Success With Small Fruits | Page 9

and pure. For a moment, at least, and perhaps forever, they may lead stained and debased creatures to turn their faces heavenward. There are little suffering children also in the hospitals; there are exiles from country homes and country life in the city who have been swept down not by evil but the dark tides of disaster, poverty, and disease, and to such it is a privilege as well as a pleasure to send gifts that will tend to revive hope and courage. That we may often avail ourselves of these gracious opportunities of giving the equivalent of a "cup of cold water," we should plant fruits and flowers in abundance.
One of the sad features of our time is the tendency of young people to leave their country homes. And too often one does not need to look far for the reason. Life at the farm-house sinks into deep ruts, and becomes weary plodding. There are too many "one-ideaed" farmers and farms. It is corn, potatoes, wheat, butter, or milk. The staple production absorbs all thought and everything else is neglected. Nature demands that young people should have variety, and furnishes it in abundance. The stolid farmer too often ignores nature and the cravings of youth, and insists on the heavy monotonous work of his specialty, early and late, the year around, and then wonders why in his declining years there are no strong young hands to lighten his toil. The boy who might have lived a sturdy, healthful, independent life among his native hills is a bleached and sallow youth measuring ribbons and calicoes behind a city counter. The girl who might have been the mistress of a tree-shadowed country house disappears under much darker shadows in town. But for their early home life, so meagre and devoid of interest, they might have breathed pure air all their days.
Not the least among the means of making a home attractive would be a well-maintained fruit garden. The heart and the stomach have been found nearer together by the metaphysicians than the physiologists, and if the "house-mother," as the Germans say, beamed often at her children over a great dish of berries flanked by a pitcher of unskimmed milk, not only good blood and good feeling would be developed, but something that the poets call "early ties."
There is one form of gambling or speculation that, within proper limits, is entirely innocent and healthful--the raising of new seedling fruits and the testing of new varieties. In these pursuits the elements of chance, skill, and judgment enter so evenly that they are an unfailing source of pleasurable excitement. The catalogues of plant, tree, and seed dealers abound in novelties. The majority of them cannot endure the test of being grown by the side of our well- known standard kinds, but now and then an exceedingly valuable variety, remarkable for certain qualities or peculiarly adapted to special localities and uses, is developed. There is not only an unfailing pleasure in making these discoveries, but often a large profit. If, three or four years ago, a country boy had bought a dozen Sharpless strawberry plants, and propagated from them, he might now obtain several hundred dollars from their increased numbers. Time only can show whether this novelty will become a standard variety, but at present the plants are in great demand.
The young people of a country home may become deeply interested in originating new seedlings. A thousand strawberry seeds will produce a thousand new kinds, and, although the prospects are that none of them will equal those now in favor, something very fine and superior may be obtained. Be this as it may, if these simple natural interests prevent boys and girls from being drawn into the maelstrom of city life until character is formed, each plant will have a value beyond silver or gold.
One of the supreme rewards of human endeavor is a true home, and surely it is as stupid as it is wrong to neglect some of the simplest and yet most effectual means of securing this crown of earthly life. A home is the product of many and varied causes, but I have yet to see the man who will deny that delicious small fruits for eight months of the year, and the richer pleasure even of cultivating and gathering them, may become one of the chief contributions to this result. I use the words "eight months" advisedly, for even now, January 29, we are enjoying grapes that were buried in the ground last October. I suppose my children are very material and unlike the good little people who do not live long, but they place a white mark against the days on which we unearth a jar of grapes.
CHAPTER III
SMALL FRUIT FARMING AND ITS PROFITS
A farm without a fruit garden