Apple Orchards. 349 



pears and secured such good prices that I wished all my trees were pear 

 trees. But a few years later the pear trees all blighted, and perhaps next 

 year my friend may have no peaches. 



What we must do is to plod along with the best knowledge we can 

 obtain each year, and profit by it, do the best we can, every duty and 

 every work thoroughly and the will to do will make the success a sure one. 



In spite of the wonderful success of special crops at certain times it 

 is not wise to go too largely into any one thing exclusively, because if a 

 failure comes it will be our all that fails. Better have the will to do a 

 little of all things that can be done well and without conflict. All kinds 

 of small fruits that succeed well and -svill give employment the whole 

 year round seems to be the safest and sure one to success. If you have 

 the will to do you need not fail. 



I wonder when this subject comes to me, what we will do, if we are 

 as slow to learn of this change of times, and seasons, and customs, and 

 business, as were the people here at the close of the war. I wonder if 

 we begin to understand that we must adapt ourselves to this new order 

 of things, and do twice the amount of work for one-half the pay. If not, 

 then we fail to realize the questions, and times, and demands that are 

 staring us in the face. 



When I located at Westport, over twenty-five years ago, there came 

 to my grounds every day an old gentleman (riding upon his little pony), 

 of the times, and customs, and manners, and business of before the war. 

 He looked on in disgust at my planting berries, and vines, and trees, and 

 evergreens, and his continual advice to me was that "you will never make 

 a cent out of all this work and nonsense. I have been here forty years 

 cutting down just such things as you are planting. Go and raise hogs 

 and mules, and cattle and corn." He never came to realize, to the day of 

 liis death, that it was a new era of things, that the old times had passed 

 away, never more to return. He died mourning the good old times, and 

 was continually repeating that town, and country, and people were going 

 to destruction as fast as possible.. 



So, I think, when we hear the complaints and fault-finding, and 

 recurrence to old times, and old prices, and old profits, and old successes, 

 if we are not as blind to the changes of our times at the close of the war 

 in many parts of our state. 



