Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/188

170 on the roadward side of the wall. I remember it perfectly—the fruit, I mean—color, shape, and flavor. Every year I see apples of the same name in the market, but somehow I can never buy any that look or taste half so good as those that I used in lucky moments to find here, waiting for me, in the roadside grass.

Those were Old Testament times in New England. Gleanings belonged to "the poor and the stranger." Who could dispute our title? We believed in special providences; and edible windfalls on the nigh side of the fence were among the chiefest of them. Schoolboys of the present day, I take for granted, are brought up under a different code. They would go past such temptations with their hands in their pockets and without a squint sideways. They apprehend no difference between "picking up" an apple and stealing one. Such is the evolution of morality. The day of the gleaner is past. Naomi and Ruth have become mythical personages, as much so as Romulus and Remus.

I was going first to Harvey White's pasture (not to dwell unsafely upon confessions