THE FRUIT garden: 



27 



and reproach themselves for their negHgence, but time passes 

 and there is no change for the better. Why? I don't know. 

 There are men who rarely kiss their wives and children. For 

 them the birds sing unheeded and even unheard ; flowers be- 

 come mere objects, and sunsets suggest only "quitting time." 

 In theory they believe in all these things. What can be said 

 of them save that they simply jog on to-day as they did yes- 

 terday, ever dimly hoping at some time or other " to live up 

 to their privileges." But they usually go on from bad to 

 worse, until, like their neglected strawberry- beds, they are 

 *' turned under." 



In cities not a hundred miles from my farm there are 

 abodes of wealth with spacious grounds, where, in many in- 

 stances, scarcely any place is found for small fruits. " It is 

 cheaper and easier to buy them," it is said. This is a sorry 

 proof of civilization. There is no economy in the barbaric 

 splendor of brass buttons and livery, but merely a little trouble 

 (I doubt about money) is saved on the choicest luxuries of 

 the year. The idea of going out of their rural paradises to 

 buy half-stale fruit ! But this class is largely at the mercy 

 of the ''hired man," or his more disagreeable development, 

 the pretentious smatterer, who, so far from possessing the 

 knowledge that the English, Scotch, or German gardeners 

 acquire in their long, thorough training, is a compound of 

 ignorance and prejudice. To hide his barrenness of mind 

 he gives his soul to rare plants, clipped lawns, but stints 

 the family in all things save his impudence. If he tells 

 his obsequious employers that it is easier and cheaper to 

 buy their fruit than to raise it, of course there is naught 

 to do but go to the market and pick up what they can ; 

 and yet Dr. Thurber says, with a vast deal of force, that 

 " the unfortunate people who buy their fruit do not know 

 what a strawberry is." 



