Success With Small Fruits | Page 8

name can learn to raise them successfully.
The ladies who know how to keep their homes neat through the labors
of their "intelligent help," could also learn to manage a fruit garden
even though employing the stupidest oaf that ever blundered through
life. The method is this: First learn how yourself, and then let your
laborer thoroughly understand that he gets no wages unless he does as
he is told. In the complicated details of a plant farm there is much that
needs constant supervision, but the work of an ordinary fruit garden is,
in the main, straightforward and simple. The expenditure of a little time,
money, and, above all things, of seasonable labor, is so abundantly
repaid that one would think that bare self-interest would solve
invariably the simple problem of supply.
As mere articles of food, these fruits are exceedingly valuable. They are
capable of sustaining severe and continued labor. For months together
we might become almost independent of butcher and doctor if we made
our places produce all that nature permits. Purple grapes will hide
unsightly buildings; currants, raspberries, and blackberries will grow
along the fences and in the corners that are left to burdocks and
brambles. I have known invalids to improve from the first day that
berries were brought to the table, and thousands would exchange their
sallow complexions, sick headaches, and general ennui for a breezy
interest in life and its abounding pleasures, if they would only take
nature's palpable hint, and enjoy the seasonable food she provides.
Belles can find better cosmetics in the fruit garden than on their toilet
tables, and she who paints her cheeks with the pure, healthful blood
that is made from nature's choicest gifts, and the exercise of gathering
them, can give her lover a kiss that will make him wish for another.
The famous Dr. Hosack, of New York City, who attended Alexander
Hamilton after he received his fatal wound from Burr, was an
enthusiast on the subject of fruits. It was his custom to terminate his
spring course of lectures with a strawberry festival. "I must let the class
see," he said, "that we are practical as well as theoretical. Linnaeus
cured his gout and protracted his life by eating strawberries."

"They are a dear article," a friend remarked, "to gratify the appetites of
so many."
"Yes, indeed," replied the doctor, "but from our present mode of culture
they will become cheap."
It is hard to realize how scarce this fruit was sixty or seventy years ago,
but the prediction of the sagacious physician has been verified even
beyond his imagination. Strawberries are raised almost as abundantly
as potatoes, and for a month or more can be eaten as a cheap and
wholesome food by all classes, even the poorest. By a proper selection
of varieties we, in our home, feast upon them six weeks together, and
so might the majority of those whose happy lot is cast in the country.
The small area of a city yard planted with a few choice kinds will often
yield surprising returns under sensible culture.
If we cultivate these beautiful and delicious fruits we always have the
power of giving pleasure to others, and he's a churl and she a pale
reflection of Xantippe who does not covet this power. The faces of our
guests brighten as they snuff from afar the delicate aroma. Our vines
can furnish gifts that our friends will ever welcome; and by means of
their products we can pay homage to genius that will be far more
grateful than commonplace compliments. I have seen a letter from the
Hon. Wm. C. Bryant, which is a rich return for the few strawberries
that were sent to him, and the thought that they gave him pleasure gives
the donor far more. They are a gift that one can bestow and another
take without involving any compromise on either side, since they
belong to the same category as smiles, kind words, and the universal
freemasonry of friendship. Faces grow radiant over a basket of fruit or
flowers that would darken with anger at other gifts.
If, in the circle of our acquaintance, there are those shut up to the
weariness and heavy atmosphere of a sick-room, in no way can we send
a ray of sunlight athwart their pallid faces more effectually than by
placing a basket of fragrant fruit on the table beside them. Even though
the physician may render it "forbidden fruit," their eyes will feast upon
it, and the aroma will teach them that the world is not passing on,
unheeding and uncaring whether they live or die.

The Fruit and Flower Mission of New York is engaged in a beautiful
and most useful charity. Into tenement-houses and the hot close wards
of city hospitals, true