PREFATORY.
The Preface to the first edition of this volume, which follows these few words, will give some idea of the book’s origin. Much of the material is of only passing importance, and is retained now rather from retrospective interest. A considerable addition has been made, however, consisting of articles contributed to Mr. Bonner’s New York Ledger, bearing upon rural affairs, and also an unpublished address upon The Apple. This was delivered at Iona Island, on a fair summer day, when ladies and gentlemen, several score,—editors, pomologists, singers, preachers, poets, and inventors,—gathered under Dr. C. W. Grant’s hospitable trees,—for the house was too small to hold them,—to eat apples and pears, to discuss grapes solid and liquid, and to listen to the venerable poet, Mr. Bryant, to Horace Greeley, to Charles Downing, and to notable songsters, whose warbles put the birds to envious silence,—at any rate, so the compliments ran at the time.
The address had better luck at Iona than its great subject did in Paradise; though it will never give rise to such a literature of results.
H. W. BEECHER.
Brooklyn, February, 1874.