willingly left on the tree, I am now glad to find have the property of
hanging on like the leaves of the young oaks. It is a way to keep cider
sweet without boiling. Let the frost come to freeze them first, solid as
stones, and then the rain or a warm winter day to thaw them, and they
will seem to have borrowed a flavor from heaven through the medium of
the air in which they hang. Or perchance you find, when you get home,
that those which rattled in your pocket have thawed, and the ice is
turned to cider. But after the third or fourth freezing and thawing they
will not be found so good.

What are the imported half-ripe fruits of the torrid South, to this
fruit matured by the cold of the frigid North? These are those crabbed
apples with which I cheated my companion, and kept a smooth face that
I might tempt him to eat. Now we both greedily fill our pockets
with them,--bending to drink the cup and save our lappets from the
overflowing juice,--and grow more social with their wine. Was there one
that hung so high and sheltered by the tangled branches that our sticks
could not dislodge it?

It is a fruit never carried to market, that I am aware of,--quite
distinct from the apple of the markets, as from dried apple and
cider,--and it is not every winter that produces it in perfection.

* * * * *

The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past. It is a fruit which will
probably become extinct in New England. You may still wander through old
orchards of native fruit of great extent, which for the most part went
to the cider-mill, now all gone to decay. I have heard of an orchard in
a distant town, on the side of a hill, where the apples rolled down and