THE RIPENING AUTUMN 
111 
There is a certain ancient high-walled garden neigh¬ 
bouring my own, and in the midst of it is set a long, 
low building, whose dim and fragrant aisles are filled 
with all sorts and conditions of fruit, rare and ordinary, 
new and old. My friend the Expert is custodian here, 
and it is here that I come to supply a vacancy, to solve 
a difficulty, to decide the doubtful point. Here is the 
great reserve of Cox’s Orange Pippin, dull-speckled 
bronze without, golden within, best of all apples for 
dessert; here, too, lie serried rows of, I can but believe, 
every apple under the sun, to say nothing of the pears. 
My own pride shrinks as I pass between the shelves 
that rise one above another from floor to ceiling. Here 
is wealth indeed—-wealth and a moral—and the moral 
of this is, in the formula of Alice’s immemorial Duchess, 
that “ handsome is as handsome does,” for it is but 
seldom the comeliest fruit that triumphs through taste 
and fidelity. 
There is, as yet, but little change in the general 
aspect of the garden; the parterre is still gay in gala 
dress with its many-coloured autumn flowers, the 
wilderness blossoms in a brilliant rout of blue and gold 
and purple; but the tits have begun their airy assaults 
upon the seeding sunflowers, the swallows are holding 
their restless Parliaments round the high gables, while 
in every plot, however watched and tended, you will 
find some symbol of the fall. Here a dry pod, there a 
casque discrowned, and now again those little mocking 
brown skulls that lurk behind the antirrhinums’ fair 
flower-faces show themselves, furtively eloquent of the 
end. I smell the mould above the rose; the year has 
