The New McGuffey Fourth Reader Part 18

The beauty of the night is hardly felt, when Day comes leaping up. Yoho! Two stages, and the country roads are almost changed to a continuous street. Yoho, past market gardens, rows of houses, villas, crescents, terraces, and squares; past wagons, coaches, carts; past early workmen, late stragglers, and sober carriers of loads; past brick and mortar in its every shape; and in among the rattling pavements, where a jaunty seat upon a coach is not so easy to preserve! Yoho, down countless turnings, and through countless mazy ways, until an old innyard is gained, and Tom Pinch, getting down, quite stunned and giddy, is in London!

--Adapted from "Martin Chuzzlewit."

DEFINITIONS:--Swells, self-important personages. Guard, conductor. Legacy, something left by will. Boot, a place for baggage at either end of a stagecoach. Dip, slope. Dowager, an English t.i.tle for widow.

THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE TREE.

BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

Come, let us plant the apple tree.

Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; Wide let its hollow bed be made; There gently lay the roots, and there Sift the dark mold with kindly care, And press it o'er them tenderly, As round the sleeping infant's feet We softly fold the cradle sheet; So plant we the apple tree.

What plant we in this apple tree?

Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs where the thrush, with crimson breast, Shall haunt, and sing, and hide her nest; We plant, upon the sunny lea, A shadow for the noontide hour, A shelter from the summer shower, When we plant the apple tree.

What plant we in this apple tree?

Sweets for a hundred flowery springs, To load the May wind's restless wings, When, from the orchard row, he pours Its fragrance through our open doors; A world of blossoms for the bee, Flowers for the sick girl's silent room, For the glad infant sprigs of bloom, We plant with the apple tree.

What plant we in this apple tree?

Fruits that shall swell in sunny June, And redden in the August noon, And drop, when gentle airs come by, That fan the blue September sky, While children come, with cries of glee, And seek them where the fragrant gra.s.s Betrays their bed to those who pa.s.s, At the foot of the apple tree.

And when, above this apple tree, The winter stars are quivering bright, The winds go howling through the night, Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth, And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine, And golden orange of the line, The fruit of the apple tree.

The fruitage of this apple tree, Winds and our flag of stripe and star Shall bear to coasts that lie afar, Where men shall wonder at the view, And ask in what fair groves they grew; And sojourners beyond the sea Shall think of childhood's careless day, And long, long hours of summer play, In the shade of the apple tree.

Each year shall give this apple tree A broader flush of roseate bloom, A deeper maze of verdurous gloom, And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower, The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower.

The years shall come and pa.s.s, but we Shall hear no longer, where we lie, The summer's songs, the autumn's sigh, In the boughs of the apple tree.

And time shall waste this apple tree.

Oh, when its aged branches throw Thin shadows on the ground below, Shall fraud and force and iron will Oppress the weak and helpless still?

What shall the tasks of mercy be, Amid the toils, the strifes, the tears Of those who live when length of years Is wasting this apple tree?

"Who planted this old apple tree?"

The children of that distant day Thus to some aged man shall say; And, gazing on its mossy stem, The gray-haired man shall answer them: "A poet of the land was he, Born in the rude but good old times; 'Tis said he made some quaint old rhymes On planting the apple tree."

DEFINITIONS:--Greensward, turf or sod green with gra.s.s. Mold, crumbling earth. Lea, a gra.s.sy field. Cintra, a town in Portugal noted for its fine climate and its delicious grapes. Line, the equator. Roseate, rose-colored. Verdurous, greenish.

THE APPLE.

BY JOHN BORROUGHS.

The apple is the commonest and yet the most varied and beautiful of fruits. A dish of them is as becoming to the center table in winter as is the vase of flowers in summer--a bouquet of Spitzenbergs and Greenings and Northern Spies.

A rose when it blooms, the apple is a rose when it ripens. It pleases every sense to which it can be addressed,--the touch, the smell, the sight, the taste; and when it falls in the still October days it pleases the ear. It is a call to a banquet,--it is a signal that the feast is ready. The bough would fain hold it, but it can now a.s.sert its independence; it can now live a life of its own.

Daily the stem relaxes its hold, till finally it lets go completely, and down comes the painted sphere with a mellow thump to the earth, toward which it has been nodding so long.

It will now take time to meditate and ripen! What delicious thoughts it has there, nestled with its fellows under the fence, turning acid into sugar, and sugar into wine!

How pleasing to the touch. I love to stroke its polished rondure with my hand, to carry it in my pocket on my tramp over the winter hills, or through the early spring woods. You are company, you redcheek Spitz or you salmon-fleshed Greening! I toy with you, press your face to mine, toss you in the air, roll you on the ground, see you s.h.i.+ne out where you lie amid the moss and dry leaves and sticks.

You are so alive! You glow like a ruddy flower. You look so animated I almost expect to see you move! I postpone the eating of you, you are so beautiful! How compact, how exquisitely tinted! Stained by the sun and varnished against the rains. An independent vegetable existence, alive and vascular as my own flesh; capable of being wounded, bleeding, wasting away, or almost repairing damages!

How they resist the cold! holding out almost as long as the red cheeks of the boys do. A frost that destroys the potatoes and other roots only makes the apple more crisp and vigorous; they peep out from the chance November snows unscathed.

When I see the fruit vender on the street corner stamping his feet and beating his hands to keep them warm, and his naked apples lying exposed to the blasts, I wonder if they do not ache, too, to clap their hands and enliven their circulation. But they can stand it nearly as long as the vender can.

n.o.ble common fruit, best friend of man and most loved by him, following him like his dog or his cow, wherever he goes! His homestead is not planted till you are planted; your roots intertwine with his; thriving best where he thrives best, loving the limestone and the frost, the plow and the pruning knife, you are indeed suggestive of hardy, cheerful industry, and a healthy life in the open air.

Do you remember the apple hole in the garden or back of the house, Ben Bolt? In the fall, after the bins in the cellar had been well stocked, we excavated a circular pit in the warm, mellow earth, and covering the bottom with clean rye straw, emptied in basketful after basketful of hardy choice varieties, till there was a tent-shaped mound several feet high, of s.h.i.+ning, variegated fruit.

Then wrapping it about with a thick layer of long rye straw, and tucking it up snug and warm, the mound was covered with a thin coating of earth, a flat stone on top holding down the straw. As winter set in, another coating of earth was put upon it, with perhaps an overcoat of coa.r.s.e, dry stable manure, and the precious pile was left in silence and darkness till spring. How the earth tempers and flavors the apples! It draws out all the acrid, unripe qualities, and infuses into them a subtile, refres.h.i.+ng taste of the soil.

As the supply in the bins and barrels gets low, and spring approaches, the buried treasures in the garden are remembered.

With spade and ax we go out, and penetrate through the snow and frozen earth till the inner dressing of straw is laid bare. It is not quite as clear and bright as when we placed it there last fall, but the fruit beneath, which the hand soon exposes, is just as bright and far more luscious.

Then, as day after day you resort to the hole, and removing the straw and earth from the opening, thrust your arm into the fragrant pit, you have a better chance than ever before to become acquainted with your favorites by the sense of touch. How you feel for them reaching to the right and left.

When you were a schoolboy you stowed them away in your pockets, and ate them along the road and at recess, and again at noon time; and they, in a measure, corrected the effects of the cake and pie with which your mother filled your lunch basket.

--Adapted "Winter Suns.h.i.+ne."

DEFINITIONS:--Meditate, to reflect. Rondure, state of being round. Exquisitely, with great perfection. Vascular, made up of small vessels. Unscathed, not injured. Vender, seller.

THE BUGLE SONG.

BY ALFRED TENNYSON.

The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory.

Blow, bugle, blow; set the wild echoes flying!

Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

Oh hark! oh hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going!

Oh sweet and far, from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying; Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

Oh love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill, or field, or rivers Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever.

Blow, bugle, blow; set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.