No More Learning

I fear that he who walks over these fields a century hence will not
know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man, there are
many pleasures which he will not know! Notwithstanding the prevalence
of the Baldwin and the Porter, I doubt if so extensive orchards are
set out to-day in my town as there were a century ago, when those vast
straggling cider-orchards were planted, when men both ate and drank
apples, when the pomace-heap was the only nursery, and trees cost
nothing but the trouble of setting them out. Men could afford then to
stick a tree by every wall-side and let it take its chance. I see
nobody planting trees to-day in such out of the way places, along the
lonely roads and lanes, and at the bottom of dells in the wood. Now
that they have grafted trees, and pay a price for them, they collect
them into a plat by their houses, and fence them in,--and the end of
it all will be that we shall be compelled to look for our apples in a
barrel.

This is "The word of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.

"Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land!
Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? . . .

"That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that
which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which
the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.

"Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine,
because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.

"For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number,
whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a
great lion.
"He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it
clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white. . . .

"Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers. . . .

"The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate
tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of
the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of
men. "




NIGHT AND MOONLIGHT


Chancing to take a memorable walk by moonlight some years ago, I
resolved to take more such walks, and make acquaintance with another
side of nature: I have done so.

According to Pliny, there is a stone in Arabia called Selenites,
"wherein is a white, which increases and decreases with the moon. " My
journal for the last year or two has been _selenitic_ in this sense.

Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not
tempted to explore it,--to penetrate to the shores of its Lake Tchad,
and discover the source of its Nile, perchance the Mountains of the
Moon? Who knows what fertility and beauty, moral and natural, are
there to be found? In the Mountains of the Moon, in the Central Africa
of the night, there is where all Niles have their hidden heads.