Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1874-09-25
Apples.
BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

berries, peaches, plums, pears, high and low
blackberries, thimble berries, blueberries,
and hucklebrrries (if the gentle reader pre-
fers to call them or spell them whortleberries,
let him do SOY, and grapes-eyen grapes,
the most poetic of fruits-might all better
be SHARED than the honest, sound. ruddy
apple. They arc the delight of an hour
| the cyanescent decoration of n week, or a
fort ;ght, or of month. They play ex
| oui. civ into each other hands, and wreathe
| the summer with continuous variety and
delicate cush. Bat the apple is perman-
ent pleasure. 1t IS for all the year. 1t
| circles the months. You NAV eat russets up
to the day when the new apples appear.
The apple is immortal, As it is the most
ancient, so it is the most royal of fruits
The apple never dies.
The sturdy fruit. delicious in flavor and of
an infinite adaptability is curiously character
istic of the Yankee, who surrounds his farm
with its stiff and unshapely trees, and gen.
orally leaves them to wrestle with the
weather as theyIchoose ; but despite his neg
lect, expects they will pour rosy plenty in
to his basket in the soft lndian-summer
days. Is his seeming neglect only the con-
fdencc of experience, after all? If it be so,
how can he look into his orchard without
blushing? What pathetic sermon is each
of those uncomfortable trees No wonder
he hangs his head as he passes by. and scOlds
his teams, and screams to them that he NAV
not hear the still, small voice OF tE1 apple
tree
"IIullo," it whispers to him, as the wind
rustleS through the leaves, "vou are a pretty
hard-looking customer, as | am. We are
both planted on this poor hillside, and we
must both grow and bear as best we can.
| You are fairly honest, they say, if YOU are
as rough and angular as | am. Yet the
town makes good roads for you, and edu-
| Gates your children, and helps you help your
self Good for you and the town. Left to
yourself alone, you might moss over with
ignorance and dullness, and slide back into
barhsrism. Luckily for you, You Yankee,
you have sense enough 10 get scrapcd and To
keep 80. You get Your roots dug around.
You have the caterpillars taken of you,-
even If YOU do sometimes cherish Il maggot
in your brain or catch bee in your bon
net. Why don't You do to Others a. you
woald be done TO? Why should be moss
bound? Why should YOU leave me to choke
with caterpillars, and long in vain to have
the band OF earth loosened around my feet?
Why not wash me once and while. and
dry me with a scraper? should be all the
better for it, and 50 would you. Don't
scream 50 noisily to those oxen, but hear
what say and do what ask
1t is the most generous and unSelf-h Of
the fruits, considering how valuable it is
The huckleberry and the blackberry are
honest souls, too. The firm, hard. buckle
berry Is very different from the b.ueberry,
which is pretty, soft. bastard branch Of the
family, and Is a. modest and generous in It's
sphere, perhaps, as the apple Bat IT, time
Is short; and although the homelies, Of her
ries. it i as capricious As a beauty. The
trailing arbutus, the earliest and one Of the
loyeliest Of wild-iowcrs, has the same ming
ling Of humility and caprice. Il rams under
the Old moist leaves Of last vear,-thc most
mouldv and old-aShioned society but it
takes dainty little airs, and will not show
it, face upon aristocratic and hish-hrei W
lands. even when they are IN the most I'M
mediate neigh5orhood. So the huckleberry
bcStows itself proiusely upon the most bar
rcn pastures but when you % t. find It a
few fields off, and apparently upon the same
kind OF soil, the whim Las seized it, and it
viii not he found.
But the noble apple viii not be whimsi-
cal All through the latitude> where il
can live at all, it gives itself imTartially and
profrsely And everywhere il i symbol.
In the apple latitulc- men are of mingled.
temperate flavor, neither too sharp nor too
sweet. They are of firm consistency, and
sound % the core. They are a wholesome,
hearty. sturdy, and trusty race In the
grape latitude~, the wine countries, they
have rare and exquisite qualitic~ but the
first gush is the best, and they are no; sweet
- the very seed and in the seed. In the
banana and c1mc.ranatc latitudes there Is
little spirit, no flavor, and an insipid, mushy
consistency. Grapes Shrilel into rai~in~.
which may Pc packed in boxes like slaves in
q -laye-~hip. But apples, even N barrel,
preserve thcir individuality and clbow-room,
and touch hut a lew points. and ,hey nobly
endure. II yol choose to slice and dry them
it is not their natural eni-but even then
they viii return you good for evil in pies
that nigh, persuade any pagan to be Chris
tan. No doughy, clammy. fatty pies. which
are q device of Satan, bat those triumphs
which have no bottom, AMI in which the
spoon sinks and sinks-Selah
Fur pic proper no condemnation can he
severe enough. 1t j. one of the alarming
signs that We are getting TO he q pie-cating
nation. (Gctting to heO Pies are the
staple food in all the taycrns in the land.
The rural kitchen j. fall Of pies The rail-
road stations are piled with pies. The eat
ing-b0oths in Fglton MarSet are lined with
pies. Il Is the popular form Of taking dys-
pepsia and running the health. The smart
Sila, who hired himself to the London TIE
graph to ridicule this country. sparkled
when he wrote Of pies and the worst of his
wit was that it was true. Il Is 4 pr0stitu-
ton to any fruit, an injury, 4 crime, to bury
it in pie. But against the venerable and
august apple it is peculiar infamy.
Thus nothing is 50 improper a. pie prop
er. But there are preparations called PIE
which are truly delightful the chief among
them that which slices the apple without
making a mush of it, and after it slices ii.
/ spices it, and then bakes it under firm,
| light, thoroughly Drowned, and dry ernst.
/ Or Is there any human food which tran
scends n Pumpkin or Talman Sweeting.
carefully baked, and eaten with cream and
rev milk? In other days the CAFE de Paris
upon the lerdrd dcs Hdl,nS had tooths0me
carte, or bill Of fare. The choicest dishes
| exquisitely cooked were there. But a GER
| tain traveller searched it in vain, and with
a sigh, for plump sweeting apple perfectly
| baked and submerged in cream. II a Yam
kee from New England hills had invited
Abd-el-kader, the late guest of Paris, to
dine with him IN that city. and could have
set before him what every Yankee housewife
sets before her husbands "hands," the
pleased Algerinc would have confessed a
triumph of the cuisine beyond the reach of
his impassioned Imagination.
We call the apple venerable and august.
| What else has descended to Us from the gar
| den of Eden but that and sin? Had there
/ been any other fruit there in the blooming
youth and glory of all fruits which could
have persuaded Adam, the primal and per-
feet man, surely it would have been chosen.
/ Why was not the luscious peach preferred,
or the orange, or the Arabian date? For
the iov of tasting an apple, Adam made us
all taste sin. For an apple he gave the
world.
And in that other heaven of the Greeks, it
was an apple that sowed dIscord, from the
immortal jealousy of divinities that lOnged
to possess it.
Let the sluggards 90 to the ant. But the
rest of Us will Learn of the apple. of the
! most ancient and honorable ancestry, now
humble it is Under what plain home
spun coat it hides its perennial sweetness
and exhaustless virtue Take diamonds and
gold if you will, o Mother Nature, but spare
Us the kindly apple
! 4 Sad Case.
From the Philadelphia IuqGirer.
C,,,. y, ID, o,o n pnir Of borsas, ,yera