

Time and the Tree 25 



It is therefore a question whether the would-be 

 fruit-grower will turn out a fruit-grower, or only 

 a medium through whom the title to the land is 

 transferred to some man who is a fruit-grower by 

 instinct. The "natural farmer'* shines like the 

 "natural painter," the "natural musician,'* even 

 the "natural doctor," or the "natural engineer." 

 Nature fits most men for something, but not always 

 for fruit-farming. Almost any man believes that 

 he can do light farming; that if he had only a well 

 equipped fruit-farm he could "get along nicely" 

 and even run the risk of getting rich. Nature in 

 due time — very infrequently, and but once — pro- 

 duces her Raffael, her Beethoven, her Shakespeare, 

 her Angelo. It is the fashion of the world to 

 praise the ornamental, the luxurious, and to over- 

 look the practical and the necessary. "Arms and 

 the man, I sing"; "Achilles' wrath I sing," — so 

 open jEneid and Iliad, War, passion, beauty, 

 statecraft, crime, wickedness, — not fruit-farming, 

 are the subjects of the story. Cato, it is true, 

 more than twenty centuries ago wrote on Farm 

 Management, but it is not literature as is the 

 Germany or the Agricola of Tacitus. The Ec- 

 logues of Virgil are of the oldest literature of farm- 

 ing, but they dwell on the passions of men, not 

 on cherries or corn. It is hard to make poetry 

 out of a quart of berries save by assimilation, and 

 that is not poetry but chemistry. Perhaps our 

 units of meastire of things and men need revision. 

 Virgil, first to put the peasant into literature. 



