Comfort Me with Apples 199 
ber Eating, Wine of New England, the Apple of the 
Dell in the Wood, the Apple of the Hollow in the 
Pasture, the Railroad Apple, the Cellar-hole Apple, 
the Frozen-thawed, and many more; these he loved 
for their fruit ; to them let me add the Playhouse 
Apple trees, loved solely for their ingeniously 
twisted branches, an Apple tree of the garden, 
often overhanging the flower borders. I recall 
their glorious whiteness in the spring, but I cannot 
remember that they bore any fruit save a group of 
serious little girls. I know there were no Apples 
on the Playhouse Apple trees in my garden, nor on 
the one in Nelly Gilbert’s or Ella Partridge’s gar- 
den. There is no play place for girls like an old 
Apple tree. The main limbs leave the trunk at ex- 
actly the right height for children to reach, and every 
branch and twig seems to grow and turn only to form 
delightful perches for children to climb among and 
cling to. Some Apple trees in our town had a 
copy of an Elizabethan garden furnishing; their 
branches enclosed tree platforms about twelve feet 
from the ground, reached by a narrow ladder or 
flight of steps. These were built by generous 
parents for their children’s playhouses, but their 
approach of ladder was too unhazardous, their 
railings too safety-assuring, to prove anything but 
conventional and uninteresting. The natural Apple 
tree offered infinite variety, and a slight sense of 
daring to the climber. Its possibility of accident 
was fulfilled; untold number of broken arms and 
ribs — juvenile — - were resultant from falls from 
Apple trees. 
