It was rumored that nobody's outlying curios in this line
were safe under his eye, and that if you possessed an eccentric tree
for a time, it was fated to close its existence in the keeping of
Alcott. I imagined his slightly stooping, yet tall and well-grown
figure, clothed in black, and with a picturesque straw hat, twining
itself in and out of forest aisles, or craftily returning home with
gargoyle-like stems over his shoulders. The magic of his pursuit was
emphasized by the notorious fact that his handiwork fell together in
the middle, faded like shadows from bronze to hoary pallor; its
longevity was a protracted death. In short, his arbors broke under the
weight of a purpose, as poems become doggerel in the service of a
theorist. Truly, Alcott was completely at the beck of illusion; and he
was always safer alone with it than near the hard uses of adverse
reality. I well remember my astonishment when I was told that he had
set forth to go into the jaws of the Rebellion after Louisa, his
daughter, who had succumbed to typhus fever while nursing the
soldiers. His object was to bring her home; but it was difficult to
believe that he would be successful in entering the field of misery
and uproar. I never expected to see him again. Almost the only point
at which he normally met this world was in his worship of apple-trees.
Here, in his orchard, he was an all-admirable human being and lovely
to observe. As he looked upon the undulating arms or piled the
excellent apples, red and russet, which seemed to shine at his glance,
his figure became supple, his countenance beamed with a ruby and gold
akin to the fruit.
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