No More Learning

The note of
the chickadee sounds now more distinct, as you wander amid the old
trees, and the autumnal dandelion is half closed and tearful. But
still, if you are a skillful gleaner, you may get many a pocketful
even of grafted fruit, long after apples are supposed to be gone
out-of-doors. I know a Blue Pearmain tree, growing within the edge of
a swamp, almost as good as wild. You would not suppose that there was
any fruit left there, on the first survey, but you must look according
to system. Those which lie exposed are quite brown and rotten now, or
perchance a few still show one blooming cheek here and there amid the
wet leaves. Nevertheless, with experienced eyes, I explore amid the
bare alders and the huckleberry bushes and the withered sedge, and in
the crevices of the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry under
the fallen and decaying ferns, which, with apple and alder leaves,
thickly strew the ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen
into hollows long since and covered up by the leaves of the tree
itself,--a proper kind of packing. From these lurking-places, anywhere
within the circumference of the tree, I draw forth the fruit, all wet
and glossy, maybe nibbled by rabbits and hollowed out by crickets, and
perhaps with a leaf or two cemented to it (as Curzon an old manuscript
from a monastery's mouldy cellar), but still with a rich bloom on it,
and at least as ripe and well-kept, if not better than those in
barrels, more crisp and lively than they. If these resources fail to
yield anything, I have learned to look between the bases of the
suckers which spring thickly from some horizontal limb, for now and
then one lodges there, or in the very midst of an alder-clump, where
they are covered by leaves, safe from cows which may have smelled them
out. If I am sharp-set, for I do not refuse the Blue Pearmain, I fill
my pockets on each side; and as I retrace my steps in the frosty eve,
being perhaps four or five miles from home, I eat one first from this
side, and then from that, to keep my balance.

I learn from Topsell's Gesner, whose authority appears to be Albertus,
that the following is the way in which the hedgehog collects and
carries home his apples. He says,--"His meat is apples, worms, or
grapes: when he findeth apples or grapes on the earth, he rolleth
himself upon them, until he have filled all his prickles, and then
carrieth them home to his den, never bearing above one in his mouth;
and if it fortune that one of them fall off by the way, he likewise
shaketh off all the residue, and walloweth upon them afresh, until
they be all settled upon his back again. So, forth he goeth, making a
noise like a cart-wheel; and if he have any young ones in his nest,
they pull off his load wherewithal he is loaded, eating thereof what
they please, and laying up the residue for the time to come. "


THE "FROZEN-THAWED" APPLE

Toward the end of November, though some of the sound ones are yet more
mellow and perhaps more edible, they have generally, like the leaves,
lost their beauty, and are beginning to freeze. It is finger-cold, and
prudent farmers get in their barreled apples, and bring you the apples
and cider which they have engaged; for it is time to put them into the
cellar.
Perhaps a few on the ground show their red cheeks above the
early snow, and occasionally some even preserve their color and
soundness under the snow throughout the winter. But generally at the
beginning of the winter they freeze hard, and soon, though undecayed,
acquire the color of a baked apple.

Before the end of December, generally, they experience their first
thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite
unpalatable to the civilized taste, such at least as were frozen while
sound, let a warmer sun come to thaw them,--for they are extremely
sensitive to its rays,--are found to be filled with a rich, sweet
cider, better than any bottled cider that I know of, and with which I
am better acquainted than with wine. All apples are good in this
state, and your jaws are the cider-press. Others, which have more
substance, are a sweet and luscious food,--in my opinion of more worth
than the pineapples which are imported from the West Indies. Those
which lately even I tasted only to repent of it,--for I am
semicivilized,--which the farmer willingly left on the tree, I am now
glad to find have the property of hanging on like the leaves of the
young oaks. It is a way to keep cider sweet without boiling. Let the
frost come to freeze them first, solid as stones, and then the rain or
a warm winter day to thaw them, and they will seem to have borrowed a
flavor from heaven through the medium of the air in which they hang.
Or perchance you find, when you get home, that those which rattled in
your pocket have thawed, and the ice is turned to cider. But after the
third or fourth freezing and thawing they will not be found so good.

What are the imported half-ripe fruits of the torrid south, to this
fruit matured by the cold of the frigid north? These are those crabbed
apples with which I cheated my companion, and kept a smooth face that
I might tempt him to eat. Now we both greedily fill our pockets with
them,--bending to drink the cup and save our lappets from the
overflowing juice,--and grow more social with their wine. Was there
one that hung so high and sheltered by the tangled branches that our
sticks could not dislodge it?

It is a fruit never carried to market, that I am aware of,--quite
distinct from the apple of the markets, as from dried apple and
cider,--and it is not every winter that produces it in perfection.