"You are a white man," he pronounced. "By that I mean you are not stained with many vile sins."
"I hadn't an equal chance with other men. I lost nine years."
"Mebby," hazarded Johnny Appleseed cautiously, "you are the one appointed to open and read what is sealed."
"If you mean to interpret what you read, I'm afraid I am not the one. Where did you get those leaves?"
"From a book that I divided up to distribute among the people."
"Doesn't that destroy the sense?"
"No. I carry the pages in their order from cabin to cabin."
He came around the fire with the lightness of an Indian, and gave me his own fragment to examine. It proved to be from the writings of one Emanuel Swedenborg.
With a smile which seemed to lessen the size of his face and concentrate its expression to a shining point, Johnny Appleseed slid his leather bags along the rope girdle, and searched them, one after the other. I thought he wanted me to notice his apple seeds, and inquired how many kinds he carried. So he showed them in handfuls, brown and glistening, or gummed with the sweet blood of cider. These produced pippins; these produced russets; these produced luscious harvest apples, that fell in August bursting with juicy ripeness. Then he showed me another bagful which were not apple seeds at all, but neutral colored specks moving with fluid swiftness as he poured them from palm to palm.
"Do you know what this is?"