 
doubtless, because in my birthplace in New England 
they form a part of every farm scene, of every coun- 
try home. Apple trees soften and humanize the 
wildest country scene. Even- in a remote pasture, 
or on a mountain side, they convey a sentiment of 
home ; and after being lost in the mazes of close- 
grown wood-roads Apple trees are inexpressibly 
welcome as giving promise of a sheltering roof-tree. 
Thoreau wrote of wild Apples, but to me no Apples 
ever look wild. They may be the veriest Crabs, 
growing in wild spots, unbidden, and savage and 
bitter in their tang, but even these seedling Pippins 
are domestic in aspect. 
On the southern shores of Long Island, where 
meadow, pasture, and farm are in soil and crops 
