THE HOMES OF SOME OF OUR FRIENDS. 389 



THE HOMES OF SOME OF OUR FRIENDS. 



A. W. LATHAM, SECY. 



It had long- been my wish to visit the homes of our horticultural 

 friends in fruiting time, but no favorable opportunity had occurred 

 until this one I am about to describe. I shall not be tiresomely sta- 

 tistical nor, I fear, uncomfortably accurate in any efforts I may 

 make to give figures, but I hope to set before my readers something 

 like pen pictures of the surroundings of some of these friends which 

 will give you pleasure. It is to me always an added joy when think- 

 ing of a friend to have in my mind a picture of his home and home 

 surroundings, and after that I always know him better and enjoy 

 him more. 



A disagreeably gloomy morning in mid-August last witnessed the 

 departure from Minneapolis, southward bound by rail along the 

 picturesque way which skirts the Mississippi river. Beyond St. Paul 

 the skies brightened a little and began to give promise of a more 

 cheerful day, but they were still lowering when our friends, Wyman 

 Elliot and J. M. Underwood, climbed aboard at Lake City and we were 

 fairly under way to carry out our previously arranged plan. Early 

 noon found us at Minnesota City, a little village six miles the other 

 side of Winona. Here lives our veteran friend and horticultur- 

 ist, O. M. Lord, to whom we gave the hand of greeting and profound 

 fraternal sympathy in the recent loss of the companion of this life 

 during a half century. 



The iron road always seeks the valleys and follows the wa- 

 ter courses, and so here it has followed the usual way, and 

 the track appears and disappears among the bluffy hills and ridges 

 which in this region indicate nearness to the great river. Here in 

 this secluded valley, where the sun rises earlier and sets later than 

 where you live, our friend many years ago made his home. Forty 

 rods east of the railway and a few rods further from the little 

 stream that meanders through this valley, and facing to the 

 south, stands this home, a typical story-and-a-half white farm house 

 with the usual straggling array of barns and outhouses that natur- 

 ally group themselves about an older farm. From the west porch 

 the view at a hundred rods away is limited by a wooded bluff, run- 

 ning up rapidly 200 odd feet. Just across the door yard, in a picket 

 enclosure, is the famous plum grove of many kinds, tenanted then 

 by a solitary but familiar calf which has a liking for strangers^ 

 Very few of these trees were in bearing at the time of our visit, and, 

 indeed, this was true of nearly all his fruit trees, as the warm soil of 

 this narrow valley matures everything at a very early date. While 

 this is mainly a small fruit farm, yet a large variety of apples, in. 

 eluding some valuable seedlings, in the grove back qf the house, at- 

 test the interest taken and successful results attained in the culti- 

 vation of orchard fruits. We were all interested, and friend Elliot 

 enthusiastic, over a cabinet of plum pits arranged by Mr. Lord, 

 which demonstrates that there is such uniformity in their charac- 

 teristics that different varieties can be told absolutely by this 

 method. He has also in preparation a portfolio showing the leaves, 



