9 2 Details and Dollars 



a day than by ten hours' work in an orchard, 

 I should certainly go into the business. So 

 much is said about the impossibility of making 

 any money at gardening or fruit-raising that it 

 is almost hopeless to convince any one to the 

 contrary, and it is far from my wish to do any- 

 thing of the kind. My aim is to tell how I 

 manage to do without money, not how to make 

 it. The first is a topic upon which I have had 

 some experience, for reasons beyond my con- 

 trol, while as to the last I cannot speak as an 

 expert. The scores of books which prove that 

 if a man can raise ten thousand quarts of straw- 

 berries from an acre of ground, and sell them 

 at ten cents a quart, he will grow rich and his 

 family will rejoice, are mostly based upon the 

 experience of some wonderfully clever person ; 

 the truth of their theory is irrefutable, pro- 

 vided you admit the premises. They remind 

 me of a circular once sent to me by a man who 

 was offering fame and fortune in return for ten 

 cents in stamps. He set forth that if I bought 

 from him a certain prescription for a magic 

 hair-grower, to be manufactured at four cents 

 a bottle, fortune was mine. For if I sold 



