STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 69 



A SERMON ON THE NORTHERN SPY. 



Hon. Solon Chase, Chase's Mills. 



Now this is not my first time of appearing before the people of 

 Farmington. I have not been here for some few years, but it 

 don't seem but a very little time since I was here before. I was 

 preaching a sermon at that time and my text was, there was "too 

 much hog in the dollar," and I made a good many of them believe 

 it. I didn't make them all believe it. But conditions have 

 changed, hogs have "riz" and I don't need to preach that sermon 

 any more. Tonight my text is '"the Northern Spy," — the North- 

 ern Spy apple. Now I claim to be a man of truth and veracity 

 but sometimes I have had my word disputed a little. That is not 

 strange, for sometimes the truth is too strong to be believed — it 

 wants to be restricted a little, and sometimes it wants to be 

 stretched. But I am going to prove what I say to you about the 

 Northern Spy. I don't want you to take my word for it. I 

 know one time not a very great while ago I got into trouble with 

 the women folks at Chase's Mills, and I would rather have got 

 into trouble with the whole of Farmington. They said I didn't 

 tell the truth. I told a story about the women folks having a rag 

 bee in the winter time at my brother's wife's. There was a snow 

 storm. The men were out breaking the roads with horses. But 

 the snow storm didn't stop the rag bee, they went on snow shoes. 

 I counted the snow shoes in my brother's house and there were 

 seventeen pairs of snow shoes, and I counted them over twice ; 

 and when the truth came out afterward, I had lied, there were 

 but sixteen pairs of snow shoes. And ever since then they 

 haven't believed always what I said. 



Now what I am going to say about the Northern Spy I am 

 going to prove by no less a person than the president of the 

 Pomological Society of Maine, I can prove my story by him 

 because he has been into my orchard and seen my apples. As I 

 said today a Northern Spy is good enough for me. My North- 

 em Spy orchard is a farm that was abandoned, I wasn't a very 

 large boy, I was a small boy, but I remember all there was left 

 of the house upon that farm was an old cellar, and all there was 

 left of the barn was a few boards — the barn was tumbled down. 



