CHAPTER XX.
MAKING LINCOLN A "SON OF MALTA."
When Jasper, some years later, again met Aunt Eastman, she had a yet more curious story to tell about Abraham.
It was spring, and the cherry-trees were in bloom and musical with bees. In the yard a single apple-tree was red with blooms, which made fragrant the air.
"And here comes Johnnie Apple-seed!" said Aunt Olive. "Heaven bless ye! I call ye Johnnie Apple-seed because ye remind me so much of that good man. He was a good man, if he had lost his wits; and ye mean well, just as he did. Smell the apple-blossoms! I don't know but it was him that planted that there tree."
To explain Aunt Olive's remarks, we should say that there once wandered along the banks of the Ohio, a poor wayfaring man who had a singular impression of duty. He felt it to be his calling in life to plant apple-seeds. He would go to a farmer's house, ask for work, and remain at the place a few days or weeks. After he had gone, apple-seeds would be found sprouting about the farm. His journeys were the beginnings of many orchards in the Middle, West, and prairie States.
"I love to smell apple-blossoms," said Aunt Olive. "It reminds me of old New England. I can almost hear the bells ring on the old New England hills when I smell apple-blooms. They say that Johnnie Apple-seed is dead, and that they filled his grave with apple-blooms. I don't know as it is so, but it ought to be. I sometimes wish that I was a poet, because a poet fixes things as they ought to be—makes the world all over right. But, la! Abe Linken was a poet. Have ye heard the news?"
"No. What?—nothing bad, I hope?"
"He's hung out his shingle."
"Where?"