, 1861-12-27
The Old Orchard,

The old Orchard Don't you wish you were
there to-day? We do not mean nurseries or lit
tie trees that stand nowadays, with brushed up
tops like the inmates of Charity School; noi
yet the small shrubbery of the good goddess Po-
mona, whose offerings these many years can be
counted, and whose infant branches yet lack the
confidence of birds and never bore nest OF
sheltered song, or flung a shadow larger than a
handkerchief
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 shadows, and glad hearts in the
children; the old Orchard that come with the
pioneer, and grew up, side BY side with the girls
and boys, and was set close to the house, and not
great way from the barn.
The recolections that cling around those old
trees are as fragrant and beautiful as their bios
SONS were, when like the snow from some cloud
that the angels had breathed on, they clung to
the branches unmelted by the sun, till the winds
shook them down in a 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 was more than an
apple or two, to 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-nc-furthers" stood we called them "Sig-
nifyders" then, but that don't signify. Then there
were the "Rnssets" 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 there
on, of much scrambing and kicking and many a
missile of a club have the fallen leaves revealed, ly-
ing among its branches, but the errand it had gone
on was undoubtedly done, long ago, and as for the
fnger-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 ashes in his hand? Was he brother, and is
he changed and affair 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 over forever? There too, was
the Greening, the "Rhode Island Greening," ex-
actly in the centre of the Orchard, at whose foot
the "old-red Lion" made his lair, and whence he
sailed in roundabout" and striped trousers,
when the boldest of us ventured to dare him "out
of his den," to catch some wel-conditioned "hen'
in straw hat and tow jacket. 1t was at that
tree, we each had taken our turn "to blind, until
the shrill scoop" rang in every direction from
among the shadows. Some of us have encountered
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
And then when brown October came, and the
great ripe apples hung like garnets and emeralds
and comedians, to the half leaAess branches and
began to fall one after another, of their own ac-
cord, gancing from limb to limb, as if reluctant
to leave the tree they always lived in, what a
time we had IN the harvesting "Our man" went
up into the trees and shook them like a great
ague, while with shouts of brave delight, we with
stood the rafting shower beneath. Then the
cistern hook was brought into requisition, to give
some refractory limb hearty shaking, Then we
were sent out, creeping like young cat-mountains
upon the most ambitious boughs, to pluck off the
loiterers, until every tree bare as it was born
And there they lay in yellow, red and green, all
over the earth, and how they few into piles, the
jaspers and the topazes, here they were crimson