286 ANNUAL KEPORT. 



he knows the reason of all these failures and how to avoid them in 

 the future; but let him be ever so well posted, when he comes to 

 open his purse for a new purchase, and contemplate the labor, the 

 u?e of his ground and the possible chances of another failure, here 

 is where he needs the courage, a courage like that of Peter M. 

 Gideon, originator of the Wealthy apple, who, for twenty years, went 

 ragged in the battle for apples, through "frosts and fasts, hard 

 lodging and thin weeds," but said all the while, "I will grow apples 

 or leave the state: and I won't leave the state !" 



Love for trees is perhaps more necessary to success in severe cli- 

 mates than it is in mild ones. Nothing so well keeps up an interest 

 and a watchful care. Trees need more care in Minnesota than in 

 Missouri, though they get none too much of it anywhere. It 

 must be a love akin to that of parents for their children, of a lover 

 for his mistress, a husband for his wife, of friend for friend — a love for 

 their society, for their beauty, their protection from all danger, 

 their help in time of trouble — an enjoyment of their budding and 

 blossoming time, their growth, their fruitage, until and through 

 the autumn when they hang out their crimson, russet and golden 

 banners, vying with all the lop^ely colors of the wooded hills, and 

 onward to shield them from harm during the white-robed period of 

 their winter's rest. A man who will bark a tree in cultivating, if 

 he can avoid it, or who having done it, will not hasten to bind up 

 the wound as he would upon the limb or body of a friend, is not 

 fit to grow apples in Minnesota. If he love not his trees, he is 

 liable to put it off, "time is too valuable, something else I can do 

 will pay better." Pay! a man must feel that nothing else pays so 

 well as to keep himself and his associates out of trouble, and he 

 must have that feeling for his trees. He must feel hurt when they 

 suffer, and guilty when he neglects them. Nothing but love for 

 his trees will give him this feeling. "I would like to look through 

 your orchard," I said to a German farmer several years ago, as I 

 was driving by his house. I had just passed his orchard and noted 

 the clean ground, the smooth healthy look of the trees, their gen- 

 eral thrifty and well kept expression. "Come in, I will show you." 

 '"How nicely your orchard looks," I said, as he was pointing out the 

 different sorts and telling me their names. "Oh, yes," he replied; 

 "''I love mij trees!" The words were few, but such as they were, 

 they gave me, with the man's own expression of countenance and 

 another glance of mine, up and down the rows of his pets, a good 

 long lesson that will never be forgotten. 



