A B C OF STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 167 



that it ever looked before, and I asked him a little anxiously 

 which way I should look to catch a glimpse of the sun before 

 it vanished. Yes, there it was through the trees, a glowing 

 golden orb ; and I had made my 30 miles in just about an even 

 four hours, notwithstanding the hills and the amount of visiting 

 I did while getting my supper. I felt quite anxious to know 

 whether Terry's wheat would really show that it was a paying 

 operation to work the soil over so many times before it was 

 sown, last fall. And I was glad to notice the finest piece of 

 wheat, perhaps, I ever looked upon. His locality, however, is 

 a very frosty one, and they had been having frosts night after 

 night, even though it was in the month of June, and he feared 

 his wheat had suffered somewhat in consequence. It had also 

 fallen down so as to in jure it somewhat. Notice the difference 

 in just 30 miles. We had been picking strawberries for a week 

 or ten days, and yet none of his were ripe. Heavy mulching, 

 and a location north of an evergreen hedge, had likely some- 

 thing to do with it. 



Friend Terry and his son Robert are enlarging their farm- 

 ing operations somewhat this year. Robert is getting to be 

 somewhere near 21 years old, and his father is naturally quite 

 anxious he should choose for his associates those who neither 

 drink, smoke, nor swear. Well, somebody told me, or else I 

 dreamed it, that the boy has concluded he would be on the safe 

 side by choosing a nice looking girl for an associate at least, 

 when he goes out riding in that nice new buggy. You see, a 

 girl would be quite sure to be free from any of these bad hab- 

 its, and I am not a bit surprised if the boy finds her quite as 

 agreeable, as a companion, as any of the young men. And 

 now please do not understand me as casting reflections on the 

 young men in the vicinity of Hudson, Ohio. 



Well, the boy has a farm adjoining his father's or at least 

 they two, father and son, are working at it together. The old 

 fences have been removed, and new ones that is, where any 

 fence was needed have taken their place. Old trees, big 

 stones and stumps, and all useless rubbish, have been cleared 

 away, and the potatoes are already coming up on this neglected 

 waste. Now, wouldn't it be funny if those potatoes this very 

 first year should conclude to behave themselves exactly as they 

 do over on the father's farm, and bear great crops from the 

 word go ? I went through the fruit-garden where the raspber- 

 ries, blackberries, and currants have not seen a hoe nor culti- 

 vator for the past six years. Mulching with straw does it all. 



