The apple is an easy fruit to pick. The stem parts readily from the spur or twig. Yet if the harvester is choice of his trees he will work deftly rather than roughly, not to injure the bearing wood. The fruits are placed in baskets as they are plucked, sometimes in a bag slung over the shoulders but this is not the best way when the apples are ripe. In the packing-house, the fruits are sorted into uniform grades if they are for market. The better the trees are tilled, pruned and sprayed, the more uniform will be the crop, and particularly if the fruit is thinned on the tree; yet the second-class and even cull apples will be many under ordinary conditions. The purchaser, noting the price of extra-grade apples, may not realize that he buys only the remainder in a long process of grading, extending really over the season or even throughout the life of the orchard. In all this time, the grower has borne the risks of frosts and hail, insect and fungus invasions, lack of help, and disastrously low prices. A finished product of high quality is always expensive. The usual apples on the open market are not the kind I have here tried to describe. They are the product of indifferent orchards or of careless handling. They are purchased for cooking; and the eating of apples out of hand because they are attractive and really good is an unknown experience with great numbers of our people. The polished shiny apples of the fruit-stands are a delusion. The practice of burnishing the fruits produces a most inartistic result, destroying the natural bloom and violating the appearance of a natural apple. It is one thing to clean a fruit if it is soiled (which is seldom the case with boxed or barreled apples); it is quite another thing to rub and furbish an apple as if it were a billiard ball or glass marble and not a living object that grew on a tree,--it sets false standards before the children. Yet all this is in line with much of our practice whereby, in cookery and manipulation, we disguise our foods and show our lack of appreciation of the products themselves. For home use, winter apples may well be stored in boxes in a cool moist cellar if such a place is available. For best results in long keeping, the temperature should be maintained below 40 degrees F. In a cellar containing a furnace, the fruits shrivel from too much evaporation, as also in an attic or other dry room. If the fruit must be stored in such places, it is well to keep the box or barrel tightly closed, and the individual apples may be wrapped in thin paper.