Comfort Me with Apples 207 
cut, an Apple paring, or an Apple bee. The cheer- 
ful kitchen of the farm-house was set out with its 
entire array of empty pans, pails, tubs, and baskets. 
Heaped-up barrels of apples stood in the centre of 
the room. The many skilful hands of willing 
neighbors emptied the barrels, and with sharp knives 
or an occasional Apple parer, filled the empty 
vessels with cleanly pared and quartered apples. 
When the work was finished, divinations with 
Apple parings and Apple seeds were tried, simple 
country games were played; occasionally there was 
a fiddler and a dance. An autumnal supper was 
served from the three zones of the farm-house : 
nuts from the attic. Apples from the pantry, and 
cider from the cellar. The apple-quarters intended 
for drying were strung on homespun linen thread 
and hung out of doors on clear drying days, A 
humble hillside home in New Hampshire thus 
quaintly festooned is shown in the illustration oppo- 
site page 208 — a characteristic New Hampshire 
landscape. When thoroughly dried in sun and 
wind, these sliced apples were stored for the winter 
by being hung from rafter to rafter of various living 
rooms, and remained thus for months (gathering 
vast accumulations of dust and germs for our bliss- 
fully ignorant and unsqueamish grandparents) until 
the early days of spring, when Apple sauce, Apple 
butter, and the stores of Apple bin and Apple pit 
were exhausted, and they then afforded, after proper 
baths and soakings, the wherewithal for that domes- 
tic comestible — dried Apple pie. The Swedish 
parson, Dr. Acrelius, writing home to Sweden in 
