156 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETV. 



but yon can kt the boys and 'girls have a show at huckleber- 

 rying. 



Now these other fruits, of which such fine specimens 

 are scattered about these tables, are the result of skill, train- 

 ing and of learning. The huckleberry is a gift of nature, 

 coming when we do not expect to find it, and where you do 

 not oftentimes want it, but it is nevertheless an awful good 

 berry. I do not know of anything better in the farmers' 

 menu than the huckleberry. You can see how this early re- 

 collection of my youth has impressed itself upon my mind. 

 I do not know of any way by which a boy can disgrace him- 

 self quicker than by being obliged to own that he has never 

 been huckleberrying. Of course, there are certain things, 

 such as huckleberry pie and pumpkin pie, which cannot be 

 made by everybody. They have to be made by mother, or 

 better still by grandmother. Then they will be indisputably 

 all right. When those delectable articles are made by the 

 proper parties, they constitute, as I have already intimated, 

 a most delectable part of the menu of the farmer's wife. 



Now when I was asked to come here and speak, your 

 President, I think, asked me to talk about education. Per- 

 haps I will before I sit down, just to please him, but this sub- 

 ject of huckleberries rather diverts my mind at present. Per- 

 haps, however, I have exhausted that sufficiently for the pur- 

 pose of this occasion, and I want to say just a word or two 

 about another topic connected with fruit raising, and that is 

 grafting. (Laughter.) It is a most interesting occupation. 

 In fact, from early years, and long before I went into poli- 

 tics (laughter) I learned a good deal about grafting. It 

 seems to me now, after having had kind of a scientific edu- 

 cation — it seems to me one of the most remarkable things on 

 earth, that no matter what kind of an apple seed you plant, 

 the result is, by the process of grafting, the production of 

 something good. You can take a little twig, and by putting 

 it into a sort of a pit on another twig, years and years after, 

 pick another variety of fruit altogether from the tree in 

 which the graft is made. It is an application of graft which 



