LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF PIONEER FRUIT GROWING. 38 1 



oak would hardly live growing and bearing fruit. Such an object 

 lesson as this I think should encourage apple seed planting, and 

 among the millions that would grow there would probably be an 

 apple that would beat the one that will get the $1,000 premium 

 offered by the Minnesota Horticultural Society. 



Mr. E. R. Pond: I have here samples (exhibiting) of the apples 

 grown on the first tree planted in Minnesota. They are a sweet 

 apple. It was perhaps late in May or the first of June when my 

 father arrived there, so they may not have been planted until the 

 following spring. 



The President : Is it a good sized tree ? 



Mr. Pond : This tree we have now is a small tree, probably 

 only two inches in diameter and eight to ten feet high. It is a sprout 

 from the old tree and was set out about ten years ago. 



IMPROVEMENT OF SCHOOL GROUNDS. 



FRANK H. NUTTER, MINNEAPOLIS. 



The "school question" has been a prominent one for years in the 

 pulpit, on the platform and in the press, but it is only recently that 

 we have heard it referred to in a meeting like this ; doubtless natural 

 development is being carried out here as it has been in the case of 

 our cemeteries, parks and home grounds, and it is a matter of con- 

 gratulation that it is tarrying so little behind these other interests 

 in the journey towards the ideal. 



The first "district schoolhouse" which I can recall was a small, 

 unattractive building at the intersection of two roads in the New 

 Hampshire hills. Yard there was none ; close at hand a big pile of 

 stones picked from the adjoining fields afforded a convenient perch 

 for the quieter scholars at recess time; the carvings of the interior 

 were the work of the boys' jackknives, the colorings and decorations 

 of the exterior the work of the elements. 



A disagreeable picture you say ? Not entirely so. In the summer the 

 young birches, sweet ferns, wild rasperries and blackberries of the 

 roadside thickets concealed much of the roughness of the surround- 

 ings, while a little brook trickling under the roadway was a center 

 of attraction to the little ones. Even in winter the foliage of the 

 young pines added a touch of life to the picture. 



Twenty years later another district schoolhouse came under 

 my notice. A party of engineers, engaged in setting the first stakes 

 for what is now one of the thriving young cities of our state, were 

 tramping back to headquarters through several inches of fresh snow 

 and in darkness that confused all landmarks, so that dispute arose 

 as to the direction of home. At last a building loomed up near 

 at hand, which proved to be the schoolhouse. I can assure you it 



