ed that we need much to cultivate this appreciation of the
physical perfectness of the fruits that we grow. We cannot afford to
lose this note from our lives, for this may contribute a good part of
our satisfaction of being in the world. The discriminating appreciation
that one applies to a picture or a piece of sculpture may be equally
applied to any fruit that grows on the commonest tree or bush in our
field or to any animal that stands on a green pasture. It is no doubt a
mark of a well-tempered mind that it can understand the significance of
the forms in fruits and plants and animals and apply it in the work of
the day.

I sometimes think that the rise of the culinary arts is banishing this
fine old appreciation of fruits in their natural forms. There are so
many ways of canning and preserving and evaporating and extracting the
juices, so many disguises and so much fabrication, that the fruit is
lost in the process. The tin-can and the bottle seem to have put an
insuperable barrier between us and nature, and it is difficult for us to
get back to a good munch of real apples under a tree or by the fireside.
The difficulty is all the greater in our congested city life where
orchards and trees are only a vacant memory or stories told to the
young, and where the space in the larder is so small that apples must be
purchased by the quart. The eating of good apples out of hand seems to
be almost a lost art. Only the most indestructible kinds, along with
leather-skinned oranges and withered bananas, seem to be purchasable in
the market. The discriminating apple-eater in the Old World sends to a
grower for samples of the kinds that he grows; and after the inquirer
has tested them in the family, and discussed them, he orders his winter
supply. The American leaves the matter to the cook and she orders plain
apples; and she gets them.

I wonder whether in time the perfection of fabrication will not reach
such a point that some fruits will be known to the great public only by
the picture on the package or on the bottle. Every process that removes
us one step farther from the earth is a distinct loss to the people, and
yet we are rapidly coming into the habit of taking all things at second
hand. My objection to the wine of the grape is not so much a question of
abstinence as of the fact that I find no particular satisfaction in the
shape and texture of a bottle.

If one has a sensitive appreciation of the beauty in form and colo