We gathered our apples. We had a small orchard of red Baldwins across the brook, and some old, scattering trees such as you will find on every New England farm. These last were very ancient, and of varieties unknown to-day. One, badly broken by the wind, we cut, and its rings gave it one hundred and fifty years. Putnam's soldiers could have hooked apples from that tree, and probably did so, for it was not in plain view of the house.
We put the Baldwins away and made cider of the others, it being now the right moment, when there was a tang of frost in the morning air. We picked up enough to fill both of Uncle Joe's cider-barrels, Westbury and I hauled them to the mill, and the next day Elizabeth was boiling down the sweet juice into apple-butter, which is one of the best things in the world.
There is work about making apple-butter. It is not just a simple matter of putting on some juice and letting it boil. Apples must
he could frame no adequate reply. Westbury came, and I persuaded him to take them at a reduction, and threw in Uncle Joe's pork and ham barrels. I said we wanted Hans and Gretel to have a good home that we had not been worthy of them.
They found it at Westbury's. There they were in a sort of heaven. When I saw them at the end of another two weeks they were again unrecognizable they were once more pigs.
We parted, with Lazarus about the same time. Our régime was not suited to his needs. It was a pity. With his gifts, the right people might have modeled him into a politician, or something, but we couldn't. We had neither the equipment nor the time. Nor, according to agreement, could we administer that discipline which, from our old-fashioned point of view, he sometimes seemed to require. We could only "send back to de home." Perhaps to-day he is "somewhere in France," making a good soldier. I hope so.
IV Westbury had advised against wheat
Our rye had such a sturdy look that I said it was pretty sure to turn out something fancy in the way of grain, and that we could probably sell it as "seed" rye, which always brought a better price than the regular crop. Then, as the idea expanded, I said that with our few acres we could cultivate intensively and raise seed crops entirely. That would be something really aristocratic in the farming line. We would begin with seed rye and wheat, of which latter grain I had put in a modest sowing. Next year we would go in for seed potatoes, oats, corn, and the like. We could have a neat sign on the stone wall in front, announcing our line of goods. Very likely buyers would come from a considerable distance for them I had myself driven seven miles with Westbury for the seed rye. A business like that would grow. We could go in for new varieties of things, and in time set up a shipping-station, with a packing-house and a bookkeeper. No doubt Henderson and Hiram Sibley and Ferry and those other seed magnates had begun in some such modest way.
I don't think Elizabeth responded entirely to this particular enthusiasm, and I could see that she was doubtful about the sign in front, but on a winy, windless November day, warmed by a mellow sun, all things seem possible, and she graciously admitted that one never could tell that stranger things had happened. Then we came to our small wheat-field, and the new seed enthusiasm received a slight check. Westbury had advised against wheat. He said it did not do well in that section. This, I had insisted, must be a superstition, and I had gone to considerable expense to have the ground properly prepared, and to obtain the best seed.
The result, as it appeared now, was not promising. Here and there a spindling blade had come through, and some of those seemed about to turn into grass. I do not know why wheat acts like that in Connecticut. I did not follow up the scientific phases of the case, but I confided to Elizabeth that perhaps, after all, we would not announce "Seed Wheat" on the neat sign planned for the outer wall.
Late October winds had changed the aspect of our world. Our woods were no longer deep, vast, and mysterious. We could see straight through them and read their most hidden secrets. We discovered one day, what we had never suspected, that at one place our brook turned and came back almost to the road. All that summer it had supped silently through that brushy corner which for some reason we had never penetrated. We discovered, too, a little to one side of our former excursions, a rocky acclivity, a place of pretty hemlock-trees and seclusion a spot for a summer tent.
There were not many mushrooms any more, but we gathered gay red berries for decoration, bunches of late fern, sprays of bittersweet; we raked over the leaves for nuts, and sometimes found bits of spicy wintergreen or checkerberry, the kind that always flavored old-fashioned lozenges which our grandmothers bought in little rolls for a penny, on the way to school. You may guess that this was pleasant play to us who for ten years had known only city or suburban life at this season, and not the least pleasant part of it was the quiet noise the leaves made as we strode through them, the fruis-sas-se-ar , as the French of the Provence call it, and the word as they