PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION. 



Books are like men, they become old as rapidly as 

 their authors, and unless books are revised frequently and 

 kept abreast with the times, they fall behind and become 

 of little value. And as we, their authors, find that 

 toward the end of life time seems to travel with railway 

 speed and seemingly flies faster, thus crowding us with 

 events and their progress, we become aware that but a 

 short space is left us in which to record it. 



When I look back over life's checkered journey, at 

 an age when many are called to join the silent army, the 

 wish becomes but natural to leave to those of my viti- 

 cultural friends (and I hope I have many throughout 

 this broad land) who have had patience with my several 

 efforts to become useful, especially to the beginner in 

 grape culture, a memento of wliich I need not be 

 ashamed. That even the revised and enlarged edition 

 which preceded this has become very old, that it is far 

 behind the times and their progress, no one knows bet- 

 ter than I. When I think of the time when I, as a 

 youth of twenty, planted the first small vineyard I ever 

 took charge of, on my father's farm in the backwoods of 

 Missouri, in 1847, and find now that my pet fruit, the 

 grape, has spread over the whole Union, until there is 

 not a State or Territory in which its cultivation has not 

 been attempted in a more scientific and thorough man- 

 ner than my first crude attempt ; that the vineyards of 

 this broad land now cover millions of acres ; that wo 

 have hundreds of varieties instead of the three or four 



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