they
exclude as much as may be from their cider-vat." This opinion still
prevails.

[11] An English writer of the seventeenth century.

All apples are good in November. Those which the farmer leaves out as
unsalable, and unpalatable to those who frequent the markets, are
choicest fruit to the walker. But it is remarkable that the wild apple,
which I praise as so spirited and racy when eaten in the fields or
woods, being brought into the house, has frequently a harsh and crabbed
taste. The Saunter-er's Apple not even the saunterer can eat in the
house. The palate rejects it there, as it does haws and acorns, and
demands a tamed one; for there you miss the November air, which is the
sauce it is to be eaten with. Accordingly, when Tityrus, seeing the
lengthening shadows, invites Meliboeus to go home and pass the night
with him, he promises him mild apples and soft chestnuts. I frequently
pluck wild apples of so rich and spicy a flavor that I wonder all
orchardists do not get a scion from that tree, and I fail not to bring
home my pockets full. But perchance, when I take one out of my desk and
taste it in my chamber I find it unexpectedly crude,--sour enough to
set a squirrel's teeth on edge and make a jay scream.

These apples have hung in the wind and frost and rain till they have
absorbed the qualities of the weather or season, and thus are highly
seasoned, and they pierce and sting and permeate us with their spirit.
They must be eaten in season, accordingly,--that is, out-of-doors.

To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it is
necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. The
out-door air and exercise which the walker gets give a different tone
to his palate, and he craves a fruit which the sedentary would call
harsh and crabbed. They must be eaten in the fields, when your system
is all aglow with exercise, when the frosty weather nips your fingers,
the wind rattles the bare boughs or rustles the few remaining leaves,
and the jay is heard screaming around. What is sour in the house a
bracing walk makes sweet. Some of these apples might be labelled, "To
be eaten in the wind."

Of course no flavors are thrown away; they are intended for the taste
that is up to them. Some apples have two distinct flavors, and perhaps
one-half of them must be eaten in the house, the other out-doors. One
Peter Whitney wrote from Northborough in 1782, for the Proceedings of
the Boston Aca