Almost all wild apples are handsome. They cannot be too gnarly and
crabbed and rusty to look at. The gnarliest will have some redeeming
traits even to the eye. You will discover some evening redness dashed
or sprinkled on some protuberance or in some cavity. It is rare that
the summer lets an apple go without streaking or spotting it on some
part of its sphere. It will have some red stains, commemorating the
mornings and evenings it has witnessed; some dark and rusty blotches,
in memory of the clouds and foggy, mildewy days that have passed over
it; and a spacious field of green reflecting the general face of
Nature,—green even as the fields; or a yellow ground, which implies a
milder flavor,—yellow as the harvest, or russet as the hills.
Apples, these I mean, unspeakably fair,—apples not of Discord, but of
Concord! Yet not so rare but that the homeliest may have a share.
Painted by the frosts, some a uniform clear bright yellow, or red, or
crimson, as if their spheres had regularly revolved, and enjoyed the
influence of the sun on all sides alike,—some with the faintest pink
blush imaginable,— some brindled with deep red streaks like a cow, or
with hundreds of fine blood-red rays running regularly from the
stem-dimple to the blossom-end, like meridional lines, on a
straw-colored ground,—some touched with a greenish rust, like a fine
lichen, here and there, with crimson blotches or eyes more or less
confluent and fiery when wet,—and others gnarly, and freckled or
peppered all over on the stem side with fine crimson spots on a white
ground, as if accidentally sprinkled from the brush of Him who paints
the autumn leaves. Others, again, are sometimes red inside, perfused
with a beautiful blush, fairy food, too beautiful to eat,—apple of the
Hesperides, apple of the evening sky! But like shells and pebbles on
the sea-shore, they must be seen as they sparkle amid the withering
leaves in some dell in the woods, in the autumnal air, or as they lie
in the wet grass, and not when they have wilted and faded in the house.