When Life Was Young: At the Old Farm in MaineStephens, C. A. (Charles Asbury)
General
When Life Was Young: At the Old Farm in Maine
Stephens, C. A. (Charles Asbury)
Farm life -- Juvenile fiction; Maine -- Juvenile fiction
"Addison is a real good cousin," Theodora said to me, apologetically, as
we returned to the orchard. "He is one of the nicest boys I ever saw. He
almost never gets angry, and always speaks in a gentlemanly way to
grandfather and grandmother; and he is real good to us girls, whenever
we have anything hard to do, or want to make flower boxes, or spade up
our flower beds. He knows the different kinds of rocks and trees and
flowers, and the birds, too, and all about their nests and where they go
winters. Uncle William, you know, was a teacher, the preceptor of an
Academy; he understood botany and mineralogy and taught Ad when he was a
little boy. Addison means to get a college education, if he can make his
way to do it.
"I should like to get a good education, too," Theodora added after
awhile. "Have you any plans of your own?"
I replied that I had no plans as yet; but that I, too, would like to
attend school.
"We all go to the district school here," said Theodora, "and we can
learn a good deal, if we study well. But I should like to go to a more
advanced school when I get a little older, so that I could be a teacher
myself, perhaps; though I would rather be something else than a
teacher," she added.
"What is that?" I asked.
"Oh, I don't quite like to tell you that just yet," she said.
"I am going to show you the good apple trees," she continued, and led
the way through the orchard. "These three great ones, here below the
garden wall, are Orange Speck trees; they are real nice apples for
winter; and there is the Gilliflower tree. Over here is the Early Sweet
Bough; and that big one is the August Sweeting; and out there are the
three August Pippins. All those away down there toward the road are
Baldwins and Greenings. Those two by the lane wall are None Such trees.
Out there by the corn-field wall are four Sweet Harvey trees and next
below them, two Georgianas. I learned all their names last year. But
this one here by the currant bushes is a Sops-in-wine. Oh, they are so
good! and they get ripe early, too, and so do the August Pippins and the
Harveys and the August Sweetings; they are all nice. Those small trees
just below the barnyard fence are pears, Bartlett pears, luscious ones!
and those vines on the trellises are the Isabella and Concord grapes;
some years grapes don't get ripe up here in Maine; but they did last
year, pretty ripe, in October. Grandfather carried some of them to the
County Fair and lots of the apples; he had over forty different kinds of
fruit on exhibition. We girls went with him and placed the apples and
pears and the grapes on plates, in the Fair building. You will go with
us this year, I suppose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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