demy, describing an apple-tree in that town "producing
fruit of opposite qualities, part of the same apple being frequently
sour and the other sweet;" also some all sour, and others all sweet,
and this diversity on all parts of the tree.

There is a wild apple on Nawshawtuck Hill in my town which has to me a
peculiarly pleasant bitter tang, not perceived till it is
three-quarters tasted. It remains on the tongue. As you eat it, it
smells exactly like a squash-bug. It is a sort of triumph to eat and
relish it.

I hear that the fruit of a kind of plum-tree in Provence is "called
Prunes sibarelles, because it is impossible to whistle after having
eaten them, from their sourness." But perhaps they were only eaten in
the house and in summer, and if tried out-of-doors in a stinging
atmosphere, who knows but you could whistle an octave higher and
clearer?

In the fields only are the sours and bitters of Nature appreciated;
just as the wood-chopper eats his meal in a sunny glade, in the middle
of a winter day, with content, basks in a sunny ray there, and dreams
of summer in a degree of cold which, experienced in a chamber, would
make a student miserable. They who are at work abroad are not cold, but
rather it is they who sit shivering in houses. As with temperatures, so
with flavors; as with cold and heat, so with sour and sweet. This
natural raciness, the sours and bitters which the diseased palate
refuses, are the true condiments.

Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses. To appreciate
the flavor of these wild apples requires vigorous and healthy senses,
papillae[12] firm and erect on the tongue and palate, not easily
flattened and tamed.

[12] A Latin word, accent on the second syllable, meaning here the
rough surface of the tongue and palate.

From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be
reason for a savage's preferring many kinds of food which the civilized
man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a
savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.

What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of
life, the apple of the world, then!

"Nor is it every apple I desire,
Nor that which pleases every palate best;
'T is not the lasting Deuxan I require,
Nor yet the red-cheeked Greening I request,
Nor that which first beshrewed the name of wife,
Nor that whose beauty caused the golden strife:
No,