Tennessee, and Virginia. They got
the seed from early Spaniard voyagers to Florida. There was indeed a
special Indian peach, as dark-skinned as its namesake, blood-red inside
and out, very sweet and full of juice, if permitted to ripen fully--but
as ill-tasting almost as a green persimmon, if unripe. There were
clearstone and clingstone sorts, and one tree differed from another in
glory of flavor, even as one star. That was the charm of our
seedlings--which had further a distinction of flavor no commercial fruit
ever yet owned.

August peaches were for drying--in September, early, came the Heaths,
for preserves, brandy fruit, and so on. October peaches, nearly all
clear-seed, made the finest peach butter. Understand, in those days,
canning, known as "hermetic sealing," was still a laboratory process. I
wonder if anybody else recalls, as I do, the first editions of fruit
cans? They were of tin, tall and straight, with a flaring upstanding
tin ruffle around the tops. The ruffle was for holding the sealing wax,
into which the edge of the tin top was thrust. They did not last
long--pretty soon, there were cans of the present shape--but sealing
them with wax was hard work, likewise uncertain. Women everywhere should
rise and call blessed he who invented the self-sealing jar.

Return we to our peach butter. It began in cider--the cider from fall
apples, very rich and sweet. To boil it down properly required a battery
of brass kettles swung over a log fire in the yard, the same as at
drying up lard time. Naturally brass kettles were at a premium--but
luckily everybody did not make peach butter, so it was no strain upon
neighborly comity to borrow of such. It took more than half a day to
boil down the cider properly--kettles were filled up constantly as there
was room. By and by, when the contents became almost syrup, peaches went
in--preferably the late, soft, white ones, dead ripe, very juicy, and
nearly as sweet as sugar. After the kettles were full of them, peeled
and halved, of course, the boiling went on until the fruit was mushy.
Constant stirring helped to make it so. Fresh peaches were added twice,
and cooked down until the paddle stood upright in the middle of the
kettle. Then came the spicing--putting in cloves, mace, bruised ginger,
and alspice--sparingly, but enough to flavor delicately. If the white
peaches ran short, there might be a supplemental butter-making when the
Red Octobers came in, at the very last of