The Washingtonian or Temperance reform which swept over this country like a purifying wind in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, found many temporizers who tried to exclude cider from the list of intoxicating drinks which converts pledged themselves to abandon. Some farmers who adopted this much-needed movement against the all-prevailing vice of drunkenness received it with fanatic zeal. It makes the heart of the Apple lover ache to read that in this spirit they cut down whole orchards of flourishing Apple trees, since they could conceive no adequate use for their apples save for cider. That any should have tried to exclude cider from the list of intoxicating beverages seems barefaced indeed to those who have tasted that most potent of all spirits--frozen cider. I once drank a small modicum of Jericho cider, as smooth as Benedictine and more persuasive, which made a raw day in April seem like sunny midsummer. I afterward learned from the ingenuous Long Island farmer whose hospitality gave me this liqueur that it had been frozen seven times. Each time he had thrust a red-hot poker into the bung-hole of the barrel, melted all the watery ice and poured it out; therefore the very essence of the cider was all that remained. It is interesting to note the folk customs of Old England which have lingered here, such as domestic love divinations. The poet Gay wrote:-- "I pare this Pippin round and round again, My shepherd's name to flourish on the plain. I fling th' unbroken paring o'er my head, Upon the grass a perfect L. is read." I have seen New England schoolgirls, scores of times, thus toss an "unbroken paring." An ancient trial of my youth was done with Apple seeds; these were named for various swains, then slightly wetted and stuck on the cheek or forehead, while we chanted:-- "Pippin! Pippin! Paradise! Tell me where my true love lies!" The seed that remained longest in place indicated the favored and favoring lover. With the neglect in this country of Saints' Days and the Puritanical frowning down of all folk customs connected with them, we lost the delightful wassailing of the Apple trees. This, like many another religious observance, was a relic of heathen sacrifice, in this case to Pomona. It was celebrated with slight variations in various parts of England; and was called an Apple howling, a wassailing, a youling, and other terms. The farmer and his workmen carried to the orchard great jugs of cider or milk pans filled with cider and roasted apples. Encircling in turn the best bearing trees, they drank from "clayen-cups," and poured part of the contents on the ground under the trees. And while they wassailed the trees they sang:-- "Here's to thee, old Apple tree! Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow, And whence thou mayst bear Apples enow! Hats full! caps full, Bushel--Bushel--sacks full, And my pockets full too."