APPLE BLOSSOMS.
Why, as he went on a hintin’ so powerful strong, and givin’ such burnin’ glances onto that head-dress, why, I sort o’ sprunted up, and begun to see things on the other side plainer than I had seen ’em.
Then says I, as the eyes of my specks rested upon the apple-boughs that filled the north kitchen winder with a glow of rosiness and sweetness:
“The Lord don’t seem to think as you do, Kellup. Jest see how He has dressed up that old apple-tree.” Says I: “No fashionable belle in New York or Paris village can ever hope to wear garments so daintily fine and sweet. No queen nor empress ever wore or ever will wear for their coronation robes such splendid and gorgeous raiment as the common spring suit of that old apple-tree.”
HOW IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.
Says Kellup, holdin’ his head well up in the air, and drawin’ his lips down with a very self-righteous drawin’, that I knew meant head-dress, though he didn’t come right out and say it:
“I despise and detest the foolishness of display. There is more important and serious business on earth than dressin’ up to look nice.”
“That is so,” says I, “that is jest as true as you live. Now that old apple tree’s stiddy business and theme is to make sweet, juicy apples; but at the same time that don’t hender her from dressin’ up, and lookin’ well. The Lord might have made the apples grow in rows right round the trunk from top to bottom, with no ‘foolishness of display’ of the rosy coloring and perfume—but He didn’t. He chose in His wisdom, which it is not for you or me to doubt, to make it a glory and a delight to every beholder. So beautiful that the birds sail and sing with very joy in and out of the sweet branches, and the happy bees hum delightedly about the honey-laden cells, and she whose name was once Smith, has been made happy as a queen all day long, by jest lookin’ out of that window down into the fragrant, rosy depths of sweetness and light.”