I am to discourse of the apple to an audience, many of whom know much
more about it than I do, and all of them full as much. It does not, on
that account, follow that I should not speak. What a terrible blow
would fall upon all professions if a teacher should be forbidden to
speak upon things of which he knew nothing, and to an audience who
knew more about them than he! One large part of the duty of a teacher
is to remind his hearers of how much they know, and tempt them to a
better use of their knowledge. Instruction is one thing, and important
in its place; but the inspiration of men to a good use of the things
that they already know is far more needed.
While the character of the ladies and gentlemen present makes it
proper for me to hide, with due modesty, my knowledge of the apple in
the department of culture, there is what may be called the _Political
Economy of the Apple_, by which I mean the apple in its relation to
domestic comfort and commerce; and on that subject I think I can
speak, if not to edification, at least without fear of being tracked
and cornered.
The apple is, beyond all question, _the_ American fruit. It stands
absolutely alone and unapproachable, grapes notwithstanding.
Originating in another hemisphere, neither in its own country, nor in
any other to which it has been introduced, has it flourished as in
America. It is conceded in Europe that, for size, soundness, flavor,
and brilliancy of coloring, the American apple stands first,—a long
way first.
But it is American in another sense. This is a land in which diffusion
is the great law. This arises from our institutions, and from the
character which they have imprinted upon our people. In Europe,
certain classes, having by their intelligence and wealth and influence
the power to attract all things to themselves, set the current from
the center toward the surface. In America, the simple doctrines that
the common people are the true source of political power, that the
government is directly responsible to them, and therefore that moral
culture, intelligence, and training in politics are indispensable to
the common people, on whom every state is to rest safely, have wrought
out such results that in all departments of justice and truth, as much
as in politics, there is a tendency toward the popularizing of
everything, and learning, or art, or any department of culture, is
made to feel the need of popularity; a word which is very much
despised by classicists, but which may be used in a sense so large as
to make it respectable again. Things that reach after the universal,
that include in them all men in their better and nobler nature, are in
a proper sense _popular_; and in this country, amusement and
refinement and wealth itself, first or last, are obliged to do homage
to the common people, and so to be _popular_. Nor is it otherwise in
respect to horticulture. Of fruits, I think this, above all others,
may be called the true democratic fruit. There is some democracy that
I think must have sprung from the first apple. Of all fruits, no other
can pretend to vie with the apple as the fruit of the common people.
This arises from the nature of the tree and from the nature of the
fruit.
First, as to the tree. It is so easy of propagation, that any man who
is capable of learning how to raise a crop of corn can learn how to
plant, graft or bud, transplant, and prune an apple-tree,—and then eat
the apples. It is a thoroughly healthy and hardy tree; and that under
more conditions and under greater varieties of stress than perhaps any
other tree. It is neither dainty nor dyspeptic. It can bear high
feeding and put up with low feeding. It is not subject to gout and
scrofula, as plums are; to eruptions and ruptures, as the cherry is;
or to apoplexy, as the pear is. The apple-tree may be pampered, and
may be rendered effeminate in a degree; but this is by artificial
perversion. It is naturally tough as an Indian, patient as an ox, and
fruitful as the Jewish Rachel. The apple-tree is among trees what the
cow is among domestic animals in northern zones, or what the camel of
the Bedouin is.
And, like all thoroughly good-natured, obliging, patient things, it is
homely. For beauty is generally unfavorable to good dispositions. (I
am talking to the ladies now.) There seems to be some dissent; but
this is the orthodox view. It seems as if the evil incident to human
nature had struck in, with handsome people, leaving the surface fair;
while the homely are so because the virtue within has purged and
expelled the evil, and driven it to the skin. Have you never seen a
maiden that lovers avoided because she was not comely, who became,
nevertheless, and perhaps on that account, the good angel of the
house, the natural intercessor for afflicted children, the one to stay
with the lonely when all the gay had gone a-gadding after pleasure,
the soft-handed nurse, the story-teller and the book-reader to the
whole brood of eager eyes and hungry ears in the nursery; in short,
the child’s ideal of endless good-nature, self-sacrifice, and
intercessorship, the Virgin Mary of the household,—mother of God to
their love, in that she brings down to them the brightest conceptions
of what God may peradventure be? And yet, such are stigmatized _old
maids_, though more fruitful of everything that is good (except
children) than all others. One fault only do we find with them,—that
they are in danger of perverting our taste, and leading us to call
homeliness beautiful. All this digression, ladies and gentlemen, is on
account of my dear Aunt Esther, who brought me up,—a woman so good and
modest that she will spend ages in heaven wondering how it happened
that she ever got there, and that the angels will always be wondering
why she was not there from all eternity.
I have said, with some digressions, that the apple-tree is homely; but
it is also hardy, and not only in respect to climate. It is almost
indifferent to soil and exposure. We should as soon think of coddling
an oak-tree or a chestnut; we should as soon think of shielding from
the winter white pine or hemlock, as an apple-tree. If there is a lot
too steep for the plow or two rocky for tools, the farmer dedicates it
to an apple orchard. Nor do the trees betray his trust. Yet, the apple
loves the meadows. It will thrive in sandy loams, and adapt itself to
the toughest clay. It will bear as much dryness as a mullein stalk,
and as much wet, almost, as a willow. In short, it is a genuine
democrat. It can be poor, while it loves to be rich; it can be plain,
although it prefers to be ornate; it can be neglected, notwithstanding
it welcomes attention. But, whether neglected, abused, or abandoned,
it is able to take care of itself, and to be fruitful of excellences.
That is what I call being democratic.
The apple-tree is the common people’s tree, moreover, because it is
the child of every latitude and every longitude on this continent. It
will grow in Canada and Maine. It will thrive in Florida and Mexico.
It does well on the Atlantic slope; and on the Pacific the apple is
portentous. Newton sat in an orchard, and an apple, plumping down on
his head, started a train of thought which opened the heavens to us.
Had it been in California, the size of the apples there would have
saved him the trouble of much thinking thereafter, perhaps, opening
the heavens to him, and not to us. Wherever Indian corn will grow, the
apple will thrive; and wherever timothy-grass will ripen its seed, the
apple will exist fruitfully.
Nor is the tree unworthy of special mention on account of health and
longevity. It is subject to fewer diseases than almost any tree of our
country. The worms that infest it are more easily destroyed than those
upon the currant or the rose. The leaf is subject to blight in so
small a degree, that not one farmer in a hundred ever thinks of it.
The trunk is seldom winter-killed. It never cracks. It has no trouble,
as the cherry does, in unbuckling the old bark and getting rid of it.
The borer is the only important enemy; and even this is a trifle, if
you compare the labor required to destroy it with the pains which men
willingly take to secure a crop of potatoes. Acre for acre, an apple
orchard will, on an average of years, produce more than half as many
bushels of fruit as a potato-field,—will it not? And yet, in plowing
and planting and after-plowing and hoeing and digging, the potato
requires at least five times the annual labor which is needed by the
apple. An acre of apple-trees can be kept clean of all enemies and
diseases with half the labor of once hoeing a crop of potatoes. And if
you have borers it is your own fault, and you ought to be bored!
The health of the apple-tree is so great that farmers never think of
examining their orchards for disease, any more than they do cedar
posts or chestnut rails. And the great longevity of the apple-tree
attests its good constitution. Two hundred years it sometimes reaches.
I have a tree on my own place in Peekskill that cannot be less than
that. Two ladies, one about eighty years of age, called upon us about
three years ago, saying that they were brought up on that farm, and
inquiring if the old apple-tree yet lived. They said that in their
childhood it was called _the old apple-tree_, and was then a
patriarch. It must now be a Methuselah. And, not to recur to it again,
I may say that it is probably the largest _recorded_ apple-tree of the
world. I read in no work of any tree whose circumference is greater
than twelve or thirteen feet. This morning I measured the Peekskill
apple-tree, and found that six inches above the ground it was fourteen
feet and six inches, and, at about four feet, or the spring of the
limbs, fourteen feet and ten inches. I am sorry to add that the
long-suffering old tree gives unmistakable signs of yielding to the
infirmities of age. The fruit is sweet, but not especially valuable,
except for stock. I do not expect to live to see any of my other trees
attain to the size and age of this solitary lingerer of other
centuries! I cannot help reverencing a tree whose leaves have trembled
to the cannonading of the guns of our Revolution, which yielded fruit
to Putnam’s soldiers when that hill was a military post, and under
whose shadow Washington himself—without any stretch of probability—may
have walked.
I ought not to omit the good properties of the apple-tree for fuel and
cabinet-work. I have for five autumns kept up the bright fire required
by the weather in an old-fashioned Franklin fireplace, using
apple-wood, procured from old trees pruned or cut up wholly; and, when
it is seasoned, I esteem it nearly as good as hickory, fully as good
as maple, and far better than seasoned beech. I have also for my best
bureau one of apple-wood. It might be mistaken for cherry. It is
fine-grained, very hard, solid as mahogany, and grows richer with
every year of age.
In Europe, the streets and roads are often shaded by fruit trees, the
mulberry and the cherry being preferred. In some parts, the public are
allowed to help themselves freely. When the fruit of any tree is to be
reserved, a wisp of straw is placed around it, which suffices.
Upright-growing apple-trees might be employed, with pears and
cherries, in our streets and roads, and by their very number, and
their abundance of fruit, might be taken away one motive of pilfering
from juvenile hands. He must be a preordained thief who will go miles
to steal that which he can get in broad daylight, without reproach, by
his door. One way to stop stealing is to give folks enough without it.
I have thus far spoken of the apple _tree_. I now pass to the
_fruit_,—to the apple itself. The question whether it sprang from the
wild crab I do not regard as yet settled. It is not known from any
historical evidence to have had that origin. You cannot prove that
this, that, or the other man, of any age or nation, planted the seed
and brought forward the fruit. Nor am I aware that any man has
conducted experiments on it like those of Van Mons on the pear, or
those which Dr. Grant has made on the grape that is cultivated in this
country, to show that it sprang from the wild grape of Europe. Until
that is done, it will be only a theory, a probable fact, but not a
fact proved. And, by the way, it might be worth some man’s while, at
his leisure, to take the seeds of the American wild grape, and see if,
by any horticultural Sunday school, he can work them up into good
Christian vines.
The apple comes nearer to universal uses than any other fruit of the
world. Is there another that has such a range of season? It begins in
July, and a good cellar brings the apple round into July again, yet
unshrunk, and in good flavor. It belts the year. What other fruit,
except in the tropics, where there is no winter, and where there are
successive growths, can do that?
It is a luxury, too. Kinds may be had so tender, so delicate, and, as
Dr. Grant—the General Grant of the vineyards—would say, _so
refreshing_, that not the pear, even, would dare to vie with it, or
hope to surpass it. The Vanderveer of the Hudson River, the American
Golden Russet, need not, in good seasons, well ripened, fear a
regiment of pears in pomological convention, even in the city of
Boston. It may not rival the melting qualities of the peach, eating
which one knows not whether he is eating or drinking. But the peach is
the fruit of a day,—ephemeral; and it is doubtful whether one would
carry through the year any such relish as is experienced for a few
weeks. It is the peculiarity of the apple that it never wearies the
taste. It is to fruit what wheaten bread is to grains. It is a
life-long relish. You may be satisfied with apples, but never cloyed.
Do you remember your boyhood feats? I was brought up in a great
old-fashioned house, with a cellar under every inch of it, through
which an ox-cart might have been wheeled after all the bins were full.
In this cellar, besides potatoes, beets, and turnips, were stored
every year some hundred bushels of apples,—the Rhode Island Greening,
the Roxbury Russet, the _Russet round the Stem_, as it was called, and
the Spitzenberg; not daintily picked, but shaken down; not in
aristocratic barrels set up in rows, but ox-carts full; not handled
softly, but poured from baskets into great bins, as we poured potatoes
into their resting-place. If they bruised and rotted, let them. We had
enough and to spare. Two seasons of picking over apples—a sort of
grand assizes—put the matter all right. In all my boyhood I never
dreamed of apples as things possible to be stolen. So abundant were
they, so absolutely open to all comers,—who went down into the cellar
by the inside stairs instead of the outside steps,—that we should as
soon have thought of being cautioned against taking turnips, or asking
leave to take a potato. Apples were as common as air. And that was
early in December and January; for I noticed that the sun was no more
fond than I was of staying out a great while on those Litchfield
hills, but ran in early to warm his fingers, as I did mine. When the
day was done, and the candles were lighted, and the supper was out of
the way, we all gathered about the great kitchen fire; and soon after
George or Henry had to go down for apples. Generally it was Henry. A
boy’s hat is a universal instrument. It is a bat to smack butterflies
with, a bag to fetch berries in, a basket for stones to pelt frogs
withal, a measure to bring up apples in. And a big-headed boy’s old
felt hat was not stingy in its quantities; and when its store ended,
the errand could always be repeated. To eat six, eight, and twelve
apples in an evening was no great feat for a growing young lad, whose
stomach was no more in danger of dyspepsia than the neighborhood mill,
through whose body passed thousands of bushels of corn, leaving it no
fatter at the end of the year than at the beginning. Cloyed with
apples? To eat an apple is to want to eat another. We tire of
cherries, of peaches, of strawberries, of figs, of grapes, (I say it
with reverence in this presence!) but never of apples. Nay, when
creature comforts fail, and the heart—hopeless voyager on the troubled
sea of life—is sick, apples are comforters; or, wherefore is it
written:—
“As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among
the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his
fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house,
and his banner over me was love. Stay me with flagons,”—undoubtedly of
cider!—“comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love.”
If this is the cure of love, we may the better understand why the
popular instinct should have resorted to the apple-tree as a cure for
ambition, singing,
“We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour-apple tree.”
There is, in this toothsomeness of the apple, together with its utter
harmlessness, a provision for nurses and mothers. There is a growing
period when children are voracious. They must be filled; and it is a
matter of great account to know what to fill them with. If you give
them but bread, that seems meager. Pies, cakes, and sweetmeats are
mischievous; and yet more so are candies and confections. Apples just
hit the mark. They are more than a necessary of life, and less than a
luxury. They stand just half-way between bread and cake, as wholesome
as one and as good as the other.
But now I enter upon the realm of uses, culinary and domestic, where,
were I an ancient poet, I should stop and invoke all the gods to my
aid. But the gods are all gone; and next to them is that blessing of
the world, the housewife. Her I invoke, and chiefly one who taught me,
by her kitchen magic, to believe that the germ of civilization is in
the art and science of the kitchen. Is there, among fruits, one other
that has so wide a range, or a range so important, so exquisite, so
wonderful, as the range of the apple in the kitchen?
First, consider it as a fruit-vegetable. It might with great advantage
take its place upon the table as regularly as the potato or the onion.
Far more odorous is the onion, but, I think, far more blessed is the
apple. It is an admirable accompaniment of meat, which always craves a
piquant acid for relish. And when meat is wanting, a scrap of pork in
the frying-pan, with sliced apples, will serve the economic table
almost as well as if it had been carved from a beef or cut from a
sheep.
We do not use the apple enough in our cooking. As a fruit upon the
table it may be used for breakfast, for supper, for dessert. Roasted
apples! Baked apples! What visions come before my mind! Not the baked
apples of the modern stove, which has humbled their glory. They are
still worth eating, but they have lost the stature, the comeliness,
and the romance of the old roasted apples, that were placed in due
order between the huge andirons, and turned duly by the careful
servant, drinking in heat on one side and oxygen on the other, and
coming to a degree of luxurious nicety that will never be attained
till we go back again to the old fireplace. It was a real pleasure to
be sick,—I mean on the hither border of sickness; so that we might not
go to school, and so that, while we took a little magnesia, we might
feast on delicious roasted apples. And as for baked apples and milk,
how can I adequately speak of that most excellent dish!
Then, again, the apple may be regarded as a confection, serving in the
form of tarts, pies,—blessed be the unknown person who invented the
apple-pie! Did I know where the grave of that person was, methinks I
would make a devout pilgrimage thither, and rear a monument over it
that should mark the spot to the latest generations. Of all pies, of
every name, the apple-pie is easily the first and chief. And what
shall I say of jellies, dumplings, puddings, and various preserves,
that are made from the apple?
It might seem hard, in this enumeration of the many forms in which the
apple is made to contribute to the benefit of mankind, not to notice
that form in which it defies age, I refer to the dried apple. No
festoons are more comely than were those half-circles that used to
decorate the rafters of the old-fashioned kitchen. I confess that no
dried fruit is worthy to be called fruit, whether it be huckleberry,
or peach, or pear, or apple. Once dried, these things have lost the
soul of their flavor; and no coddling, no soaking, no experimenting,
will ever bring them back to what they were in their original fresh
life. You cannot give youth to old age in apples any more than among
men. And yet, as a _souvenir_, as a sad remembrances of days gone by,
dried apples are very good.
Next, we naturally consider the use of apples as food for stock,—for
swine, for horses, and for cattle. This use of them is known; but it
seems to me that they are not thus employed near so much as their
benefits would justify.
Last of all, let me speak of cider; for, although the days of
temperance have banished cider from its former and almost universal
position upon the farmer’s table, it is creeping back again. Not
daring to come in its own name, it comes in the name of a neighbor,
and is called _champagne_. But whether it comes in one form or
another, it still is savory of the orchard; still it brings warmth to
chilly veins; still it is a contribution to many a homely domestic
festival. And though I cannot, as a temperance man, exhort you to make
it, I must say, that if you _will_ make it, you had better make it
good!
But woe to him who takes another step in that direction! Cider-brandy
is a national disgrace. How great is the calamity that impends over a
community that makes cider-brandy may be known by the recent history
of the Shenandoah valley; it being declared by several of the Richmond
papers that the defeat of Early was owing to the abundance of
apple-jack there.
It only remains that I should say a single word on the subject of the
apple as an article of commerce. Whether fresh or dried, it is still,
in that relation, a matter of no small importance. The home market is
enlarging every year; and as soon as the apple shall become so cheap
that all men may have it no matter how poor they may be, the market
must of necessity have become very much augmented. Many men suppose
that as orchards increase and fruit multiplies the profits diminish.
Such is not the fact. As the commoner kinds multiply, and the common
people learn to use them as daily food, the finer kinds will bear
proportionally higher prices; and cheapness is one of the steps to
profit in all things that are consumed in the community. And I should
be glad to see the day when, for a few pence, every drayman, every
common laborer in every city, should be able to bring as much fruit to
his house every day as his family could consume in that day. I should
be glad to see in our cities, what is to be seen to some extent in the
cities of Europe, the time when a penny or two will enable a man to
bring home enough flowers to decorate his table of food twice a day.
We have not merely in view the profits of raising fruit when we exhort
you to bestow your attention on the apple more and more as an article
of commerce; we have also in view the social influence which it may be
made to exert. I hold that when in any respect you lift the common
people up, whether by giving them a better dwelling, by placing within
their reach better furniture, or by enabling them to furnish their
table better, you are raising them toward self-respect; you are
raising them toward the higher positions in society. For, although all
men should start with the democracy, all men have a right to stop with
the aristocracy. Let all put their feet on the same level; and then
let them shoot as high as they please. Blessed is the man that knows
how to overtop his neighbors by a fair development of skill and
strength. And every single step of advance in general cultivation,
even though it is brought about by so humble an instrumentality as the
multiplication of fruit, or anything else that augments the range of
healthful enjoyment among the common people, not only stimulates their
moral growth, but, through that growth, gives the classes above them a
better chance to grow. One of the most efficient ways of elevating the
whole community is to multiply the means of livelihood among the
poorest and commonest.
I will not finish my remarks with those elaborate statistics or with
those admirable and eloquent periods with which I should be pleased to
entertain you, for two reasons: first, because I would not consume
your time at so late an hour; and, secondly, because I have none of
these things at hand!