the second round able
to call each fearlessly by name and oftentimes save mutual
embarrassment.

But there are minor considerations, after all. I have an idea that
the pasture shrubs may never take kindly to thus carrying
conventional calling cards, and that shyer still and more
nimble-footed friends will finally relieve them of what wind and
rain have left. In a year or two I shall find the cards nameless and
built in as foundations of nests of jay birds and white-footed
mice, or worked up more skillfully yet by white-faced hornets into
the gray paper of their nests. This is a carefully adjusted world
and the instinctive movements of all creatures go to the keeping
of the perfect balance. The normal attacks the abnormal
immediately and all along the line. With shrub or bird or beast to
exceed the old-world conventions is to be firmly thrust back into
the adjustment or wiped out.

Yet, now and then the balance is not exactly disturbed, but rather
readjusted by some alien that seems to find a foothold through all
opposition and establishes a place through pure vigor and
sweetness of character. Of such is the apple tree that came out of
the East with other beginnings of civilization, reaching the
shores of Western Europe by way of Greece and Rome. Thence it
passed with the early Puritans to New England. A pampered denizen
of the orchard and garden for a century or two the tree, so far as
New England is concerned, seems to be steadily passing to the wild
state. Old orchards grow up to pasture and woodland and the trees
of a century ago hold on, if at all, in spite of the encroachments
of their surroundings. Thus the best of grafted trees pass to the
wild state through decay and regrowth, the strength and sweetness
of the wood seeming to bear up against all adversity. The old-time
trunk rots away, but sprouts from below the graft spring up and
the tree reverts to the primitive in habit as well as surroundings.
Or seeds, planted by bird or squirrel grow up in rich, modest
humus among rough rocks where never a plough could pass and
we have some new variety, a veritable wild apple with no
semblance of the original fruit about it but often a delectable,
wild tang, a flavor and perfume such as no cultivated variety ever
had. No tree gives more beauty to the wildest of New England woods
and pastures today than this. Innocent of pruning knife or
fertilizer its growth has a rugged picturesqueness about it that
makes the well