Actually, the apples and the man have suffered a similar fate in the years since they journeyed down the Ohio together in Chapman’s double-hulled canoe. Both then had the tang of strangeness about them, and both have long since been sweetened beyond recognition. Figures of tart wildness, both have been thoroughly domesticated—Chapman transformed into a benign Saint Francis of the American frontier, the apple into a blemish-free plastic-red saccharine orb. “Sweetness without dimension” is how one pomologist memorably described the Red Delicious; the same might be said of the Johnny Appleseed
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