Success With Small Fruits | Page 4

man and the world he trampled
on rather than cultivated, there was a class who in their dreams and
futile efforts became the unconscious prophets of our own time--the
Alchemists. For centuries they believed they could transmute base
metals into gold and silver. Modern knowledge enables us to work
changes more beneficial than the alchemist ever dreamed of; and it
shall be my aim to make one of these secrets as open as the sunlight in
the fields and gardens wherein the beautiful mutations occur. To turn
iron into gold would be a prosaic, barren process that might result in
trouble to all concerned, but to transform heavy black earth and insipid
rain-water into edible rubies, with celestial perfume and ambrosial
flavor, is indeed an art that appeals to the entire race, and enlists that
imperious nether organ which has never lost its power over heart or
brain. As long, therefore, as humanity's mouth waters at the thought of
morsels more delicious even than "sin under the tongue," I am sure of
an audience when I discourse of strawberries and their kindred fruits. If
apples led to the loss of Paradise, the reader will find described
hereafter a list of fruits that will enable him to reconstruct a bit of Eden,
even if the "Fall and all our woe" have left him possessed of merely a
city yard. But land in the country, breezy hillsides, moist, sheltered
valleys, sunny plains-- what opportunities for the divinest form of
alchemy are here afforded to hundreds of thousands!
Many think of the soil only in connection with the sad words of the
burial service--"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes." Let us, while we may,
gain more cheerful associations with our kindred dust. For a time it can
be earth to strawberry blossoms, ashes to bright red berries, and their

color will get into our cheeks and their rich subacid juices into our
insipid lives, constituting a mental, moral, and physical alterative that
will so change us that we shall believe in evolution and imagine
ourselves fit for a higher state of existence. One may delve in the earth
so long as to lose all dread at the thought of sleeping in it at last; and
the luscious fruits and bright-hued flowers that come out of it, in a way
no one can find out, may teach our own resurrection more effectually
than do the learned theologians.
We naturally feel that some good saints in the flesh, even though they
are "pillars of the church," need more than a "sea-change" before they
can become proper citizens of "Jerusalem the Golden;" but having
compared a raspberry bush, bending gracefully under its delicious
burden, with the insignificant seed from which it grew, we are ready to
believe in all possibilities of good. Thus we may gather more than
berries from our fruit-gardens. Nature hangs thoughts and suggestions
on every spray, and blackberry bushes give many an impressive scratch
to teach us that good and evil are very near together in this world, and
that we must be careful, while seeking the one, to avoid the other. In
every field of life those who seek the fruit too rashly are almost sure to
have a thorny experience, and to learn that prickings are provided for
those who have no consciences.
He who sees in the world around him only what strikes the eye lives in
a poor, half-furnished house; he who obtains from his garden only what
he can eat gathers but a meagre crop. If I find something besides berries
on my vines, I shall pick it if so inclined. The scientific treatise, or
precise manual, may break up the well-rooted friendship of plants, and
compel them to take leave of each other, after the arbitrary fashion of
methodical minds, but I must talk about them very much as nature has
taught me, since, in respect to out-of-door life, my education was
acquired almost wholly in the old-fashioned way at the venerable
"dame's school." Nay more, I claim that I have warrant to gather from
my horticultural texts more than can be sent to the dining table or
commission merchant. Such a matter-of-fact plant as the currant makes
some attempt to embroider its humble life with ornament, and in April
the bees will prove to you that honey may be gathered even from a

gooseberry bush. Indeed, gooseberries are like some ladies that we all
know. In their young and blossoming days they are sweet and
pink-hued, and then they grow acid, pale, and hard; but in the ripening
experience of later life they become sweet again and tender. Before
they drop from their places the bees come back for honey, and find it.
In brief, I propose to take the reader on a quiet and extended ramble