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, and almost of repairing damages!
How it resists 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; it peeps 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.
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