age in the human family.

After walking some distance, we began to doubt whether we might not
have missed the way to the gate of which the woman had spoken. For a
wall appeared, which, to judge from the tree-tops visible over it, must
surround a kitchen garden or orchard; and from this we feared we had
come too nigh the house. We had not gone much further before a branch,
projecting over the wall, from whose tip, as if the tempter had gone
back to his old tricks, hung a rosy-cheeked apple, drew our eyes and
arrested our steps. There are grown people who cannot, without an
effort of the imagination, figure to themselves the attraction between
a boy and an apple; but I suspect there are others the memories of
whose boyish freaks will render it yet more difficult for them to
understand a single moment's contemplation of such an object without
the endeavour to appropriate it. To them the boy seems made for the
apple, and the apple for the boy. Rosy, round-faced, spectacled Mr
Elder, however, had such a fine sense of honour in himself that he had
been to a rare degree successful in developing a similar sense in his
boys, and I do believe that not one of us would, under any
circumstances, except possibly those of terrifying compulsion, have
pulled that apple. We stood in rapt contemplation for a few moments,
and then walked away. But although there are no degrees in Virtue, who
will still demand her uttermost farthing, there are degrees in the
virtuousness of human beings.

As we walked away, I was the last, and was just passing from under the
branch when something struck the ground at my heel. I turned. An apple
must fall some time, and for this apple that some time was then. It lay
at my feet. I lifted it and stood gazing at it--I need not say with
admiration. My mind fell a-working. The adversary was there, and the