Grand River times. [volume] (Grand Haven, Mich.) 1851-18??, 1855-10-03
THE OLD ORCHARD.

The old orchard! Don't you wish you
were there to-day! We do not mean the
nursery of little trees that stand nowadays,
with brushed up tops, like the inmates of a
Charity School; nor yet the small shrubbery
of the good goddess Pomona, whose offerings
these many years can be counted, and whose
infant branches yet lack the confidence of
birds, and never bore a nest, or sheltered a
a song, or flung shadow larger than hand
kerchief.
Of course we mean nothing like that at
all, but the dear old Orchard on the southern
slope, where the shadows used to play all
about in the sun, and children in the shad-
ows, and clad hearts in the children; the old
Orchard that came with the pioneer, and grew
up, side by side, with the girls and the boys,
and was set close to the house, and not great
way from the barn.
The recollections that cling around those
old trees are as fragrant and beautiful as their
blossoms were, when like snow from some
cloud that the angels had breathed on, they
chung to the branches, unmelted by the sun,
till the winds shook them down in shower.
All, this life we are leading, is for all the
world like the blossoms; for didn't they hang
in little clusters together, and what promise
they gave of fruit by and by, but how seldom
it was that there were more than an apple or
two to a whole family of pink and white
promises! And that perhaps is the reason
why youth looks so beautiful to all, for how
full the world is, of orchards in bloom.
We know you have not forgotten where
the Seek-no- furthers" stood-we called
them "Signyfders" then, bnt no matter for
that. Then there were the Russets," in the
second row from the bars, and the great
" Golden Sweeting" under the lee of the
barn, and the "Harvest Bough' was close
to the fence, and very convenient to climb to
and there used to be, you remember, marks
thereon, of much scrambling and kicking
and many missile of club, have the fall
en- leaves revealed, lying among its branches,
but the errand it had gone on, was undoubt-
edly done, long ago, and as for the finger
what, we ask you, has become of him? Has
he striven for other fruit since? Has he
struggled for the clusters upon the Dead Seas
shore, and did they look beautiful to his eye,
and turn to ashes in his hand? Was he a
brother, and is he changed and afar off?
Was he friend, and did you mourn him, and
is he dead? Have the blossoms come down,
is the fruit garnered, and the summer gone
forever?
There, too, was the Greening, the great
"Rhode Island Greening," exactly in the
center of the Orchard, at whose foot the
old red Lion" made his lair, and whence he
sailed in roundabout" and striped trowsers,
when the boldest of us ventured to dare him
I" out of his den," to catch some well condi-
toned "hen' in straw hat and tow jacket
1t was at that tree, we each had our turn :" to
blind" until the shrill scoop" rang in every
direction from among the shadows. Some
of us have encountered "a lion in the way
since then, and some have sought in vain the
friends that clouds and binding storms have
scattered abroad. 1t is very queer, how we
keep up the old games to the last.
You must remember how we helped each
other up into the Russets, just to see what the
robins were doing in the tree, as if they
hadn't better right there than we had; and
who told us we might 90 to the neighbors al
all? Well, at length you sat triumphantly
astride the first limb, and carefully proceeded