Success With Small Fruits | Page 7

of fruits that strayed out of Paradise, and have not yet
lost themselves among the "thorns and thistles." Indeed, modern
skill--the alchemy of our age--has wrought such wonders that Eden is
possible again to all who will take the trouble to form Eden- like tastes
and capacities.
The number who are doing this is increasing every year, The large
demand for literature relating to out-of-door life, horticultural journals,
like the fruits of which they treat, flourishing in regions new and
remote, are proof of this. The business of supplying fruit- trees, plants,
and even flowers, is becoming a vast industry. I have been informed
that one enterprising firm annually spends thousands in advertising
roses only.
But while we welcome the evidences that so many are ceasing to be
bucolic heathen, much observation has shown that the need of further
enlightenment is large indeed. It is depressing to think of the number of
homes about which fruits are conspicuous only by their absence--
homes of every class, from the laborer's cottage and pioneer's cabin to
the suburban palace. Living without books and pictures is only a little
worse than living in the country without fruits and flowers. We must
respect to some extent the old ascetics, who, in obedience to mistaken
ideas of duty, deprived themselves of the good things God provided,
even while we recognize the stupidity of such a course. Little children
are rarely so lacking in sense as to try to please their father by
contemptuously turning away from his best gifts, or by treating them
with indifference. Why do millions live in the country, year after year,
raising weeds and brambles, or a few coarse vegetables, when the
choicest fruits would grow almost as readily? They can plead no
perverted sense of duty.
It is a question hard to answer. Some, perhaps, have the delusion that
fine small fruits are as difficult to raise as orchids. They class them
with hot-house grapes. Others think they need so little attention that

they can stick a few plants in hard, poor ground and leave them to their
fate. One might as well try to raise canary-birds and kittens together as
strawberries and weeds. There is a large class who believe in small
fruits, and know their value. They enjoy them amazingly at a friend's
table, and even buy some when they are cheap., A little greater outlay
and a little intelligent effort would give them an abundant supply from
their own grounds. In a vague way they are aware of this, and reproach
themselves for their negligence, but time passes and there is no change
for the better. Why? I don't know. There are men who rarely kiss their
wives and children. For them the birds sing unheeded and even unheard;
flowers become mere objects, and sunsets suggest only "quitting time."
In theory they believe in all these things. What can be said of them save
that they simply jog on to-day as they did yesterday, ever dimly hoping
at some time or other "to live up to their privileges"? But they usually
go on from bad to worse, until, like their neglected strawberry-beds,
they are "turned under."
In cities not a hundred miles from my farm there are abodes of wealth
with spacious grounds, where, in many instances, scarcely any place is
found for small fruits. "It is cheaper and easier to buy them," it is said.
This is a sorry proof of civilization. There is no economy in the
barbaric splendor of brass buttons and livery, but merely a little trouble
(I doubt about money) is saved on the choicest luxuries of the year. The
idea of going out of their rural paradises to buy half-stale fruit! But this
class is largely at the mercy of the "hired man," or his more
disagreeable development, the pretentious smatterer, who, so far from
possessing the knowledge that the English, Scotch, or German
gardeners acquire in their long, thorough training, is a compound of
ignorance and prejudice. To hide his barrenness of mind he gives his
soul to rare plants, clipped lawns, but stints the family in all things save
his impudence. If he tells his obsequious employers that it is easier and
cheaper to buy their fruit than to raise it, of course there is naught to do
but go to the market and pick up what they can; and yet Dr. Thurber
says, with a vast deal of force, that "the unfortunate people who buy
their fruit do not know what a strawberry is."
In all truth and soberness it is a marvel and a shame that so many sane

people who profess to have passed beyond the habits of the wilderness
will not give the attention required by these unexacting fruits. The man
who has learned to write his