ts harvest,
sincere, though small.

By the end of some October, when its leaves have fallen, I frequently
see such a central sprig, whose progress I have watched, when I thought
it had forgotten its destiny, as I had, bearing its first crop of small
green or yellow or rosy fruit, which the cows cannot get at over the
bushy and thorny hedge which surrounds it; and I make haste to taste
the new and undescribed variety. We have all heard of the numerous
varieties of fruit invented by Van Mons[9] and Knight.[10] This is the
system of Van Cow, and she has invented far more and more memorable
varieties than both of them.

[9] A Belgian chemist and horticulturist.

[10] An English vegetable physiologist.

Through what hardships it may attain to bear a sweet fruit! Though
somewhat small, it may prove equal, if not superior, in flavor to that
which has grown in a garden,--will perchance be all the sweeter and
more palatable for the very difficulties it has had to contend with.
Who knows but this chance wild fruit, planted by a cow or a bird on
some remote and rocky hillside, where it is as yet unobserved by man,
may be the choicest of all its kind, and foreign potentates shall hear
of it, and royal societies seek to propagate it, though the virtues of
the perhaps truly crabbed owner of the soil may never be heard of,--at
least, beyond the limits of his village? It was thus the Porter and the
Baldwin grew.

Every wild-apple shrub excites our expectation thus, somewhat as every
wild child. It is, perhaps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to man!
So are human beings, referred to the highest standard, the celestial
fruit which they suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate; and
only the most persistent and strongest genius defends itself and
prevails, sends a tender scion upward at last, and drops its perfect
fruit on the ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and statesmen
thus spring up in the country pastures, and outlast the hosts of
unoriginal men.

Such is always the pursuit of knowledge. The celestial fruits, the
golden apples of the Hesperides, are ever guarded by a hundred-headed
dragon which never sleeps, so that it is an herculean labor to pluck
them.

This is one and the most remarkable way in which the wild apple is
propagated; but commonly it springs up at wide intervals in woods and
swamps, and by the sides of roads, as the soil may suit it, and grows
with comparative rapidity. Those which grow in