ANNUAL MEETING AT LEXINGTON. 139 



LESSON III. 



We inay fertilize, cultivate and prune unwisely. In the years of 

 sweet memory as he who had no home sang of home, so I believe there 

 is no place like home ; married a wife and set up for myself in the 

 midst of an orchard which, though planted, cultivated and brought to 

 fruitage by an English gentleman of taste and culture, had, like Ben. 

 Bolt's mill, gone to decay, and in a few years fell^ tit only to be burned. 

 Longing to sit beneath my own vine and fruit tree, I planted standard 

 and small fruits. In the morning I put forth my strength, and in the 

 evening withheld not my hand. I manured the soil; dug about the 

 roots ; pruned and trimmed early and late. They sprang up like Jonah's 

 gourd vine: glistened in the sunshine; shimmered in the showers; 

 smiled at my caresses ; bloomed in their childhood ; fruited in their 

 youth, and died in my fond embrace when the cup of joy was fud — 

 dashing the cup to the gromui — killed with kindness, pruning knife, 

 manure and high culture. In forty years three orchards have grown, 

 fruited and died on this same land. Lesson — We may enrich the soil 

 too greatly, cultivate too highly and prune too closely — forgetting 

 nature, the great teacher. 



LESSON lY. 



A Commercial Orchard — ^Yhere to buy Trees. — Although unsuccess- 

 ful on a small scale, "fail'* had been erased from my book. I began a 

 commercial orchard of twenty-five acres. I asked the advise of old 

 men with orchards ; read Barry's Fruit Garden ; subscribed for agri- 

 cultural and horticultural papers ; consulted with tree raisers ; examined 

 their catalogues and ordered direct from "reliable" nurserymen at 

 Hermann and got forty Ortley and jS^ewtown labeled Golden Pippin, and 

 I lay before you the fruit on one Early Harvest which you can keep till 

 the next centennial and then use as canister shot in defense of your 

 country. From Bloomington I received Ortley labeled Pennsylvania 

 Red Streak, and that's the kind of Phoenix which arose from the ashes 

 of an overweening confidence, and I have everything on the catalogue 

 but what was ordered. Had the old tanner done a little more tanning, 

 perhaps there might have been one less "reliable" nurseryman. From 

 Pilot Knob I got a mixed lot, which the proprietor made good to the 

 extent of one-fifth the cost. From Parkville T have two varieties, under 

 two different names each, and the lauded Gen. Lyon, a veriest humbug. 



