STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 311 



EECOLLBCTIONS OF FIFTY YEAES AMONG OUK 

 SMALL FRUITS. 



By J. M. Smith, Green Bay, Wis. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 



Sixty years ago I was a pale, busy, white -liaired little boy, 

 spending most of iny time with my grandparents. My grand- 

 mother, a kind-hearted active old lady, had the entire charge of 

 the garden. She was a dear lover of fruit of all the varieties 

 grown in our climate. This love of fruit continued to her ex- 

 treme old age. After she had completed her hundredth year, 

 she would still go out and gather some of the choicest varieties 

 and keep them in her room to distribute among her friends and 

 relations. It was in her garden that I saw the first and only 

 strawberry bed that I ever saw until I had grown to manhood. 

 It was a little plot perhaj^s twelve feet square, of, as I now sup- 

 pose, some of the Alpine varieties. They were white, and 

 would with us be considered very small and very poor berries. 

 The largest picking that I remember ever seeing was about one 

 pint that my grandmother picked to give an extra treat to some 

 friends who were visiting her. In short, strawberries at that 

 early day were a luxury only to be enjoyed by the favored few, 

 and by them only on extra occasions, and in small quantities. 



SCARCITY OF STRAWBERRIES. 



In the days of my childhood it never occurred to me, even in 

 my wildest dreams, that I should live to see the day when straw- 

 berries would be as plenty and as free on my table as potatoes 

 or bread and butter. If some good angel had appeared to me 

 at that time and told me that I should at some time in the future 

 be transported to Heaven in Elijah's fiery chariot, and another 

 that I should some time have strawberries in the greatest abund- 

 ance, not only for myself and friends, but thousands of bushels 

 to sell, I should have believed one just as readily as the other; 

 but if I had been called on to choose between them, I should 

 certainly have taken the strawberry angel as my chosen friend. 



My early home being only about twenty-five miles from ll^ew 

 York City, I was often there when a boy, as nearly all the pro- 

 duce of my father's farm was carried there for sale. !N^ew York 

 City was then the one and only one great market metropolis 



