Part 29

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 shine 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.

Noble 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 shining, 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 coarse, 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, refreshing 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 Sunshine."

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.

DEFINITIONS:--Splendor, light, glory. Summits, mountain, tops, lofty mountains. Cataract, a waterfall. Scar, a bare place on a mountain side. Elfland, fairyland.

THE STORY OF CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH.

BY JOHN ESTEN COOKE.

Captain Smith was born at Willoughby, in England, in the month of January, 1579. His parents died when he was a mere child, and he was left alone in the world without any one to take care of him. Yet he was a brave and independent boy, and he soon showed that he was well able to make his own way in the world. He was fond of adventure, as most boys are; and while he was still a youth he wandered away to Holland, and spent some time with the English army which was there.

When he came back to England, he began to train himself for the life of a soldier. Instead of passing his time in idleness with other young men of WilloughLy, he went out to the woods near by and built a sort of house for himself of the boughs of trees. Here he intended to stay; and as for food, he meant to shoot deer, and live on the venison. In this "Bower," as he called it, he got together as many books on warlike matters as he could find; and he spent the greater part of his time in studying them.

Young John Smith had a horse and lance with which he practiced every day, riding swiftly and trying to strike a ring or other object from the bough of a tree to which it had been hung. He also practiced with his sword to make his eye keen and his wrist tough; and he fired at trees with his pistol, to become a good marksman. By such means as these he fitted himself for the life of a soldier; and then he set out in search of adventures.

He crossed the English Channel and landed in France; but three Frenchmen who had come over with him in the ship treated him very badly. They saw that he was but a mere boy, and stole the trunk in which were all his clothing and his money. They left him in great trouble, for he was in a strange country without friends. But he kept a brave heart, and soon showed that he could take care of himself. He wandered on through France, meeting many kind persons on the way who helped him, until at last he came to the city of Marseilles on the Mediterranean Sea.

As his plan was to go and fight the Turks, he went on board a ship bound for Rome, which was on his way. The ship set sail, but soon a great storm arose, and the vessel was tossed about, and in danger of being wrecked. Some of the men on board said that Smith, being a stranger, had brought them bad luck, and that the only way to escape the storm was to get rid of him; so they seized him and threw him into the sea.