What are the imported half-ripe fruits of the torrid South, to this fruit matured by the cold of the frigid North?  These are those crabbed apples with which I cheated my companion, and kept a smooth face that I might tempt him to eat.  Now we both greedily fill our pockets with them,—­bending to drink the cup and save our lappets from the overflowing juice,—­and grow more social with their wine.  Was there one that hung so high and sheltered by the tangled branches that our sticks could not dislodge it?

It is a fruit never carried to market, that I am aware of,—­quite distinct from the apple of the markets, as from dried apple and cider,—­and it is not every winter that produces it in perfection.

* * * * *

The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past.  It is a fruit which will probably become extinct in New England.  You may still wander through old orchards of native fruit of great extent, which for the most part went to the cider-mill, now all gone to decay.  I have heard of an orchard in a distant town, on the side of a hill, where the apples rolled down and lay four feet deep against a wall on the lower side, and this the owner cut down for fear they should be made into cider.  Since the temperance reform and the general introduction of grafted fruit, no native apple-trees, such as I see everywhere in deserted pastures, and where the woods have grown up around them, are set out.  I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples.  Ah, poor man, there are many pleasures which he will not know!  Notwithstanding the prevalence of the Baldwin and the Porter, I doubt if so extensive orchards are set out to-day in my town as there were a century ago, when those vast straggling cider-orchards were planted, when men both ate and drank apples, when the pomace-heap was the only nursery, and trees cost nothing but the trouble of setting them out.  Men could afford then to stick a tree by every wall-side and let it take its chance.  I see nobody planting trees to-day in such out-of-the-way places, along the lonely roads and lanes, and at the bottom of dells in the wood.  Now that they have grafted trees, and pay a price for them, they collect them into a plat by their houses, and fence them in,—­and the end of it all will be that we shall be compelled to look for our apples in a barrel.

This is the word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

“Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land!  Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers?...

“That which the palmer-worm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten; and that which the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.

“Awake, ye drunkards, and weep! and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine! for it is cut off from your mouth.