Half an apple goes to the core."

Early apples begin to be ripe about the first of August; but I think
that none of them are so good to eat as some to smell. One is worth more
to scent your handkerchief with than any perfume which they sell in the
shops. The fragrance of some fruits is not to be forgotten, along with
that of flowers. Some gnarly apple which I pick up in the road reminds
me by its fragrance of all the wealth of Pomona,--carrying me forward to
those days when they will be collected in golden and ruddy heaps in the
orchards and about the cider-mills.

A week or two later, as you are going by orchards or gardens, especially
in the evenings, you pass through a little region possessed by the
fragrance of ripe apples, and thus enjoy them without price, and without
robbing anybody.

There is thus about all natural products a certain volatile and ethereal
quality which represents their highest value, and which cannot be
vulgarized, or bought and sold. No mortal has ever enjoyed the perfect
flavor of any fruit, and only the god-like among men begin to taste its
ambrosial qualities. For nectar and ambrosia are only those fine flavors
of every earthly fruit which our coarse palates fail to perceive,--just
as we occupy the heaven of the gods without knowing it. When I see a
particularly mean man carrying a load of fair and fragrant early apples
to market, I seem to see a contest going on between him and his horse,
on the one side, and the apples on the other, and, to my mind, the
apples always gain it. Pliny says that apples are the heaviest of all
things, and that the oxen begin to sweat at the mere sight of a load
of them. Our driver begins to lose his load the moment he tries to
transport them to where they do not belong, that is, to any but the most