TWO apple trees that stood on opposite sides of the road, being both of them neglected by their owners, used to sympathize with each other’s misfortunes.

“Just look at the suckers that are allowed to spring up about my roots!” said one.

“And see the great nests of caterpillars that remain undisturbed among my branches!” said the other.

But after a while the farm on which one of the trees stood was sold, and it soon became evident that its new owner was a very different farmer from the old one. He began straightening up his fences, whitewashing his buildings,[183]
[184] and putting things to rights all over his farm. His fields were ploughed, his garden planted, his fruit trees attended to—among the rest, the apple tree that stood near the road. Its dead wood was cut out, the caterpillars it had complained of were cleared away, and the ground about its roots was loosened and enriched.

As a consequence, when spring arrived, it was covered with blossoms, and later in the summer loaded down with fruit.

But while all this was going on it had noticed a strange alteration in its opposite neighbor. Formerly the two trees used to talk together every day, but now very little passed between them. The one across the road seemed unwilling to talk and grew more and more silent, until, when autumn came and the great red apples were being gathered from the branches of its old acquaintance, it would scarcely return an answer when spoken to. The other bore this for a time, but at length could bear it no longer, and then spoke out plainly, as follows:

“You will hardly answer me when I speak to you. What a change is this in an old friend! Yet I have done nothing to make you dislike me. I am left to imagine only one cause for it, and that is jealousy, and regret, at my greater good fortune.”

“You wrong me,” replied the fruitless tree—“not in charging me with unkind treatment, which I acknowledge, but in the motive you have imputed it to. It is not because I am sorry for your good fortune, but because I am ashamed of my own unhappy condition, that I am so silent. I would not strip from you one green leaf or have you to bear one apple less, but in looking at your prosperous state I am made more conscious of my own poverty, and realize what a poor barren stock I am.”

“Pardon me,” said the other. “Instead of being angry I am sorry for you, and hope with all my heart that by next spring you may fall into better hands, and by autumn be more heavily loaded down with fruit than myself.”

An appearance of ill-will does not always prove its existence. We should be sure of the motive before judging the act.