78 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



"How would you like some mutton chops?"' Not a word. They all 

 looked at the floor. 



"How would some fried pork do?" Every man looked at the floor. The 

 look of disgust that came over their faces was quite interesting to me. 



"How would you Uke to have some pears?" "Pears?" "Pears?" 

 They began to look at one another. 



"How would you like to have some grapes?" "Grapes! Grapes!" 



"How would you like to have some watermelon?" Watermelon! Water- 

 melon! You ought to have seen those boys. I said, "All right. Come on." 

 I took them into the dining room. The table was completely covered with 

 great pile of pears, peaches, grapes, and everything I could get, watermelons 

 with the rest. It was in the fall, and frost just beginning to come. And 

 those men just fell to eating; they just laid hold of that fruit and they ate 

 to their fill — as Moses said they might — and not one of them suffered the 

 slightest inconvenience. There was not a man there that did not have 

 looseness of the bowels ; there was not a man there that did not have diarrhoea 

 or dysentery; they were just getting over typhoid fever; they had just barely 

 survived terrible attacks of dysentery and diarrhoea, every one of them. 

 They just ate all the fruit they wanted, and they got well from that minute 

 right straight on, although some of them were considered most desperate 

 cases whom it was hardly possible to save. There was only one out of the 

 whole number that died, and he was so nearly dead when he got there that 

 he could hardly raise his head. He died a day or two afterwards, and the 

 rest of them recovered, and not the slightest ill effects from those fruits. 



I mention this to you as an illustration of the terrible damage that comes 

 from the reckless and absurd notion that this food which is one of Heaven's 

 greatest blessings to man, one of the very choicest and most delicate things 

 God has given to us, that this food is dangerous, poisonous. It is simply 

 one of the devil's tricks to keep us away from the good things that belong 

 to us. I hope this error may disappear. One thing that is going to help 

 about it very much, is a splendid publication recently issued by the United 

 States Government, entitled "Farmers' Bulletin No. 293, U. S. Department 

 of Agriculture," and the subject is the same as mine, "Use of Fruit as Food," 

 by C. F. Langworthy. I wonder how many people here have it? Every 

 one of you is entitled to it. All you have got to do is to send down there 

 and get it, or have your congressman send it to you. It is quite a large 

 pamphlet, as you will see, and it is just brim full of the most splendid things; 

 tells you all about fruit; tells you just what I am telling you, that fruit is 

 good to eat; and it prepares a table giving the caloric value of the food value 

 of fruits. 



If you are going to buy fuel, you know basswood is not worth so much 

 as oak, and oak not as much as hickory; hard hickor}^ has more fuel value, 

 more heat in it, than pine, a whole lot. When you come to investigate 

 these things, you will find some kinds of fruits are much more valuable 

 than others. 



I was at a banquet last night. The first thing on the bill of fare was oysters. 

 I did not want any. Why? In the first place, the oyster is a scavenger; 

 his business is to lick off the slime at the bottom of the sea; you catch the 

 oyster down there; he has got his broad lips open and licking off the slime; 

 he likes that slime because it is full of germs. A drop of oyster juice is like 

 a*silver mine in Colorado: "It has millions in it." I am not mentioning 

 this to discount the banquet last night, for it was a splendid banquet — for 

 those that like that kind of banquet. It was very fine of its kind. But 



