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Johnny Appleseed fixed his rapt eyes on the little object in my fingers. "Mebby you are the one appointed to open and read what is sealed!" "No, I'm not! How could my key fit a padlocked book that belonged to prisoners killed by the Indians?" He held it out to me and I took hold of the padlock. It was a small steel padlock, and the hole looked dangerously the size of my key. "I can't do it!"
Is was a land of promise that they came to. The virgin soil bore riotously. There were fruit-trees in the forest that Johnny Appleseed had planted on his journeyings. The young husband could stand in his dooryard and kill wild turkeys with his rifle. They fed to loathing on venison, and squirrels, and all manner of game, and once in a great while they had the luxury of salt pork.
In cabins that cannot be reached by automobile and deserts that cannot be crossed by boulevards, the John the Baptists, the hermits and the prophets can strengthen their souls. Here are lonely places as sweet for the spirit as was little old New Salem, Illinois, one hundred years ago, or the wilderness in which walked Johnny Appleseed.
"If she wrote and sent a letter she expected it would be received." "When I said a letter I meant what is called a journal: the writing down of what happens daily. Johnny Appleseed got the book from an Indian. That is how it was sent to me." "If you read it you will want to drop everything else and go to find her." This was the truth, for I was not under military law. "Where is the book?"
One second she sat very still, then a dancing light leaped sparkling into her eyes; a flock of dimples chased each other around her lips like swallows circling their homing place at twilight. "What about that wonderful pie?" she asked me. I ran to the nearest fence corner, and laid the shingle on the gnarled roots of a Johnny Appleseed apple tree.
Open-mouthed or stern-jawed, according to temperament, the young pioneers listened to stories about Tecumseh, and surmises on the enemy's march, and the likelihood of a night attack. "Tippecanoe was fought at four o'clock in the morning," said a soldier. "I was there," spoke out Johnny Appleseed. No other man could say as much.
It proved to be from the writings of one Emanuel Swedenborg. With a smile which seemed to lessen the size of his face and concentrate its expression to a shining point, Johnny Appleseed slid his leather bags along the rope girdle, and searched them, one after the other. I thought he wanted me to notice his apple seeds, and inquired how many kinds he carried.
"What are their names?" "Their names I cannot see." "Well, suppose we call them Louis and Lazarre." His eyes sparkled. "You are a white man," he pronounced. "By that I mean you are not stained with many vile sins." "I hadn't an equal chance with other men. I lost nine years." "Mebby," hazarded Johnny Appleseed cautiously, "you are the one appointed to open and read what is sealed."
The curious story of "Johnny Appleseed" is given us by historians, who tell us of this semi-religious enthusiast who roamed barefoot over the wilds of Ohio and Indiana a century ago, sowing apple-seeds in the scattered clearings, and living to see the trees bearing fruit, selections from which probably are interwoven among the varieties of today.
Only let him come in person, not in film, till we hear him speak, and consider his suggestions, and make sure he has eaten of the mystic Amaranth Apples of Johnny Appleseed. Let us assume, friendly reader, that it is eight o'clock in the evening when you make yourself comfortable in your den, to peruse this chapter. I want to tell you about the Action Film, the simplest, the type most often seen.
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