The fish all run down the stream in the fall except the trout; it runs up or stays up and spawns in November, the male becoming as brilliantly tinted as the deepest-dyed maple leaf.  I have often wondered why the trout spawns in the fall, instead of in the spring like other fish.  Is it not because a full supply of clear spring water can be counted on at that season more than at any other?  The brooks are not so liable to be suddenly muddied by heavy showers, and defiled with the whashings of the roads and fields, as they are in spring and summer.  The artificial breeder finds that absolute purity of water is necessary to hatch the spawn; also that shade and a low temperature are indispensable.

Our northern November day itself is like spring water.  It is melted frost, dissolved snow.  There is a chill in it and an exhilaration also.  The forenoon is all morning and the afternoon all evening.  The shadows seem to come forth and to revenge themselves upon the day.  The sunlight is diluted with darkness.  The colors fade from the landscape, and only the sheen of the river lights up the gray and brown distance.

VII.  THE APPLE

Lo! sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in silent autumn night. 

          
                                                  Tennyson.

Not a little of the sunshine of our northern winters is surely wrapped up in the apple.  How could we winter over without it!  How is life sweetened by its mild acids!  A cellar well filled with apples is more valuable than a chamber filled with flax and wool.  So much sound, ruddy life to draw upon, to strike one’s roots down into, as it were.

Especially to those whose soil of life is inclined to be a little clayey and heavy, is the apple a winter necessity.  It is the natural antidote of most of the ills the flesh is heir to.  Full of vegetable acids and aromatics, qualities which act as refrigerants and antiseptics, what an enemy it is to jaundice, indigestion, torpidity of liver, etc.!  It is a gentle spur and tonic to the whole biliary system.  Then I have read that it has been found by analysis to contain more phosphorus than any other vegetable.  This makes it the proper food of the scholar and the sedentary man; it feeds his brain and it stimulates his liver.  Nor is this all.  Besides its hygienic properties, the apple is full of sugar and mucilage, which make it highly nutritious.  It is said “the operators of Cornwall, England, consider ripe apples nearly as nourishing as bread, and far more so than potatoes.  In the year 1801—­which was a year of much scarcity—­apples, instead of being converted into cider, were sold to the poor, and the laborers asserted that they could ‘stand their work’ on baked apples without meat; whereas a potato diet required either meat or some other substantial nutriment.  The French and Germans use apples extensively; so do the inhabitants of all European nations.  The laborers depend upon them as an article of food, and frequently make a dinner of sliced apples and bread.”