“How funny!” laughed Edith.  “Does the apple tree move its head, Miss Harson?”

“It cannot go quite so far as that,” was the reply; “it just stays bent over like a person carrying a heavy burden.  The branches of overladen fruit trees are sometimes propped up with long poles to keep them from breaking.  There is another strange custom, which used to be practiced on New Year’s eve.  It was called ‘Apple-Howling,’ and a troop of boys visited the different orchards—­which would scarcely have been desirable when the apples were ripe—­and, forming a ring around the trees, repeated these words: 

“’Stand fast, root! bear well, top! 
Pray God send us a good howling crop—­
Every twig, apples big;
Every bough, apples enow.’

“All then shouted in chorus, while one of the party played on a cow’s horn, and the trees were well rapped with the sticks which they carried.  This ceremony is thought to have been a relic of some heathen sacrifice, and it is quite absurd enough to be that.”

“What is ‘a howling crop,’ Miss Harson?” asked Clara.  “That name sounds so queer!”

“I don’t know what it can be,” replied her governess, “unless it refers to the strange expression sometimes used, ‘howling with delight.’  We hear more commonly of ‘howling with pain,’ but ‘a howling crop’ must be one that makes the owner scream, as well as dance for joy.”

“Why, I scream only when I’m frightened,” said Edith, who began to think that there were much sillier people in the world than herself.

“At garter-snakes,” added Malcolm, giving his sister a sly pinch; but Edith did not mind his pinches, because he always took good care not to hurt her.

Miss Harson said that the best way was not to scream at all, as it was both a silly and a troublesome habit, and the sooner her charges broke themselves of it the better she should like it.  Clara and Edith both promised to try—­just as they had promised before, when the ants were so troublesome; but they were nine months older now, and seemed to be getting a little ashamed of the habit.

“Are apples mentioned anywhere in the Bible?” asked Miss Harson, presently.

Clara and Malcolm were busy thinking, but nothing came of it, until their governess said,

“Turn to the book of Proverbs, Clara, and find the twenty-fifth chapter and the eleventh verse.”

Clara read very carefully: 

“‘A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.’  But what does it mean?” she asked.

“It probably means ‘framed in silver’ or ‘in silver frames[11],’” was the reply; “and then it is easy to understand how important our words are, and that ‘fitly-spoken’ ones are as valuable and lasting as golden apples framed in silver.  The apple tree is mentioned in Joel, where it is said that ‘all the trees of the field are withered[12],’ and both apple trees and apples are mentioned in several places of the Old Testament.  But, to tell the whole truth, scholars are not agreed as to whether the Hebrew word denotes the apple or some other fruit that grew in the land of Israel.”