TWENTIETH ANNUAL MEETING. i6i 



a young- man, and there is a sort of a sentiment about it. My 

 father owned the place, and my grandfather owned the place 

 before him, and my great-grandfather before him, and no man 

 knows how old the house is, an old stone mansion. We have 

 got its history back a hundred and forty years, and in some 

 way we feel attached to those old places in Virginia. I don't 

 know of a single farm for sale. If any of you gentlemen 

 should rise in your places and ask me the price of land, I 

 couldn't tell you. If any of you should ask me if I could tell 

 you where you could buy an orchard in Frederick county, Vir- 

 ginia, I should have to say to you : "There is none for sale." 

 Almost every part of the country is held by people who have 

 lived there two generations, and there is a sentiment about it 

 that you feel attached to. 



Now the old orchard that I spoke of, which I helped to 

 plant, has not been well cared for. I expect if some of you 

 gentlemen should happen in that old Pippin orchard, you 

 would think you were back in some of the neglected orchards 

 in Connecticut. We didn't know much about fruit growing 

 when we planted that orchard, at least my father didn't, and 

 we tried almost every way we knew how to kill those trees, 

 and I sometimes think we tried more than 57 varieties of 

 ways to kill them. And I sometimes wonder if we fruit- 

 growers are not making a mistake in not pausing to think 

 more about what we are doing and how much money we are 

 making, and urging others to go into the fruit business, but 

 I don't feel alarmed, because I feel pretty sure you are going 

 to make the same mistake I made, notwithstanding all my 

 advice. 



I expected to buy the cheapest trees, and I supjxtse all of 

 you who are going to plant trees next spring are going to bu\' 

 the cheapest trees you can get, you are not g'oing to get the 

 best, you get the cheapest. That is what I did. I expect when 

 you plant those trees you will have to get some crops off that 

 land as I did. Perhaps if you are corn growers you will put 

 corn in the orchard, and perhaps if you are hay growers you 

 will put some hay in the orchard; anyway, you try to get 



