Evening star., 1909-04-18

1T all came about through some pictured E.1,ts
j apple blossoms. 1t water color s1aRis
Orchard Scene" riotously impress w.
sionistic but true. four five wind s.
swept old apple trees at the falling time Of 2S4
the blossoms. the vaguely pink petals sift- ETT
ing, sitting down with sort of lesurey k,.., ).
whirliness through the gusts of spring e.
breeze that was all but visible,-a spring -
breeze that brought the battling, elusive -
scent of the blossoms to my nostrils as
stood before the shop window, gazing at
the picture.
Then and there a long latent idea
reached its focal point would revisit the
home of my boyhood!
Not that there had been apple orchards
in the little old town. but there had been
apple trees. lots of them, old, far spread By
ing. with knobbed trunks, prodigious Civ -
ers of luscious fruit. There had been
dozen of them in the big yard of my boy
hood on either side of the little frame
house And always had remembered the blossoms
more keeny than the fruit The sitting. drifting ap-
pie blossoms had come i don't know why-to SYM
bolize my boyhood period I cannot explain how
they had crystaized into token of the flown years
but always they had reminded me of the boy time.
The sight of them on the actual bough canvas,
always had moved me to promise myself that some
day-some memorable day should 60 back. Time
and again. year after year, this promise had been
pushed into the ever handy discard of deferred things
Now. however. standing before the shop window
in the beakness of the great city and studying the
lazy zephyred crclings of the pictured apple bios
SONS, said to myself aloud, Il going now"
Within that hour l was packed and on my way to
my boyhood home
Memories of the Long Ago
HERE let me say that twenty-six years with their
spring SHOWS of apple blossoms. had passed since
had left the little old town as boy. l had never
been the place during that long interval 1t
lies about midway of the country, on the west bank
Of of the great rivers, but we'll off the lines of
railroad travel between the two seas. Thus the op-
portunity never had come to me to drop in, SO to
speak, and make the self promised pilgrimage sort
of side incident to a bit of necessary travelling. l
knew that the town had not grown-f indeed. it had
not shrunk-during the quarter-century since had
lived there. 1t had been town-self styled city,,
of course-of twenty thousand population when l
left it. and at twenty thousand it had stuck through
all the pyramiding years between its State
sus figures having given it but grudging nineteen
thousand two hundred only last year
But what has the matter of the actual size
of mans boyhood town to do with his reminiscent
dreams of that marvellous place! Before he has
visited it, l mean Never-until he goes back of
course-does he entirely outgrow the boy ingraned
idea that the town of his boyhood is and always was
a great yes, peerless. city No thronged
Broadway of New York. or teeming State-st. of Chi
cago. wide sweeping Pennsylvania-av of Wash
ington. cosmopolitan Market-st. of San Francisco
ever will weaken threaten his allegiance
until he has returned, and seen it again. please
member his boyhood recollection of the mighty
Main-st of the little burg in which he began to
grow up.
No church. be it the Cologne cathedral itself, can
ever seem to you sheerly in its proper