ORCHARDS AND A LINE FROM VIRGIL Orchards! We were walking to New York--through orchards.

And we might have gone by train! A country of orchards and gold-dust sunshine falling through the quaint tapestry trees, falling dreamily on heaped-up gold, and the grave backs of little pigs joyously at large in the apple twilight.

A drowsy, murmuring spell was on the land, the spell of fabled orchards, and of old enchanted gardens-- _In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon_-- the country of King Alcinous.

At intervals, as we walked on through the cider-dreamy afternoon, thinking apples, smelling apples, munching apples, there came a mellow sound like soft thunder through the trees.

It was the thunder of apples being poured into barrels, and, as in a sleep, the fragrant wagons passed and repassed along the road--"the slow-moving wagons of our lady of Eleusis." That line of Virgil came to me, as lines will sometimes come in fortunate moments, with the satisfaction of perfect fitness to the hour and the mood, gathering into one sacred, tear-filled phrase the deep sense that had been possessing me, as we passed the husbandmen busy with the various harvest, of the long antiquity of these haunted industries of the earth.
So long, so long, has man pursued these ancient tasks; so long ago was he urging the plowshare through the furrow, so long ago the sower went forth to sow; so long ago have there been barns and byres, granaries and threshing-floors, mills and vineyards; so long has there been milking of cows, and herding of sheep and swine.