2S SUCCESS WITH SMALL FRUITS. 



In all truth and soberness, it is a marvel and a shame that 

 so many sane people who profess to have passed beyond the 

 habits of the wilderness will not give the attention required 

 by these unexacting fruits. The man who has learned to 

 write his name can learn to raise them successfully. The 

 ladies who know how to keep their homes neat through the 

 labors of their " intelligent help," could also learn to man- 

 age a fruit garden even though employing the stupidest oal 

 that ever blundered through Hfe. The method is this : 

 First learn how yourself, and then let your laborer thor- 

 oughly understand that he gets no wages unless he does as 

 he is told. In the complicated details of a plant farm there 

 is much that needs constant supervision, but the work of an 

 ordinary fruit garden is, in the main, straightforward and 

 simple. The expenditure of a little time, money, and, 

 above all things, of seasonable labor, is so abundantly re- 

 paid that one would think that bare self-interest would solve 

 invariably the simple problem of supply. 



As mere articles of food, these fruits are exceedingly val- 

 uable. They are capable of sustaining severe and continued 

 labor. For months together we might become almost in- 

 dependent of butcher and doctor if we made our places 

 produce all that nature permits. Purple grapes will hide 

 unsightly buildings ; currants, raspberries, and blackberries 

 will grow along the fences and in the corners that are left 

 to burdocks and brambles. I have known invalids to im- 

 prove from the first day that berries were brought to the 

 table, and thousands would exchange their sallow complex- 

 ions, sick headaches, and general ennui for a breezy interest 

 in life and its abounding pleasures, if they would only take 

 nature's palpable hint, and enjoy the seasonable food she 

 provides. Belles can find better cosmetics in the fruit gar- 

 den than on their toilet tables, and she who paints her 



