WINTER MEETING AT LEBANON. 205 



PROFIT AND LOSS IN ORCHARDING. 



DAN CARPENTER. 



The program makers, like a veritable Handy Andy, have the knack 

 of doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, yet it can hardly be hoped, 

 3,8 in Handy Andy's case, that any benefit will be derived by any one 

 from their blunder in this instance, for certainly they have assigned the 

 wrong man to the subject, or the wrong subject to the man. 



But desiring always to be subservient to the will of superiors, the 

 attempt is made and the failure must be charged to the program 

 makers. 



The subject, " Profit and Loss in Orcharding," assigned me for a 

 paper, presents itself in various phases to different minds. 



To most minds all profit consists in the accumulation of dollars, 

 and all loss in the failure to increase them above the cost of obtaining. 

 To some, however, profit consists of personal improvement, intellectual 

 advancement and moral development, regardless of increase of wealth 

 and loss in the failure to accomplish some of these desired ends, even 

 though wealth may be gathered in heaps and dollars piled up in pyra- 

 mids as high as those of Egypt. 



This paper will endeavor to present both phases of the subject, 

 leaving the choice of the most desirable with my fellow travelers to 

 the land of ambrosial fruits and perennial flowers. 



In 1866 I planted an orchard of apple, pear, peach and cherry 

 trees, a small vineyard with small fruits for family use, hoping at fruit- 

 age to retire from mercantile life, and beneath my own vine and fig tree 

 (the fig tree, not figurative but real, I succeeded in bringing into fruit- 

 age in open air), enjoy the quiet and comfort of a rural life, devoted to 

 experiment and development in fruit-growing. But the best laid plaus 

 u o' mice and men gang aft' aglee." 



The severe contraction of the currency by the banks, and the with- 

 drawal of the " circulating medium " by Secretary McCulloch and his 

 successors for thirteen years prior and preparatory to "resumption of 

 specie payments," bursted the bubble of hope I had been blowing, and 

 with thousands of others, 1 found that redoubled energy, vigilance, 

 economy, industry, labor and toil were necessary to avoid the crashing 

 force of the withdrawal of over a thousand millions of the nation's 

 money from the channels of commerce. 





