Bodaeus exclaims,
referring to the culti-vated kinds, and adapting Virgil to his case, so
I, adapting Bodaeus,--

"Not if I had a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths,
An iron voice, could I describe all the forms
And reckon up all the names of these wild apples."

[14] The apple that brings the disease of cholera and of dysentery, the
fruit that small boys like best.

[15] The tramp's comfort.

[16] See p. 172 (Proof readers note: paragraph 25)

THE LAST GLEANING.

By the middle of November the wild apples have lost some of their
brilliancy, and have chiefly fallen. A great part are decayed on the
ground, and the sound ones are more palatable than before. The note of
the chickadee sounds now more distinct, as you wander amid the old
trees, and the autumnal dandelion is half-closed and tearful. But
still, if you are a skilful gleaner, you may get many a pocket-full
even of grafted fruit, long after apples are supposed to be gone
out-of-doors. I know a Blue-Pearmain tree, growing within the edge of a
swamp, almost as good as wild. You would not suppose that there was any
fruit left there, on the first survey, but you must look according to
system. Those which lie exposed are quite brown and rotten now, or
perchance a few still show one blooming cheek here and there amid the
wet leaves. Nevertheless, with experienced eyes, I explore amid the
bare alders and the huckleberry-bushes and the withered sedge, and in
the crevices of the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry under the
fallen and decaying ferns, which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly
strew the ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen into
hollows long since and covered up by the leaves of the tree itself,--a
proper kind of packing. From these lurking-places, anywhere within the
circumference of the tree, I draw forth the fruit, all wet and glossy,
maybe nibbled by rabbits and hollowed out by crickets and perhaps with
a leaf or two cemented to it (as Curzon[17] an old manuscript from a
monastery's mouldy cellar), but still with a rich bloom on it, and at
least as ripe and well kept, if not better than those in barrels, more
crisp and lively than they. If these resources fail to yield anything,
I have learned to look between the bases of the suckers which spring
thickly from some horizontal limb, for now and then one lodges there,
or in the very midst of an alder-clump, where they are covered by
leaves, safe from cows whic