arly mean man carrying a load of fair and fragrant early apples
to market, I seem to see a contest going on between him and his horse,
on the one side, and the apples on the other, and, to my mind, the
apples always gain it. Pliny says that apples are the heaviest of all
things, and that the oxen begin to sweat at the mere sight of a load
of them. Our driver begins to lose his load the moment he tries to
transport them to where they do not belong, that is, to any but the most
beautiful. Though he gets out from time to time, and feels of them, and
thinks they are all there, I see the stream of their evanescent and
celestial qualities going to heaven from his cart, while the pulp and
skin and core only are going to market. They are not apples, but pomace.
Are not these still Iduna's apples, the taste of which keeps the gods
forever young? and think you that they will let Loki or Thjassi carry
them off to Joetunheim, while they grow wrinkled and gray? No, for
Ragnaroek, or the destruction of the gods, is not yet.

There is another thinning of the fruit, commonly near the end of August
or in September, when the ground is strewn with windfalls; and this
happens especially when high winds occur after rain. In some orchards
you may see fully three-quarters of the whole crop on the ground, lying
in a circular form beneath the trees, yet hard and green,--or, if it is
a hill-side, rolled far down the hill. However, it is an ill wind that
blows nobody any good. All the country over, people are busy picking up
the windfalls, and this will make them cheap for early apple-pies.

In October, the leaves falling, the apples are more distinct on the
trees. I saw one year in a neighboring town some trees fuller of fruit
than I remembered to have ever seen before, small yellow apples hanging
over the road. The branches were gracefully drooping with their weight,
like a barberry-bush, so that the whole tree acquired a new character.
Even the topmost branches, instead of standing erect, spread and drooped
in all directions; and there were so many poles supporting the lower
ones, that they looked like pictures of banian-trees. As an old English
manuscript says, "The mo appelen the tree bereth, the more sche boweth
to the folk."

Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits. Let the most beautiful or the
swiftest have it. That should be the "going" price of apples.

Between the fifth and twentieth of October I see the barrels lie under
the tre