NINETEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 205 



after another get up and say about the same thing as I had 

 intended to say here this afternoon. So I shall bring you no 

 new messages. I feel a good deal like the fellow where I was 

 attending a football game once. They had a large lemon 

 suspended with a string, and when each player got a little 

 winded, he went up and squeezed wind out of the lemon. 

 About nineteen or twenty had squeezed the lemon, when Jim 

 came up, and one of them said to him : "Jim, that has been 

 squeezed about a dozen time, and there isn't very much juice 

 left in it." Nevertheless, Jim squeezed it, and he says : "Yes, 

 there is a little." So with me here to-day. I think there is 

 a little juice still left in this subject of fruit growing. Each 

 time we take up for discussion the different phases of fruit 

 growing we get a little juice out of it. 



For the 99th time I congratulate the fruit and vegetable 

 growers of Connecticut on the admirable location which 

 they have. We are right at our markets. We ought to know 

 the conditions in which our products go to the consumer's 

 door. We have reason to know. We have the advantage of 

 the distant grower in that respect. We hear a great deal 

 nowadays of Florida, that land under water, and what is not 

 under water covered by crocodiles, — we hear a great deal about 

 the enormous profits made from that Florida land, quite a 

 good deal of which has been bought up and is now being 

 used by a lot of good New Englanders down there. I do not 

 believe most of you would enjoy life there very much, because 

 they are working at a disadvantage, and have a very long 

 distance to ship their fruit. What can be the flavor of straw- 

 berries picked very often just as the pink begins to become 

 tinged with red, put into boxes and forwarded many hun- 

 dreds of miles to some commission house, or some other place 

 by various and different methods? How does that flavor com- 

 pare with the flavor of a berry which has been ripened by 

 .Mother Nature? There is no comparison whatever. That 

 fact alone should give northern berries the market. Constant 

 care by all New Englanders in the fruit and vegetable grow- 



