patriarchal age of ninety, ate the apples from this orchard during
many years, and added silver and gold to his annual stipend by
disposing of the superfluity. It is pleasant to think of him walking
among the trees in the quiet afternoons of early autumn and picking up
here and there a windfall, while he observes how heavily the branches
are weighed down, and computes the number of empty flour-barrels that
will be filled by their burden. He loved each tree, doubtless, as if
it had been his own child. An orchard has a relation to mankind, and
readily connects itself with matters of the heart. The trees possess
a domestic character; they have lost the wild nature of their forest
kindred, and have grown humanized by receiving the care of man as well
as by contributing to his wants. There, is so much individuality of
character, too, among apple trees, that it gives them all additional
claim to be the objects of human interest. One is harsh and crabbed
in its manifestations; another gives us fruit as mild as charity. One
is churlish and illiberal, evidently grudging the few apples that it
bears; another exhausts itself in free-hearted benevolence. The
variety of grotesque shapes into which apple, trees contort themselves
has its effect on those who get acquainted with them: they stretch out
their crooked branches, and take such hold of the imagination, that we
remember them as humorists and odd fellows. And what is more
melancholy than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where
once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney
rising out of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit
to every wayfarer,--apples that are bitter sweet with the moral of
Time's vicissitude.

I have met with no other such pleasant trouble in the world as that of
finding myself, with only the two or three mouths which it was my
privilege to feed, the sole inheritor of the old clergyman's wealth of