ogether a festival of beauty, not
connected with the food that follows the flowers. They actually dare to
cut the blossoms, too, for adornment, and all the populace take time to
drink in the message of the spring. Will we workaday Americans ever dare
to "waste" so much time, and go afield to absorb God's provision of soul
and sense refreshment in the spring, forgetting for the time our shops
and desks, our stores and marts?

[Illustration: The beauty of a fruiting apple branch]

Professor Sargent, that deep student of trees who has built himself a
monument, which is also a beneficence to all mankind, in the great
volumes of his "Silva of North America," lives not far from Boston, and
he loves especially that jewel of the apple family which, for want of a
common name, I must designate scientifically as _Pyrus floribunda_. On
his own magnificent estate, as well as at the Arboretum, this superb
shrub or small tree riots in rosy beauty in early spring. While the
leaves do come with these flowers, they are actually crowded back out of
apparent sight by the straight wands of rose-red blooms, held by the
twisty little tree at every angle and in indescribable beauty. If the
visitor saw nothing but this Floribunda apple--"abundant flowering" sure
enough--on his pilgrimage, he might well be satisfied, especially if he
then and there resolved to see it again, either as he planted it at home
or journeyed hither another spring for the enlargement of his soul.

There are other of these delightful crabs or apples to be
enjoyed--Ringo, Kaido, Toringo--nearly all of Japanese origin, all of
distinct beauty, and all continuing that beauty in handsome but inedible
fruits that hang most of the summer. My tree-loving friends can well
study these, and, I hope, plant them, instead of repeating continually
the monotonously familiar shrubs and trees of ordinary commerce.

But I have not spoken enough of one notable feature of the every-day
apple tree that we may see without a journey to the East. The fully set
fruiting branch of an apple tree in health and vigor, properly nurtured
and protected against fungous disease by modern "spraying," is a thing
of beauty in its form and color. See those deep red Baldwins shine
overhead in the frosty air of early fall; note the elegance of form and
striping on the leathery-skinned Ben Davis; appreciate true apples of
gold set in green enamel on a tree of the sunny Bellefleur! These in the
fall; but it is