INTRODUCTION. IV 



pies in copious abundance can be produced on dwarf trees 

 in four or five years, and on standards in six to ten years. 

 A well-balanced brain and a skillful hand will not fail to 

 produce fine fruit. 



We have in inind an old farmer in Ohio who felt prompt- 

 ed, when a young man, to plant an orchard ; but he had im- 

 bibed the erroneous notion that the man who plants apple- 

 trees seldom lives to partake of the fruit. When at the 

 age of forty, fifty, sixty, and at seventy, he looked back 

 with regret that he did not plant an orchard when he was 

 a young man. As he passed the age of threescore-and-ten, 

 he resolved to plant an orchard; and the trees came into 

 full bearing so soon that he lived to eat the luscious fruit 

 of his labor for several years, and to get drunk on the cider 

 made from the apples of those trees which were planted at 

 such a late period, in his life. Apple-trees, like our chil- 

 dren, will grow up so quickly that we are surprised to con- 

 template how soon they are filled with fruit. If one-half 

 the money that is now expended by the laboring classes for 

 tobacco and intoxicating beverages, the pernicious influen- 

 ces of which fill the land with crime, and spread unhappiness 

 and desolation around the fireside, were employed to culti- 

 vate apple-trees, or to purchase fruit, many apothecary 

 shops would be closed at once for lack of patronage ; quacks 

 and doctors would be obliged to seek other employment; 

 and unhappy homes would be changed to places of delight. 

 A small fruit-orchard is far more valuable, for any family, 

 than bonds, mortgages, or money at legal interest. 



