22 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



S. Sam! Sam! is called. So, smiling, smirking, simple Samuel steps 

 softly, smacks soundly sweet, simpering Sue; she squeakily, squawking, 

 squarely squirming squeamishly. Were you ever there? 



Soon the ten bushels are pared and strung, enough for nearly a barrel of 

 dried apples; the dishes are cleared away, a big pan of doughnuts is 

 passed around, and then an hour is spent at "snap-and-ketch-'em", "hold 

 fast all I give you", ''marching to Quebec", "crossing London bridge", 

 and occasionally "going to Rome". Should you visit that home on the 

 morrow, or for a week, you would see those strings of quarters hanging 

 in clusters near the chimney and the windows, dependent from poles 

 overhead — fragrant festoons, foreshadowing full family feasts for the 

 future. Weeks afterward, the five-pail brass kettle holds sway in the 

 chimney corner two nights and a day, soaking a peck of the dried fruit one 

 night, cooking it slowl}' next day, cooling off next night; and this 

 being well seasoned with boiled sweet-apple cider, furnishes sauce for 

 the table and for pies for a fortnight. 



Other fruits, peaches, plums, cherries, were either dried on tins near the 

 fire or in the tin bake-oven before it ; or they w^ere "done up" in preserves 

 with sugar, "pound for pound." 'Twas rich sauce and good. But what 

 days did our mothers spend cooking over the sweets to keep them from 

 souring, or in looking over each piece of the barrel or two of dried fruit, 

 several times the next summer, to banish intruding insects! 



Good bye, old-fashion paring bee! Gone, gone with the threshing flail 

 and the flax wheel. 



Fifty years ago no human being had ever tasted canned fruits or flesh. 

 Dried fruits and salted meats constituted the only variation from the 

 local products, and the only supply, out of season, on land and sea the 

 world over. Some silent peaceful revolution has changed those methods 

 in every civilized household throughout the world. Scurvy, that scourge 

 of the ocean, is nearly driven from the face of the earth. Now, the 

 arctic explorer, climbing for the pole, breakfasts on fresh lamb from 

 Chicago, dines on sweet corn from Maine, and sups on green peas from 

 Hart. The missionary in far off India varies his fare of boiled rice with 

 salmon from the Columbia or peaches from Michigan. The dweller in 

 Sahara may occasionally forego his dried locusts and partake of plums 

 fit)m Oceana. 



Do any of you remember that picture, in the old Oluey's geography, 

 of a pigtailed celestial bearing a long bamboo on his shoulder, from which 

 dangled by strings tied to their tails, many quadrupeds, and underscored 

 "Chinaman i)eddling rats and puppies for pies?" 



Now, whether that picture ever prevented my volunteering to go as 

 consul or ambassador to China, I can not say; but I do think that if the 

 next administration teases me to go, that I shall take for pie timber a 

 plentiful supply of lake shore fruits. 



Away back in the forties there lived in the southwestern part of the 

 towm of Macedon, A\'ayne county, N. Y., near Mud Creek, a queer, quaint, 

 quiet Quaker by the name of William R. Smith; queer, because he took to 

 growing nursery stock, and trying new ideas, and he was an Abolitionist; 

 quaint, because of his queer name, and quiet because he was a Quaker. 

 My father then lived two miles from him. About 1845 or '6, Mr. Smith 

 conceived the idea of preserving fruits for future use in a fresh state. 



