mn day, and as I
drove out I saw the apples ripening in all the orchards along the road,
and the corn was beginning to look brown, and the meadows by the brook
were green with rowen. It was an ideal day for an auction, and farmers
and townsmen came trooping from all parts of the country, for the
Templeton antiques were to be sold.

John Templeton lived in one house for seventy-eight years; he was born
there, and you will find the like of that in few places in America. It
was a fine house for its time, for any time, and not new when John
Templeton was born. A great, solid, square structure, such as they built
when the Puritan spirit was virile in New England, with an almost Greek
beauty of measured lines. It has a fanlight over the front door, windows
exquisitely proportion, and in the center a vast brick chimney. Even
now, though weathered and unpainted, it stands four-square upon the
earth with a kind of natural dignity. A majestic chestnut tree grows
near it, and a large old barn and generous sheds, now somewhat
dilapidated, ramble away to the rear.

Enclosing the fields around about are stone fences representing the
infinite labour of John Templeton's forebears. More toil has gone into
the stone fences of New England, free labour of a free people, than ever
went into the slave-driven building of the Pyramids of Egypt.

I knew John Templeton in his old age--a stiff, weather-beaten old man
driving to town in a one-horse buggy.

"How are you, Mr. Templeton?"

"Comin' on, comin' on." This was his invariable reply.

He had the old New England pronunciation, now disappearing. He said
"rud" for road, "daown" for down, and gave an indescribable twist to the
word garden, best spelled "gardin." He had also the old New England
ways. He was forehanded with his winter woodpile, immaculately neat with
his dooryard, determined in his Sunday observance, and if he put the
small apples in the middle of the barrel he refused to raise tobacco,
lest it become a cause of stumbling to his neighbour. He paid his debts,
disciplined his children, and in an age which has come to look chummily
upon God, he dreaded His wrath.

He grew a peculiar, very fine variety of sweet apple which I have never
seen anywhere else. He called it the Pumpkin Sweet, for it was of a rich
yellow. I can see him yet, driving into town with a shallow wagon box
half full of this gold of the orchard; can see him turn stiffly to get
one of the apples for me; can