not very long ago, yet in those days, high-road and byways were divided
between horse and man only and therefore were our own, while we jogged
along plucking at the branches and trailers that we passed, letting the
horses browse, reins upon neck without risk of danger.
The _make believe_ was that we were a couple of carefree children
playing at going on a journey to seek the Tree of Life, which, should we
chance to find in blossom and walk in its shadow, would enable us to
live as long as we wished. This had been one of my childhood’s plays, a
hybrid born of Genesis and Pilgrim’s Progress, belonging to days spent
alone in the garden when father had gone a day’s journey to see some
patients over the hills, and Aunt Lot was immersed in preserves and
forgot me. Blissful forgetfulness of children by their elders that is
one of the gates to wonderland!
We took the idea as a motive for _make believe_, and if one plays at
being a child, one must complete the game, turn loose the overworked
horses of every day, Proof and Reason, and harness in their places
Instinct and Belief, steeds who may be trusted to know the straightest
road to happiness. As to the Maying part, that is a play also, and, at
least in the New England country, a game of chance if you do not know
the moves, but an ecstasy if the combinations fall right.
The Red Men waited for the May Moon to wax full and the truce flowers of
the white dogwood to signal frost’s surrender from the wood edges before
they planted their maize. We wait for the first blooming of an apple
tree to tell us that the springtide is at its height. Not one of the
opulent, well-fed orchard trees, having all the advantages of a
protected location, but a wayside, ungrafted scion of the old orchard
standing alone in a field, on the north side of the spruce wind break.
We called this tree “the Messenger.” It is the bearer of inconsequent
fruit akin to the wild, but in May it is garlanded with firm-fleshed,
deep rose-hued blossoms. When this tree opens its buds, we know that its
kindred of the hill country will also be decked, and it is our time to
go forth, for here the Maying is the festival of the Apple Blossoms, and
the blushing snow of it veils the grim gray hills, and brocades the
silken emerald of the grassy lowlands every May as completely as the
gold and purple of golden-rod and aster mantle the land in autumn.
People make journeys to the Orient to see the Festival of Fruit
Blossoms, where many of the trees enclosed in gardens are shown with
suggestion both of art and artifice; all this is deemed wonderful
because it is far away. Distance promises change, and change is
seemingly the key-note of current life. Perpetuity was the ambition of
our forbears, else we should not be here. Yet when the near-by holds a
Festival of Apple Blossoms reaching from our doors to the horizon line
that travels before us, when we try to reach it, do we make a national
event of it? Who goes out? Who sees? The reeds shaking in the wind,
perhaps; the bluebirds that nest in the hollow tree trunks; the flaming
orioles that, grown wanton with spring joy, rifle the honeyed blossoms;
but people, where are they? No parties of school children playing in the
abandoned orchards, no others sauntering along the highways like
ourselves. For the twenty years that we have gone up through the hill
country for this Maying, we have never met any others bent upon the same
errand. So we call this festival our own, and as we stray along, we
conjure up companions from the past to bear us company; the people who
planted the orchards that still remain and blossom through all the
neglect and moss that Time has dropped upon them.
Each year, though we traverse mainly the same roads, by some fashion we
always come upon some place or sign that has before escaped us, though
rarely anything that brings past and present together as happened on the
day that we played _make believe_ and set out to find the Tree of Life.
* * * * *
After we left Oaklands and the Bluffs behind, and dipped into the valley
north of Hemlock hill, we began to look for signs and symptoms; for in
this country, one can never tell what a winter may bring forth, what
tottering chimneys may have collapsed into a stone heap, or piece of
primal woodland disappear into the maw of a travelling saw-mill to
emerge in form of railway ties. Yes, the overshot water-wheel had
disappeared from the Mill in the cedar woods, and the back of the lilac
house on the hilltop overlooking the Moosatuck was broken, though the
giant lilac bushes that hedged it seemed striving to hide its crippled
state.
Here was our first stop. I love to sit on that which was a door-stone;
well-sweep on one side, wood-shed on the other, across the road the
skeleton of the oak-timbered barn where the rays of sunlight and
swallows in intimate kinship, shoot in and out through chinks and
knot-holes. Before me, the old orchard sloping downhill to the
bush-screened Moosatuck, tall flowering ferns, the cinnamon and royal
blending with spreading brakes to hide the tumble-down stone-walls. Then
only to close the eyes and think backward, and the people come; only do
not think too far. I do not care, even in make believe, for the company
of the Indians, the stone heads of whose arrows are scattered through
the valley. They were no kin of mine; they left no trace, neither making
the world happier or more fruitful.
* * * * *
In the apple orchards runs the blood of our race, the blood of the sweat
and toil of our pioneer forefathers; all these old orchards are peopled,
for those who have the eyes to see, and so there is no loneliness for us
in this silent hill country.
The ancients had it that every child was born under the influence of a
particular star; a more spiritual age, that each child has its guardian
angel. I have always believed that my particular guardian is a tree, and
that one an apple, for this was the first tree that I remember lying
under and looking up through the flower-laden branches at the sky, as
mother sat upon the round seat that encircled the big trunk, the great
fragrant Russian violets growing at her feet.
The first two birds I learned to call by name lived in that apple
tree,—a robin who had saddled his untidy nest of mud and straws on a
drooping branch, and a pair of purling bluebirds, who lived in a little
hole where a broken limb had let in the rain and consequently decay
followed,—while my first remembrance of being hurt was when a heavy
Baldwin apple fell from the tip-top of the tree and bumped me on the
forehead. As I grew up and left dolls behind, my kinship with the tree
grew more material,—four apples and a book, to be taken at regular
intervals in the depths of the big leather chair in father’s study,
being my formula for comfort on a rainy Autumn afternoon.
* * * * *
When we had looked and dreamed our fill, we turned into one of the
meandering cross-roads that traverse Lonetown converging toward Pine
Ridge, to crawl slowly upward to our watch-tower. This is the place of
all others in our haunts for looking down upon the country as if
mirrored in a pool or seen as mirage—Tuck Hill in May time, and there
is nothing more to be desired! Evan and I crouched on the summit in the
shelter of an old tree, still brave with blossoms though the trunk had
fallen forward as if on its knees, and gazed our fill.
For days after, I felt the rush of the wind through my hair, for at this
spot the wind of the hills meets the breath of the salt-water. Below,
two rivers, that give the hill its name, shot their silvery arrows
through the overhanging foliage; Tuck being an Indian term for river, as
Moosa_tuck_, Aspe_tuck_.
No Druids crowned with oak leaves, or men of myth and marvel, came to us
there, such as Puck could conjure from his charmed British hill home;
only pictures of the simple settlers who planted their dwellings in the
wilderness near ways that are remote even now from the pulse of things.
These humble settlers dared and suffered and won out in spirit
unconquerable; and though people and homes have vanished without written
history, yet God in Nature has made record of them. Far and near
throughout the land the festival of Apple Blossoms is celebrating them
in the orchards, some still vigorous in age, and others all of gnarled
trees that are leaning slowly earthward, as though making ready to fall
to final sleep. Again others, young limbed and smooth of bark,
unlicensed gypsy scions of the old race, often bitter of fruit, and yet
sometimes chancing to bring forth a blend incomparable. These
striplings, that wandered from the parent close, had ventured in stony
pastures, sought shelter in wood edges, and followed the watercourses,
and one and all seemed to whisper to the winds that bore their vital
pollen, “Yes, they are all gone who planted us, but we try to shift for
ourselves and live forever, for we cannot forget our mother, the Tree
that stood in the midst of the First Garden!”
All these things I said half aloud, ending with the query, “Why has no
one hereabout planted an orchard for thirty years at least?”
“You are forgetting that we are playing make believe,” muttered Evan,
who had been lying so still that I thought he must be trying to ‘hear
the grass grow,’ which is the outdoor man’s cover for sleep.
“If we are children, we mustn’t preach or think about why the orchards
are running out or why no one plants apple trees,” he continued.
“Children never look behind or before, but make a whole lifetime of a
single happy day, and it’s because people nowadays are like restless
children that they do not plant orchards; what do they care for the
future; it seems too long before the fruiting time; they want a quicker
crop.”
“Who is talking a sermon?” I cried. “Come down through that lane where
we tied the horses; it’s full of dogwood and pinxter flowers; we will
fill the chaise and bury ourselves in them; being children, it does not
matter if they fade by noon so that we can gather more,” and then we
wandered down and on, choosing the pleasantest ways, and letting the
horses lead so long as we kept due north, or fancied we did.
* * * * *
“We should cross the Ridge before noon,” said Evan, after we had driven
for many miles without keeping track of time. “I wonder if there is a
short cut: here is a green lane that runs in the right direction, but it
has a gate to it, and may either be a pent road or a private way.”
Strangely enough, the old gray horses turned toward the gate, nosed it,
and whinnied in unison.
“See the wild fruit trees and bushes that hedge it,” I cried; “apples,
cherries, a peach or two, tall blackberries; I wonder if there ever was
a garden in this corner? There are all the signs, the lilac bushes,
stones that might have been a chimney, and there are new horse tracks in
the turf, and colts pasturing yonder in that field. The way is pretty
enough to lead to the land of Forbidden Fruit, and we may find the Tree
of Life we are looking for at the end. Do let us go in; as we are only
children, no one will have the heart to scold us if we should find
ourselves in some one’s yard.” So Evan opened the gate, which was made
of rough-sawn chestnut boards, and followed rather than led the horses
along the way, for the trees closed low above our heads and shut out the
distance.
In a glimpse across the fields we saw the tower and broken outlines of a
little church.
“That’s not Pine Ridge Church!” exclaimed Evan, stopping short. “The
Ridge Church has a pointed steeple, and that is”—“A Christopher Wren
box,” I said, the name by which Evan had once designated that particular
style of architecture with a tower top that looks like a turned-over
table, legs pointing skyward.
“Where are we, Barbara? You were born in this country, not I; this lane
seems to be leading us due west, and I’m getting hungry, a natural
feeling for a child.”
“I do not know,” I confessed; “there is a place back of Banbury
somewhere in this direction called Fool’s Hill because of its
cross-purpose roads, where father once had a patient, but I’ve never
been there. Wherever we are, we can stop for lunch at the first flat
rock that we see.”
Still another sweep of lane and the sound of running water. The horses
pricked up their ears and whinnied again, and their call, evidently of
interrogation, was answered. Suddenly we emerged from the trees into an
open space; a rushing brook crossed the meadow, and was itself crossed
by a railed bridge of logs and wide chestnut planks.
“Why didn’t I think to bring my trout pole,” sighed Evan.
“It’s not at all necessary; I can supply a bent pin, and boys always
have string in their pockets; while you cut a hickory pole, I will dig
for worms with one of these tin spoons; Martha never gives us anything
but tin when we go a-Maying.”
Evan looked about as though inclined to accept my offer, and then he
stood transfixed, pointing toward a tree on the other side of the river
we were preparing to cross; it was a slender white birch that leaned out
over the water as if keeping watch, both up and down stream, while its
pointed, silver-lined leaves trembled and tittered as it swayed. Halfway
up the trunk was a small board that said in unmistakable letters,—“_No
hunting, fishing, or trespassing—by request of Father Adam._”
I pinched myself to see if I were awake, and I believe that Evan did the
same, though he would not acknowledge it. Now, indeed, had _make
believe_ come true. “Why?” I began, but Evan promptly replied, “Why
not?” Hearing a rustling among the bushes, I half expected the bodiless
head of the Cheshire cat to appear, but instead there stood a tall man
with a strong, smooth-shaven, sunburned face capped with curling white
hair, and dark eyes that, though their flash could be seen even across
stream, had a genial sort of twinkle at their corners. Save that he was
coatless, his clothes were neat almost to precision, even to a clean
linen collar turned down over a loose black tie, something unusual in
any part of the hill country.
Then Evan spied the man, who stood gazing at us more in amazement than
anger. “We were looking for something quite different when we saw your
sign,” said Evan, awkwardly, “and now we’ll go away as soon as I can
turn the horses.”
“Are you Father Adam?” I asked.
“That is what people call me,” he answered; “and who are you, and what
are you trying to find?” This time his gaze took a sweep that included
not only ourselves but the horses and the chaise, which we had forgotten
was decked like a bower.
“We? Oh, we are only two children out a-Maying,” I said, the spirit of
make believe taking complete possession, “and we are searching for the
Tree of Life, so that we may pass under its branches and live as long as
we choose. Do you know where we might find it?”
“Yes; it grows up yonder in the midst of my orchard. How did I come by
it? Ah, that is a story that I only tell those who promise to believe
it. Now it is my turn to ask questions,” said Father Adam. “Where did
you get those horses?”
“We borrowed them from father, who is Dr. Russell and lives down at
Oaklands.”
“So then you are _his_ daughter; well, I know that you are telling the
truth, for I sold him those gray colts, as they were then, sixteen years
ago.”
“They whinnied when we turned in the gate, and rather led us on; can
horses remember a place for sixteen years?”
“Yes, and longer if it is the home where they were foaled; but the time
has been broken, for the doctor has chanced in every few years.”
Then I began to wonder about this man’s age, who spoke of a few years as
if they were but days; was he fifty, or seventy, which?
“Come, let us go up into the cleared land, and I will show you the tree
and tell you its story,” said Father Adam, as he took Gray Tom by the
bit to lead him, the horse nosing and nibbling at his hand familiarly.
“Is it far?” asked Evan; “because if it is, I think we’d better eat our
luncheon first; children always listen better when they’re not hungry.”
Something in the tone made Father Adam laugh, and a different expression
took possession of his features, as though at first he had doubts as to
our entire sanity which were now removed.
“It’s only a few hundred yards, and if those who only pass under the
shadow of the tree may have their wish, how much more will happen to
those who eat bread beneath it!”
So we two followed him hand in hand, over the bridge and through another
bit of lane, and then a vision of peace broke upon our sight,—a green
hill sloping upward to a group of elms that shaded a low, rambling
house, on one side of which was a bit of garden gay with tulips,
bleeding hearts, and columbine, flanked by rows of beehives, tilled
fields showing beyond. But it was the right slope that held the eyes;
row upon row the apple trees, in first full maturity, made endless
aisles into green space—aisles so wide that we traversed them side by
side and yet had room to spare.
Then, again, we came upon an open, a square court of grass, and in the
centre an apple tree such as I had never seen before,—tall, with two
main trunks, high-branched, straight and spreading at the top, elm
fashion, half was covered with dazzling white flowers, the other half
with pink, after the pattern of a florist’s formal bouquet.
“Sit ye down there,” said Father Adam, “and hear my story. Will I eat
with ye? Well, I’ll break a bit of bread for company, for I dined at
noon, and it’s now past two.” While he was speaking, the man had slipped
the harness from the horses and left them to graze and roll at will.
“Though this was my forbears’ homestead, I was born out in Ohio on a
little farm in the Muskingan River Valley. Seventy years ago it was hard
living there as far as indoor comforts went, yet all the rich land was
free for the tilling, and the corn and wheat flourished, but the thing I
first remember about spring was the blooming apple trees. Everybody had
them, half a dozen about the dwelling and then an orchard strip, while
in almost every settlement there was a space roughly fenced in where
young seedling trees were cultivated.
“Who made these apple nurseries, where the settler might get the stock
of what was truly the Tree of Life to him, the fruit, food and drink
that moistened his bread instead of tears? Was it the pioneers’ own
providence? Was it the government? No; it was Johnny Appleseed who
planted and cultivated, and the apple trees were his.
“Did you ever hear of the man? Few of your generation have, yet I
remember him as I saw him when I was a lad, sixty years ago, and my
mother, who was Massachusetts born, numbered him among her distant kin.
She said, and she had it from her mother, that he was born in Boston in
the year of Paul Revere’s ride; and that his real name was Chapman (the
same as my mother’s), John Chapman. He was a studious boy, and wished to
be a preacher, having a zealous streak to go overseas and teach the
heathen, but what with the war and troubled times, the way was not made
straight. Yet the times were fair enough for falling in love, and this
he did with one Anice Chase, but while he bestirred himself for the
wherewithal to marry, the white plague laid its hands on her. In those
days, at the first sign, the victim was set apart as doomed, and so it
was with Anice. Only a year from their betrothal, and John journeyed on
foot three days out from Boston town to her father’s farm to bid her
good-by.
“It was a May afternoon, and the lilacs and apples in the yard were all
abloom; Anice on a couch lay under one of those trees, for she would not
rest content indoors; the sight and smell of the flowers were all she
thought or spoke of. Long they talked together, and then she said so
feebly that he could scarcely hear, ‘Go and preach, but not to the
far-off heathen. Stay in your own land, but go westward, preach Christ
and the Garden of Eden, which is Home, and wherever you go plant the
apple, the Tree of Life that stood in the midst of the garden, as its
symbol and mine. For I shall reach the garden first and wait for you
close to the door.’
“That night Anice died. John Chapman soon after fell ill of a fever,
they said from exposure on his homeward journey, and when he recovered,
he had strange fancies, and then totally disappeared.
“Soon after the year eighteen hundred, early in spring, and for nearly
half a century following, a traveller made his way from western
Pennsylvania into Ohio, journeying straight across country to the
Indiana border, whether there were houses in his route or not. He was a
strange-looking figure, tall, gaunt, and clad in curiously assorted
garments, sometimes hatless and barefoot, sometimes wearing mismated
shoes and a peaked cap of his own manufacture. Either on his back, or
else in a small cart that he dragged after him, he carried a bag filled
with apple seeds. Whenever he came to a likely spot, he would loosen the
ground with a rude, strong hoe, plant some seeds, weave saplings into a
strong enclosure to keep the cattle out, and then pass on. Wild beasts
never molested him, the rattlesnakes turned from his path, and the
Indians, brutal as they were at that time in their treatment of the
settlers, not only never harmed him, but treated him with reverence as a
messenger of the Great Spirit.
“Then, when the day was done, he would knock at the door of a cabin, and
after partaking of simple food, for which he would always offer to pay,
either in coin of which he managed to earn enough to supply his few
needs, or else in young apple trees, he would draw close to the lamp or
throw himself on the floor by the fire, and pulling a tattered Bible
from his shirt, open it and proclaim as one reading a letter, ‘Behold I
have planted the Tree of Life at your doors, now hearken to the news
fresh from Heaven.’
“To a few of the women, from time to time, he told detached fragments of
his history, and my mother being one of these, recognized him almost by
intuition as her kinsman John Chapman; and either feeling the distant
tie of blood, or because we children gathered about him and hung on his
words, he came to our cabin more frequently than to others, for next to
his beloved trees, he loved little children and all animals. For women
who tried to better his attire or sympathize with him, he had no eyes.
‘I have a wife waiting for me beside the gates of Paradise,’ he would
say, ‘and what has she to do but busy her fingers in making me wedding
garments, and none but of her making will I wear.’ As to his name,
Johnny Appleseed was the only title he was known by in that country.
“Every spring he returned to Pennsylvania for more seed, for which he
bartered at the cider mills, and wherever he went his path was strewn
with his kind deeds. Did he come across a sick horse left to die by
pioneers, it was housed and fed at his expense. Did he meet a traveller
more ragged than himself, he always found that he had a garment he could
spare, until finally, a feed bag with opening for head and arms was his
most common coat.
“One autumn, being lame, he tarried a long while at our cabin; it was
the year that I was ten, and word came that the Connecticut home in
which my father was born had fallen to him, who, being the youngest, had
been obliged to strike out for himself. At first my mother cried, for
she had learned to love the free life, hard as it was, and she could not
bear the thought of leaving what was now _home_ to her; but in
Connecticut there were better schools, and mother came of gentle stock,
and had planned to make a preacher of me.
“When the day for leaving came, Johnny Appleseed, who had not left the
vicinity of our cabin for weeks, appeared beside my mother in the
kitchen; in one hand he held a straight young apple tree, securely
packed in moss and sacking for the journey, and in the other a leaf from
his Bible, the page of Genesis that tells of the Tree of Life.
“‘Take them with you, Hannah, and you will not be lonely,’ he said;
‘where the Tree of Life is there is home, and I give you fresh news of
it; soon I shall enter forever into the garden where it grows;’ and
before she could answer, he had disappeared among the trees.