The shining of the street lamps was reflected on the polished skin of our fruit as we went our way.  As we held it in our arms it glowed like a huge ruby.  We passed a blind man selling pencils, and thought of giving it to him.  Then we reflected that a blind man would lose half the pleasure of the adventure because he couldn’t see the colors.  We bought a pencil instead.  Still running on Caliph, you see.

In our excitement we did what we always do in moments of stress—­went into a restaurant and ordered a piece of hot mince pie.  Then we remembered that we had just dined.  Never mind, we sat there and contemplated the apple as it lay ruddily on the white porcelain tabletop.  Should we give it to the waitress?  No, because apples were a commonplace to her.  The window of the restaurant held a great pyramid of beauties.  To her, an apple was merely something to be eaten, instead of the symbol of a grand escapade.  Instead, we gave her a little medallion of a buffalo that happened to be in our pocket.

Already the best possible destination for that apple had come to our mind.  Hastening zealously up a long flight of stairs in a certain large building we went to a corner where sits a friend of ours, a night watchman.  Under a drop light he sits through long and tedious hours, beguiling his vigil with a book.  He is a great reader.  He eats books alive.  Lately he has become much absorbed in Saint Francis of Assisi, and was deep in the “Little Flowers” when we found him.

“We’ve brought you something,” we said, and held the apple where the electric light brought out all its brilliance.

He was delighted and his gentle elderly face shone with awe at the amazing vividness of the fruit.

“I tell you what I’ll do,” he said.  “That apple’s much too fine for me.  I’ll take it home to the wife.”

Of course his wife will say the same thing.  She will be embarrassed by the surpassing splendor of that apple and will give it to some friend of hers whom she thinks more worthy than herself.  And that friend will give it to some one else, and so it will go rolling on down the ages, passing from hand to hand, conferring delight, and never getting eaten.  Ultimately some one, trying to think of a recipient really worthy of its deliciousness, will give it to Mr. and Mrs. Caliph.  And they, blessed innocents, will innocently exclaim, “Why we never saw such a magnificent apple in all our lives.”

And it will be true, for by that time the apple will gleam with an unearthly brightness, enhanced and burnished by all the kind thoughts that have surrounded it for so long.

As we walked homeward under a frosty sparkle of sky we mused upon all the different kinds of apples we have encountered.  There are big glossy green apples and bright red apples and yellow apples and also that particularly delicious kind (whose name we forget) that is the palest possible cream color—­almost white.  We have seen apples of strange shapes, something like a pear (sheepnoses, they call them), and the Maiden Blush apples with their delicate shading of yellow and debutante pink.  And what a poetry in the names—­Winesap, Pippin, Northern Spy, Baldwin, Ben Davis, York Imperial, Wolf River, Jonathan, Smokehouse, Summer Rambo, Rome Beauty, Golden Grimes, Shenango Strawberry, Benoni!