Tablets. Alcott Amos Bronson
he do that instantly which ought to be done at the moment.
Taking timely counsel of his experience, he adapts his labors to the seasons as they pass; has his eye on sun and soil at once. Nor shall I think the less of his piety, if he be touched a little with that amiable superstition concerning the planetary influences; since it ill becomes him to hold lightly any faith that serves to brighten his affections and establish sweet relationships between himself and natural things. In sympathy with earth and heaven, these conspire for his benefit: all helping to fructify and ripen his crops. It is unlawful to regard them as enemies of human tillage. Gracefully the seasons come round for weaving into his fancy, if not his faith, the old world's ritual as a religion of engagements. He is an ephemeris and weather-glass. He has his signs too, and aspects, his seasons, periods and stints. The months sway him. What if he sympathize with the year as it rolls; take equinoxially his March and September? Will his intermediate times be the less genial in consequence, or his April fail of distilling mystic moods with her fertilizing rains? His winter may come hoar with ideas, and brown October shall be his golden age of orchards and their ambrosia. And as June best displays the garden's freshness, so October celebrates the orchard's opulence, to crown the gardener for his labors. The golden days running fast and full have not run to waste. Orchards and gardens bloom again. He harvests the richer crop these have ripened; bright effluences of the stars, for the feast of thought and the flow of discourse. Having thus "gathered the first roses of spring and the last apples of autumn," he is ready to dispute felicity with the happiest man living, and to chant his pæan of praise for his prosperity: —
The earth is mine and mine the sheaves,
I'll harvest all her bounty leaves,
Nor stinted store she deals to me,
Gives all she has, and gives it free,
Since from myself I cannot stir
But I become her pensioner:
Sun, cloud, flame, atom, ether, sea,
Beauteous she buildeth into me,
Seasons my frame with flowing sense,
Insinuates intelligence;
Feeds me and fills with sweet contents,
Deals duteously her elements:
Dawn, day, the noon, the sunset clear,
Delight my eye; winds, woods, my ear,
While apple, melon, strawberry, peach,
She plants and puts within my reach;
Regales with all the garden grows,
Whate'er the orchard buds and blows;
Lifts o'er my head her sylvan screens,
And sows my slopes with evergreens,
While odorous roses, mint, and thyme,
Steep soul and sense in softer clime;
Preserves me when lapsed memory slips
Fading in sleep's apocalypse;
Surprising tasks and leisures sends,
And crowns herself to give me friends;
The morn's elixir pours for me,
And brims my brain with ecstasy.
Earth all is mine and mine the sheaves,
I harvest all her Planter leaves.
Orchards are even more personal in their charms than gardens, as they are more nearly human creations. Ornaments of the homestead, they subordinate other features of it; and such is their sway over the landscape that house and owner appear accidents without them. So men delight to build in an ancient orchard, when so fortunate as to possess one, that they may live in the beauty of its surroundings. Orchards are among the most coveted possessions; trees of ancient standing, and vines, being firm friends and royal neighbors forever. The profits, too, are as wonderful as their longevity. And if antiquity can add any worth to a thing, what possession has a man more noble than these? so unlike most others, which are best at first and grow worse till worth nothing; while fruit-trees and vines increase in worth and goodness for ages. An orchard in bloom is one of the most pleasing sights the eye beholds; as if the firmament had stooped to the tree-tops and touched every twig with spangles, and man had mingled his essence with the seasons, in its flushing tokens. And how rich the spectacle at the autumnal harvest:
"Behold the bending boughs, with store of fruit they tear,
And what they have brought forth, for weight, they scarce can bear."
Apples are general favorites. Every eye covets, every hand reaches to them. It is a noble fruit: the friend of immortality, its virtues blush to be tasted. Every Muse delights in it, as its mythology shows, from the gardens of the Hesperides to the orchard of Plato. A basket of pearmains, golden russets, or any of the choice kinds, standing in sight, shall perfume the scholar's composition as it refreshes his genius. He may snatch wildness from the woods, get shrewdness from cities, learning from libraries and universities, compliments from courts. But for subtlety of thought, for sovereign sense, for color, the graces of diction and behavior, he best betakes himself
"Where on all sides the apples scattered lie,
Each under its own tree."
Or to his bins, best, Columella says, when beechen chests, such as senators' and judges' robes were laid in in his day; these to be "placed in a dry place, free from frosts, where neither smoke, nor any thing noisome may come; the fruit spread on sawdust, and so arranged that the fleurets, or blossom ends, may look downwards, and the pedicles, or stalks, upwards, after the same manner as it grew upon the tree; and so as not to touch one another. And better if gathered a little green; the lids of the chests covering them close."
The ancient rustic authors give very little information concerning the apples and pears of their time, thinking them too well known to be described, as an author writing of our time might of ours. Most of them had their names from men who brought them into Italy and there cultivated them, and, "by so small a matter," says Pliny, "have rendered their names immortal."
Phillips thus describes the favorites of his time, most of which we find in our own orchards, and still in good repute: —
"Now turn thine eye to view Alcinous' groves,
The pride of the Phœacian isle, from whence,
Sailing the spaces of the boundless deep,
To Ariconian precious fruits arrived: —
The pippin burnished o'er with gold, the moyle
Of sweetest honied taste, the fair pearmain,
Tempered, like comeliest nymph, with red and white;
Nor does the Eliot least deserve thy care,
Nor John's apple, whose withered rind, intrenched
With many a furrow, aptly represents
Decrepit age; nor that from Harvey named,
Quick relishing. Why should we sing the thrift,
Codling, or Pomroy, or of pimpled coat
The russet; the red-streak, that once
Was of the sylvan kind, uncivilized,
Of no regard, till Scudamore's skilful hand
Improved her, and by courtly discipline
Taught her the savage nature to forget:
Let every tree in every garden own
The red-streak as supreme, whose pulpous fruit
With gold irradiate, and vermilion spires,
Tempting, not fatal, as the birth of that
Primeval interdicted plant, that won
Fond Eve, in hapless hour, to taste and die."
A quaint old Englishman, writing about orchards, quotes the proverb: "It will beggar a doctor to live where orchards thrive." So Cowley