s for
one. Unpeeled, the ratio fell to seven for one. But there was seldom any
lack of fruit--beside the orchard, there were trees up and down all the
static fence rows--the corner of a worm fence furnishing an ideal seat.
Further, every field boasted trees, self-planted, sprung from chance
seed vagrantly cast. These volunteer trees often had the very best
fruit--perhaps because only peaches of superior excellence had been
worth carrying a-field. Tilth also helped--the field trees bent and
often broke under their fruity burdens. It was only when late frosts
made half or three parts of the young fruit drop, that we knew how fine
and beautiful these field peaches could be. Our trees, being all
seedlings, were in a degree, immortelles. Branches, even trunks might
bend and break, but the seminal roots sent up new shoots next season,
which in another year, bore fruit scantily. Still, these renewals never
gave quite such perfect fruit as grew upon vigorous young trees, just
come to full bearing.

Here or there a plantation owner like my starch and stately grandfather,
turned surplus peaches into brandy. In that happy time excise was--only
a word in the dictionary, so the yield of certain trees, very
free-bearing, of small, deep, red, clear-seed fruit, was allowed to get
dead-ripe on the trees, then mashed to a pulp in the cider trough, and
put into stands to ferment, then duly distilled. Barrelled, after two
years in the lumber house, it was racked into clean barrels, and some
part of it converted into "peach and honey," the favorite gentleman's
tipple. Strained honey was mixed with the brandy in varying
proportions--the amount depending somewhat upon individual tastes. Some
used one measure of honey to three of brandy, others put one to two,
still others, half and half, qualifying the sweetness by adding neat
brandy at the time of drinking. Peach and honey was kept properly in
stone jugs or in demijohns, improved mightily with age, and was, at its
best, to the last degree insidious. Newly mixed it was heady, but after
a year or more, as smooth as oil, and as mellow. The honey had something
to do with final excellence. That which the bees gathered from wild
raspberries in flower, being very clear, light-colored and
fine-flavored, was in especial request.

I think these peaches of the brandy orchards traced back to those the
Indians, Creeks, Choctaws, and Cherokees, planted in the mountain
valleys of Georgia, North Carolina,