As the supply in the bins and barrels gets low and spring approaches, the buried treasures in the garden are remembered.  With spade and axe we go out and penetrate through the snow and frozen earth till the inner dressing of straw is laid bare.  It is not quite as clear and bright as when we placed it there last fall, but the fruit beneath, which the hand soon exposes, is just as bright and far more luscious.  Then, as day after day you resort to the hole, and, removing the straw and earth from the opening, thrust your arm into the fragrant pit, you have a better chance than ever before to become acquainted with your favorites by the sense of touch.  How you feel for them, reaching to the right and left!  Now you have got a Talman sweet; you imagine you can feel that single meridian line that divides it into two hemispheres.  Now a greening fills your hand; you feel its fine quality beneath its rough coat.  Now you have hooked a swaar, you recognize its full face; now a Vandevere or a King rolls down from the apex above and you bag it at once.  When you were a schoolboy, you stowed these away in your pockets, and ate them along the road and at recess, and again at noontime; and they, in a measure, corrected the effects of the cake and pie with which your indulgent mother filled your lunchbasket.

The boy is indeed the true apple-eater, and is not to be questioned how he came by the fruit with which his pockets are filled.  It belongs to him, and he may steal it if it cannot be had in any other way.  His own juicy flesh craves the juicy flesh of the apple.  Sap draws sap.  His fruit-eating has little reference to the state of his appetite.  Whether he be full of meat or empty of meat, he wants the apple just the same.  Before meal or after meal it never comes amiss.  The farm-boy munches apples all day long.  He has nests of them in the haymow, mellowing, to which he makes frequent visits.  Sometimes old Brindle, having access through the open door, smells them out and makes short work of them.

In some countries the custom remains of placing a rosy apple in the hand of the dead, that they may find it when they enter paradise.  In northern mythology the giants eat apples to keep off old age.

The apple is indeed the fruit of youth.  As we grow old we crave apples less.  It is an ominous sign.  When you are ashamed to be seen eating them on the street; when you can carry them in your pocket and your hand not constantly find its way to them; when your neighbor has aples and you have none, and you make no nocturnal visits to his orchard; when you lunch-basket is without them, and you can pass a winter’s night by the fireside with not thought of the fruit at your elbow,—­then be assured you are no longer a boy, either in heart or in years.