Is there any other fruit that has so much facial expression as the apple?  What boy does not more than half believe they can see with that single eye of theirs?  Do they not look and nod to him from the bough?  The swaar has one look, the rambo another, the spy another.  The youth recognizes the seek-no-further, buried beneath a dozen other varieties, the moment he catches a glance of its eye, or the bonny-cheeked Newtown pippin, or the gentle but sharp-nosed gillyflower.  He goes to the great bin in the cellar, and sinks his shafts here and there in the garnered wealth of the orchards, mining for his favorites, sometimes coming plump upon them, sometimes catching a glimpse of them to the right or left, or uncovering them as keystones in an arch made up of many varieties.

In the dark he can usually tell them by the sense of touch.  There is not only the size and shape, but there is the texture and polish.  Some apples are coarse-grained and some are fine; some are thinskinned and some are thick.  One variety is quick and vigorous beneath the touch, another gentle and yielding.  The pinnock has a thick skin with a spongy lining; a bruise in it becomes like a piece of cork.  The tallow apple has an unctuous feel, as its name suggests.  It sheds water like a duck.  What apple is that with a fat curved stem that blends so prettily with its own flesh,—­the wine apple?  Some varieties impress me as masculine,—­weatherstained, freckled, lasting, and rugged; others are indeed lady apples, fair, delicate, shining, mildflavored, white-meated, like the egg-drop and the lady-finger.  The practiced hand knows each kind by the touch.

Do you remember the apple hole in the garden or back of the house, Ben Bolt?  In the fall, after the bins in the cellar had been well stocked, we excavated a circular pit in the warm mellow earth, and, covering the bottom with clean rye straw, emptied in basketful after basketful of hardy choice varieties, till there was a tent-shaped mound several feet high of shining variegated fruit.  Then, wrapping it about with a thick layer of long rye straw, and tucking it up snug and warm, the mound was covered with a thin coating of earth, a flat stone on the top holding down the straw.  As winter set in, another coating of earth was put upon it, with perhaps an overcoat of coarse dry stable manure, and the precious pile was left in silence and darkness till spring.  No marmot, hibernating under ground in his nest of leaves and dry grass, more cozy and warm.  No frost, no wet, but fragrant privacy and quiet.  Then how the earth tempers and flavors the apples!  It draws out all the acrid unripe qualities, and infuses into them a subtle refreshing taste of the soil.  Some varieties perish, but the ranker, hardier kinds, like the northern spy, the greening, or the black apple, or the russet, or the pinnock, how they ripen and grow in grace, how the green becomes gold, and the bitter becomes sweet!