do. A frost that destroys the potatoes and other roots only
makes the apple more crisp and vigorous; it peeps out from the chance
November snows unscathed. When I see the fruit-vender on the street
corner stamping his feet and beating his hands to keep them warm, and
his naked apples lying exposed to the blasts, I wonder if they do not
ache too to clap their hands and enliven their circulation. But they can
stand it nearly as long as the vender can.

Noble common fruit, best friend of man and most loved by him, following
him like his dog or his cow, wherever he goes. His homestead is not
planted till you are planted, your roots intertwine with his; thriving
best where he thrives best, loving the limestone and the frost, the
plow and the pruning-knife, you are indeed suggestive of hardy, cheerful
industry, and a healthy life in the open air. Temperate, chaste fruit!
you mean neither luxury nor sloth, neither satiety nor indolence,
neither enervating heats nor the Frigid Zones. Uncloying fruit, fruit
whose best sauce is the open air, whose finest flavors only he whose
taste is sharpened by brisk work or walking knows; winter fruit, when
the fire of life burns brightest; fruit always a little hyperborean,
leaning towards the cold; bracing, sub-acid, active fruit. I think you
must come from the north, you are so frank and honest, so sturdy and
appetizing. You are stocky and homely like the northern races. Your
quality is Saxon. Surely the fiery and impetuous south is not akin to
you. Not spices or olives or the sumptuous liquid fruits, but the grass,
the snow, the grains, the coolness is akin to you. I think if I could
subsist on you or the like of you, I should never have an intemperate
or ignoble thought, never be feverish or despondent. So far as I could
absorb or transmute your quality I should be cheerful, continent,
equitable, sweet-blooded, long-lived, and should shed warmth and
contentment around.

Is there any other fruit that has so much facial expression as the
apple? What boy does not more than half believe they can see with that
single eye of theirs? Do they not look and nod to him from the bough?
The swaar has one look, the rambo another, the spy another. The youth
recognizes the seek-no-further buried beneath a dozen other varieties,
the moment he catches a glance of its eye, or the bonny-cheeked Newtown
pippin, or the gentle but sharp-nosed gilliflower. He goes to the great
bin in the cellar and sinks his s