A while ago I stood on the hill with an old farmer, eating one of a pocketful of apples he had given me, and said how very nice it was, and that I had never seen any like it.
“There are none of my apples sell half so well,” said he. “I’ve forty young trees that have been bearing a few years; and over to the right you see some old ones. Mine were grafted from those and my father took his grafts from an old tree I’d like to show you;” and as we walked towards it, he said, “It looks, and I guess it is, as old as any around here. My father always said it was brought from England in a flower-pot by some of the first settlers. Perhaps you have heard the story. It’s very shaky. The high winds last fall were pretty hard on it. It will never bear again, I am afraid. I set a good deal by the old thing. The very first thing I can remember is my father’s lifting me up to one of the lower limbs, and I was frightened and cried. I believe I think more of that tree than of anything on my farm. My wife always laughs at me about it. Well, it has lasted my time. I’m old and shaky, too; and I suppose my sons won’t miss this much, and will like the young orchard best.”
“And you and I like your orchard’s grandmother,” said I.
S. O. J.
ROUGH.
HE was a donkey, and we called him Rough. He belonged to Gerald and me. We didn’t keep him for his useful qualities, and we certainly didn’t keep him for his moral qualities; and I don’t know what we did keep him for, unless, for the best reason in the world, that we loved him.
He was always getting us into scrapes, the most renowned of which was one Rough’s enemies were fond of alluding to.
We were bidden to a christening one fair spring morning; and we not only accepted the invitation, but promised to bring apple-blossoms, to fill the font and make the church look gay. We had an old apple orchard, that bore beautiful blossoms, but worthless fruit; and of these blossoms we had leave to pick as many as we chose.
So we filled the donkey-cart with them, and set forth for the christening, which was to be at a little church about a mile or more distant from our farm. Rough’s enemies will tell how we arrived when the christening was all over, and our apple blossoms faded.