Every wild-apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as
every wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a
lesson to man! So are human beings, referred to the highest
standard, the celestial fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear,
browsed on by fate; and only the most persistent and strongest
genius defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion upward at
last, and drops its perfect fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and
philosophers and statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures,
and outlast the hosts of unoriginal men.

Such is always the pursuit of knowledge. The celestial fruits, the
golden apples of the Hesperides, are ever guarded by a hundred-
headed dragon which never sleeps, so that it is an herculean labor
to pluck them.

This is one and the most remarkable way in which the wild apple is
propagated; but commonly it springs up at wide intervals in woods
and swamps, and by the sides of roads, as the soil may suit it, and
grows with comparative rapidity. Those which grow in dense woods are
very tall and slender. I frequently pluck from these trees a
perfectly mild and tamed fruit. As Palladius says, "And the ground
is strewn with the fruit of an unbidden apple-tree."

It is an old notion, that, if these wild trees do not bear a
valuable fruit of their own, they are the best stocks by which to
transmit to posterity the most highly prized qualities of others.
However, I am not in search of stocks, but the wild fruit itself,
whose fierce gust has suffered no "inteneration." It is not my