ich have more substance,
are a sweet and luscious food,--in my opinion of more worth than the
pine-apples which are imported from the West Indies. Those which lately
even I tasted only to repent of it,--for I am semi-civilized,--which
the farmer willingly left on the tree, I am now glad to find have the
property of hanging on like the leaves of the young oaks. It is a way
to keep cider sweet without boiling. Let the frost come to freeze them
first, solid as stones, and then the rain or a warm winter day to thaw
them, and they will seem to have borrowed a flavor from heaven through
the medium of the air in which they hang. Or perchance you find, when
you get home, that those which rattled in your pocket have thawed, and
the ice is turned to cider. But after the third or fourth freezing and
thawing they will not be found so good.

What are the imported half-ripe fruits of the torrid South to this
fruit matured by the cold of the frigid North? These are those crabbed
apples with which I cheated my companion, and kept a smooth face that I
might tempt him to eat. Now we both greedily fill our pockets with
them,--bending to drink the cup and save our lappets from the
overflowing juice,--and grow more social with their wine. Was there one
that hung so high and sheltered by the tangled branches that our sticks
could not dislodge it?

It is a fruit never carried to market, that I am aware of,--quite
distinct from the apple of the markets, as from dried apple and
cider,--and it is not every winter that produces it in perfection.

"Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye in-habitants of the land!
Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?...

"That which the palmer-worm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that
which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which
the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.

"Awake, ye drunkards, and weep! and howl, all ye drinkers of wine,
because of the new wine! for it is cut off from your mouth.

"For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number,
whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek-teeth of a
great lion.

"He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig-tree; he hath made it
clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white....

"Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen! howl, O ye vine-dressers!...

"The vine is dried up, and the fig-tree languisheth; the
pomegranate-tree, the palm tree a