t value, and which cannot
be vulgarized, or bought and sold. No mortal has ever enjoyed the
perfect flavor of any fruit, and only the godlike among men begin to
taste its ambrosial qualities. For nectar and ambrosia are only those
fine flavors of every earthly fruit which our coarse palates fail to
perceive,--just as we occupy the heaven of the gods without knowing it.
When I see a particularly 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 Jotunheim,[6] while they grow
wrinkled and gray? No, for Ragnarok, or the destruction of the gods, is
not yet.

[6] Jotunheim (Ye(r)t'-un-hime) in Scandinavian mythology was the home
of the Jotun or Giants. Loki was a descendant of the gods, and a
companion of the Giants. Thjassi (Tee-assy) was a giant.

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 hillside, 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 remember to have ever seen before, small yellow apples hanging
over the road. The branches were gracefully drooping with their weight,