"highest plot
To plant the Bergamot."





THE FRUIT, AND ITS FLAVOR.




The time for wild apples is the last of October and the first of
November. They then get to be palatable, for they ripen late, and
they are still, perhaps, as beautiful as ever. I make a great
account of these fruits, which the farmers do not think it worth the
while to gather,--wild flavors of the Muse, vivacious and
inspiriting. The farmer thinks that he has better in his barrels;
but he is mistaken, unless he has a walker's appetite and
imagination, neither of which can he have.

Such as grow quite wild, and are left out till the first of
November, I presume that the owner does not mean to gather. They
belong to children as wild as themselves,--to certain active boys
that I know,--to the wild-eyed woman of the fields, to whom nothing
comes amiss, who gleans after all the world,--and, moreover, to us
walkers. We have met with them, and they are ours. These rights,
long enough insisted upon, have come to be an institution in some
old countries, where they have learned how to live. I hear that "the
custom of grippling, which may be called apple-gleaning, is, or was