The Philosopher In The Apple Orchard
It was a charmingly mild and balmy day. The sun shone beyond the orchard, and
the shade was cool inside. A light breeze stirred the boughs of the old apple-tree
under which the philosopher sat. None of these things did the philosopher notice,
unless it might be when the wind blew about the leaves of the large volume on
his knees, and he had to find his place again. Then he would exclaim against the
wind, shuffle the leaves till he got the right page, and settle to his reading. The
book was a treatise on ontology; it was written by another philosopher, a friend of
this philosopher's; it bristled with fallacies, and this philosopher was discovering
them all, and noting them on the fly-leaf at the end. He was not going to review
the book (as some might have thought from his behaviour), or even to answer it
in a work of his own. It was just that he found a pleasure in stripping any poor
fallacy naked and crucifying it. Presently a girl in a white frock came into the
orchard. She picked up an apple, bit it, and found it ripe. Holding it in her hand,
she walked up to where the philosopher sat, and looked at him. He did not stir.
She took a bite out of the apple, munched it, and swallowed it. The philosopher
crucified a fallacy on the fly-leaf. The girl flung the apple away.
"Mr. Jerningham," said she, "are you very busy?"
The philosopher, pencil in hand, looked up.
"No, Miss May," said he, "not very."
"Because I want your opinion."
"In one moment," said the philosopher, apologetically.
He turned back to the fly-leaf and began to nail the last fallacy a little tighter to
the cross. The girl regarded him, first with amused impatience, then with a vexed
frown, finally with a wistful regret. He was so very old for his age, she thought; he
could not be much beyond thirty; his hair was thick and full of waves, his eyes
bright and clear, his complexion not yet divested of all youth's relics.
"Now, Miss May, I'm at your service," said the philosopher, with a lingering look
at his impaled fallacy; and he closed the book, keeping it, however, on his knee.
The girl sat down just opposite to him.
