News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1885-04-16
THE DAYS GONE BY.
BURDETTE BUYS AN APPLE AND
THEN REFLECTS OVER 1T.
His Sad Experience with the Train Boy
while Riding on the Road.

while Riding on the Road.
L bought the apple of the train boy.
Not because l wanted it, oh, no. l did
it to save human life. 1 did it to ap-
pease the train boy, who had turned
himself loose on me at Council Bluffs,
end wos going to make me buy some
thing before we got to st. Joseph (pro-
nounced Sinjo, accent heavy on the Jo),
or lick me. He wanted me to buy all
of Professor Matthew's books, except
the gospel, and nine of E. P. Roe's
novels, and Taylor's "World on Wheels"
and Between the Gates" and seven or
eight Of Pinkerton's fearful and wonder
full detective stories and a whole library
of French novels with very fashy titles
and disappointingly tame reading, and
some California pears and Siberian
oranges and some Alaska figs and Sen
egamblan grapes, some candy packages
with beautiful prize aud $40 bill IN
every package except the one he sold
me, and some ivory ornaments made OF
ivory that grows on trees, and some
fresh roasted peanuts which he assured
me were George Washington's favorite
fruit, that would purify the blood, make
the hair curl, whiten the teeth, make
the complexion clear and promote lon
gevity, and some English walnut meats,
vintage of 1888, railway guide OF last
July and some apples.
/ reflected. / did not think ought
to buy all these things, because l have
a family to support, and l am not so
wealthy as 1 am said to be by the
soliciting committees of poverty-stricken
churches and tottering colleges. But
1 felt, as perhaps you have felt thou
sand times, dear nearer, that I had to
on the floor 81 the car and die.
So bought apples. [ selected apples
because they are palatable, nutritious
and cheap. I asked him how he sold
his apples. With exceeding scorn he
said "Twoforrasent" (Which by interpre-
tation is, two for cent?. L think he
said two for cent. I know had just
missed lecture engagement by railroad
ing into snow-drifL the night before,
and consequently had just enough
money left to buy one, in job lot.
bit it with great difficulty and little
Joy, sing hey, the leathery fungus that
it was. I handed it back to the boy and
told him to keep it; he might want to
kill dog with it some day. The boy,
with the native independence of his
class, said that I did not know good
apple when 1 got one. He opined, in
deed, and very opinely, too, in a loud
tone of expression, for the benefit of the
whole Car, that when had any orchard
fruit at home RECALLED myself, like a
prince, on dried apples.
did not smite the boy nor upbrald
him with hard and singing words.
More, indeed, in sorrow than in anger [
told him / did know what good apple
was, and I knew where they used to
grow, and moreover, if he would bring
me one now, my entire bank account,
with all the Lereditaments, protests and
overdrafts thereunto appertaining,
should be his. The only good apples in
the world. lineal descendants of the
golden stock of Hesperides, used to
grow, twenty five or thirty years ago, on
an old farm three or four miles out of
Peoria, ILL.,, on the Mount Holly road. I
told the boy that they were not always
a fair apple to look upon in their early
youth, when loved them best. They
were hard on one side and green on the
other. They were gnarly all the way
round and sour all the way through.
There was more heartache and sorrow
and deep seated, gnawing remorse and
heartfelt sorrow and honest penitence in
one of those apples, after you had eaten
a peck of them in the same afternoon,
than there is now in q whole green
watermelon.
Nevertheless, 1 used to go into that
orchard at s a. M, eat apples till 11.30
and then feel hungry for big dinner.
And I told the boy if he would bring
me one of those apples now, with the
same old taste and Savor that it had
a quarter of a century gone by, with the
same old smell of the clover and apple
blossom lingering about it; the same
old idle breezss3 thst-kissed my boyish
cheeks in the long, delightful, truant
summer afternoons; with the whistle of
bob white over in the stubble field
beyond the COW pasture; with the muir
muir of the brook that went singing
over the white pebbles at the foot of
the orchard hill; with the music of the
bees humming and buzzing about in the
red clover tops; bring them to me even
with the old well remembered and
peculiarly pungent flavor of the buggy
whip which frequently seasoned those
appIes-because no boy could always
get over the fence in time-I told him 1
would gladly, gladly give him $50 for
just one apple.
But the boy looked at me with a
nameless fear, and backed off down the
aisle of the car, and touched the con-
ductor on the elbow and said.
Chill Say, Bill 4! Who has charge
of the lunatic on the wood box ?"
All, dearly beloved; there is no lunacy
about it. We know now, and some day
the boy will know, that apples are not so
good to-day as they were 25 years
ago. Nothing is so good to us, in fact.
The apples are tough and fiavorless; the
grass is why and thin where it used to
be velvet under our feet; the days are
not so long; the nights have grown
colder; the stars shine less brightly and
there are not so many of them, I count
ed them the other night and there are
half a dozen missing; the COWS don't
come home SO early; the dogs are
crosser; Christmas doesn't come so close
apart as it used to. Every tking changes
except the circus. So runs the world
away. But it doesn't run away with
a coachman, thank the gods. Which
only goes to prove that the world is
much prouder and better than the peo-
pie who live in it.