LOCALITY—The cellar stair and the cellar.
PRESENT—DAVID and RUTH.

THE QUESTION ILLUSTRATED BY NATURE.

Ruth.

Look where you step, or you'll stumble!
Care for your coat, or you'll crock it!
Down with your crown, man! Be humble!
Put your head into your pocket,
Else something or other will knock it.
Don't hit that jar of cucumbers
Standing an the broad-stair!
They have not waked from their slumbers
Since they stood there.

David.

Yet they have lived in a constant jar!
What remarkable sleepers they are!

Ruth.

Turn to the left—shun the wall—
One step more—that is all!
Now we are safe on the ground,
I will show you around.

Sixteen barrels of cider
Ripening all in a row!
Open the vent-channels wider!
See the froth, drifted like snow.
Blown by the tempest below!
Those delectable juices
Flowed through the sinuous sluices
Of sweet springs under the orchard;
Climbed into fountains that chained them;
Dripped into cups that retained them,
And swelled till they dropped, and we gained them.
Then they were gathered and tortured
By passage from hopper to vat,
And fell-every apple crushed flat.
Ah! how the bees gathered round them,
And how delicious they found them!
Oat-straw, as fragrant as clover,
Was platted, and smoothly turned over,
Weaving a neatly ribbed basket;
And, as they built up the casket,
In went the pulp by the scoop-full,
Till the juice flowed by the stoup-full,—
Filling the half of a puncheon
While the men swallowed their luncheon.
Pure grew the stream with the stress
Of the lever and screw,
Till the last drops from the press
Were as bright as the dew.
There were these juices spilled;
There were these barrels filled;
Sixteen barrels of cider—
Ripening all in a row!
Open the vent-channels wider!
See the froth, drifted like snow,
Blown by the tempest below!

David.

Hearts, like apples, are hard and sour,
Till crushed by Pain's resistless power;
And yield their juices rich and bland
To none but Sorrow's heavy hand.
The purest streams of human love
Flow naturally never,
But gush by pressure from above
With God's hand on the lever.
The first are turbidest and meanest;
The last are sweetest and serenest.

Ruth.

Sermon quite short for the text!
What shall we hit upon next?
Lift up the lid of that cask;
See if the brine be abundant;
Easy for me were the task
To make it redundant
With tears for my beautiful Zephyr—
Pet of the pasture and stall—
Whitest and comeliest heifer,
Gentlest of all!
Oh, it seemed cruel to slay her!
But they insulted my prayer
For her careless and innocent life,
And the creature was brought to the knife
With gratitude in her eye;
For they patted her back, and chafed her head,
And coaxed her with softest words, as they led
Her up to the ring to die.
Do you blame me for crying
When my Zephyr was dying?
I shut my room and my ears,
And opened my heart and my tears,
And wept for the half of a day;
And I could not go
To the rooms below
Till the butcher went away.

David.

Life evermore is fed by death,
In earth and sea and sky;
And, that a rose may breathe its breath,
Something must die.

Earth is a sepulcher of flowers,
Whose vitalizing mold
Through boundless transmutation towers,
In green and gold.

The oak tree, struggling with the blast,
Devours its father tree,
And sheds its leaves and drops its mast,
That more may be.

The falcon preys upon the finch,
The finch upon the fly,
And nought will loose the hunger-pinch
But death's wild cry.

The milk-haired heifer's life must pass
That it may fill your own,
As passed the sweet life of the grass
She fed upon.

The power enslaved by yonder cask
Shall many burdens bear;
Shall nerve the toiler at his task,
The soul at prayer.

From lowly woe springs lordly joy;
From humbler good diviner;
The greater life must aye destroy
And drink the minor.

From hand to hand life's cup is passed
Up Being's piled gradation,
Till men to angels yield at last
The rich collation.

Ruth.

Well, we are done with the brute;
Now let us look at the fruit,—
Every barrel, I'm told,
From grafts half a dozen years old.
That is a barrel of russets;
But we can hardly discuss its
Spheres of frost and flint,
Till, smitten by thoughts of Spring,
And the old tree blossoming,
Their bronze takes a yellower tint,
And the pulp grows mellower in't.
But oh! when they're sick with the savors
Of sweets that they dream of,
Sure, all the toothsomest flavors
They hold the cream of!
You will be begging in May,
In your irresistible way,
For a peck of the apples in gray.

Those are the pearmains, I think,—
Bland and insipid as eggs;
They were too lazy to drink
The light to its dregs,
And left them upon the rind—
A delicate film of blue—
Leave them alone;—I can find
Better apples for you.

Those are the Rhode Island greenings;
Excellent apples for pies;
There are no mystical meanings
In fruit of that color and size.
They are too coarse and too juiceful;
They are too large and too useful.
There are the Baldwins and Flyers,
Wrapped in their beautiful fires!
Color forks up from their stems
As if painted by Flora,
Or as out from the pole stream the flames
Of the Northern Aurora.

Here shall our quest have a close;
Fill up your basket with those;
Bite through their vesture of flame,
And then you will gather
All that is meant by the name,
"Seek-no-farther!"

David.

The native orchard's fairest trees,
Wild springing on the hill,
Bear no such precious fruits as these,
And never will;

Till ax and saw and pruning knife
Cut from them every bough,
And they receive a gentler life
Than crowns them now.

And Nature's children, evermore,
Though grown to stately stature,
Must bear the fruit their fathers bore—
The fruit of nature;

Till every thrifty vice is made
The shoulder for a scion,
Cut from the bending trees that shade
The hills of Zion.

Sorrow must crop each passion-shoot,
And pain each lust infernal,
Or human life can bear no fruit
To life eternal.

For angels wait on Providence;
And mark the sundered places,
To graft with gentlest instruments
The heavenly graces.

Ruth.

Well, you're a curious creature!
You should have been a preacher.
But look at that bin of potatoes—
Grown in all singular shapes—
Red and in clusters, like grapes,
Or more like tomatoes.
Those are Merinoes, I guess;
Very prolific and cheap;
They make an excellent mess
For a cow, or a sheep,
And are good for the table, they say,
When the winter has passed away.

Those are my beautiful Carters;
Every one doomed to be martyrs
To the eccentric desire
Of Christian people to skin them,—
Brought to the trial of fire
For the good that is in them!
Ivory tubers—divide one!
Ivory all the way through!
Never a hollow inside one;
Never a core, black or blue!
Ah, you should taste them when roasted!
(Chestnuts are not half so good;)
And you would find that I've boasted
Less than I should.
They make the meal for Sunday noon;
And, if ever you eat one, let me beg
You to manage it just as you do an egg.
Take a pat of butter, a silver spoon,
And wrap your napkin round the shell:
Have you seen a humming-bird probe the bell
Of a white-lipped morning-glory?
Well, that's the rest of the story!
But it's very singular, surely,
They should produce so poorly.
Father knows that I want them,
So he continues to plant them;
But, if I try to argue the question,
He scoffs, as a thrifty farmer will;
And puts me down with the stale suggestion—
"Small potatoes, and few in a hill."

David.

Thus is it over all the earth!
That which we call the fairest,
And prize for its surpassing worth,
Is always rarest.

Iron is heaped in mountain piles,
And gluts the laggard forges;
But gold-flakes gleam in dim defiles
And lonely gorges.

The snowy marble flecks the land
With heaped and rounded ledges,
But diamonds hide within the sand
Their starry edges.

The finny armies clog the twine
That sweeps the lazy river,
But pearls come singly from the brine,
With the pale diver.

God gives no value unto men
Unmatched by meed of labor;
And Cost of Worth has ever been
The closest neighbor.

Wide is the gate and broad the way
That opens to perdition,
And countless multitudes are they
Who seek admission.

But strait the gate, the path unkind,
That lead to life immortal,
And few the careful feet that find
The hidden portal.

All common good has common price;
Exceeding good, exceeding;
Christ bought the keys of Paradise
By cruel bleeding;

And every soul that wins a place
Upon its hills of pleasure,
Must give its all, and beg for grace
To fill the measure.

Were every hill a precious mine,
And golden all the mountains;
Were all the rivers fed with wine
By tireless fountains;

Life would be ravished of its zest,
And shorn of its ambition,
And sinks into the dreamless rest
Of inanition.

Up the broad stairs that Value rears
Stand motives beckoning earthward,
To summon men to nobler spheres,
And lead them worthward.

Ruth.

I'm afraid to show you anything more;
For parsnips and art are so very long,
That the passage back to the cellar-door
Would be through a mile of song.
But Truth owns me for an honest teller;
And, if the honest truth be told,
I am indebted to you and the cellar
For a lesson and a cold.
And one or the other cheats my sight;
(O silly girl! for shame!)
Barrels are hooped with rings of light,
And stopped with tongues of flame.
Apples have conquered original sin,
Manna is pickled in brine,
Philosophy fills the potato bin,
And cider will soon be wine.
So crown the basket with mellow fruit,
And brim the pitcher with pearls;
And we'll see how the old-time dainties suit
The old-time boys and girls.

[They ascend the stairs.]