MEN WHO HAVE SUCCEEDED-V 



J. H. HALE 



THE EXTRAORDINARY PERSONAL STORY OF THE MAN WHO 

 FIRST PLANTED LARGE PEACH ORCHARDS IN CONNECT- 

 ICUT AND GEORGIA, AND WHOSE WORK HAS BEEN AN 

 IMPULSE TO PEACH-GROWING THROUGHOUT THE COUN- 

 TRY, AS TOLD BY HIMSELF IN "THE WORLD'S WORK " 



BORN and reared on a little Connecti- 

 cut farm, with a love of fruits 

 inherited from ancestors on both 

 sides, I have among my earliest recol- 

 lections the seedling peach trees along 

 the fence row. The little Red Rare- 

 ripe peaches -that clustered on these bushy 

 old trees every September were beautiful as 



Fig. 2362. J. H. Hale. 



a Crimson Rambler rose to-day. One old 

 tree, more sturdy than the rest, and fruiting 

 every year, strongly attracted me, especially 

 after I had learned that it was over seventy 

 years old. If a tree could fruit like that 

 under such conditions, what might not be 

 hoped for with better varieties and better 

 culture ? 



My father died in early boyhood, and 

 mother and children were kent hustling to 

 get a living and keep up the interest on the 



mortgage. A shovel, a spade, and a little 

 old hand-cart were our only implements. 

 The question of how to start a peach orch- 

 ard had to give way to the more pressing 

 question of how to get enough to eat from 

 day to day. At twelve years of age I went 

 to work by the month for a neighboring 

 farmer, and one September day, cutting 

 cornstalks near the beautiful valley of the 

 Connecticut, I came across a seedling peach 

 tree, right there in the corn field, loaded 

 down with ripening fruit ; rosy red peaches, 

 sweet and delicious. Tired and exhausted 

 from the heavy work of handling the corn- 

 stalks, I sat a long time under the tree, eat- 

 ing peaches and dreaming of the peach orch- 

 ard I would have if ever 1 got money enough 

 to buy the trees ; and I believe the joy in the 

 thought put such life into me that the extra 

 work I did that afternoon more than made 

 up for the time lost under the peach tree. 



Continuing to work out by the month on 

 farms, the fall I was fifteen found me with 

 nearly one hundred dollars in cash. The 

 winter following my last at school, I had 

 been reading everything I could get on hor- 

 ticulture, and by spring I was ready to in- 

 vest my cash in fruit trees and plants. As 

 quick returns must be had, the start was 

 made with strawberries and raspberries. 

 Some cash came in the following June, and 

 then the quarter-acre of my beginning was 

 increased to an acre, and later to four or five 

 acres. Keeping in view my peach dream, 

 the first peach orchard of a few hundred 



