I found Horace upon the March day I speak of just coming out of his new fruit cellar.  Horace is a progressive and energetic man, a leader in this community, and the first to have a modern fruit cellar.  By this means he ministers profitably to that appetite of men which craves most sharply that which is hardest to obtain:  he supplies the world with apples in March.

It being a mild and sunny day, the door of the fruit cellar was open, and as I came around the corner I had such of whiff of fragrance as I cannot describe.  It seemed as though the vials of the earth’s most precious odours had been broken there in Horace’s yard!  The smell of ripe apples!

In the dusky depths of the cellar, down three steps, I could see Horace’s ruddy face.

“How are ye, David,” said he.  “Will ye have a Good Apple?”

So he gave me a good apple.  It was a yellow Bellflower without a blemish, and very large and smooth.  The body of it was waxy yellow, but on the side where the sun had touched it, it blushed a delicious deep red.  Since October it had been in the dark, cool storage-room, and Horace, like some old monkish connoisseur of wines who knows just when to bring up the bottles of a certain vintage, had chosen the exact moment in all the year when the vintage of the Bellflower was at its best.  As he passed it to me I caught, a scent as of old crushed apple blossoms, or fancied I did or it may have been the still finer aroma of friendship which passed at the touching of our fingers.

It was a hand-filling apple and likewise good for tired eyes, an antidote for winter, a remedy for sick souls.

“A wonderful apple!” I said to Horace, holding it off at arm’s length.

“No better grown anywhere,” said he, with scarcely restrained pride.

I took my delight of it more nearly; and the odour was like new-cut clover in an old orchard, or strawberry leaves freshly trod upon, or the smell of peach wood at the summer pruning—­how shall one describe it? at least a compound or essence of all the good odours of summer.

“Shall I eat it?” I asked myself, for I thought such a perfection of nature should be preserved for the blessing of mankind.  As I hesitated, Horace remarked: 

“It was grown to be eaten.”

So I bit into it, a big liberal mouthful, which came away with a rending sound such as one hears sometimes in a winter’s ice-pond.  The flesh within, all dewy with moisture, was like new cream, except a rim near the surface where the skin had been broken; here it was of a clear, deep yellow.

New odours came forth and I knew for the first time how perfect in deliciousness such an apple could be.  A mild, serene, ripe, rich bouquet, compounded essence of the sunshine from these old Massachusetts hills, of moisture drawn from our grudging soil, of all the peculiar virtues of a land where the summers make up in the passion of growth for the long violence of winter; the compensatory aroma of a life triumphant, though hedged about by severity, was in the bouquet of this perfect Bellflower.