64 An American Fruit-Farm 



which kept the arteries elastic, not the insurance 

 company. 



One of the annual premiums of the fruit-farm 

 is health; usually, with insurance companies one 

 must die to win, and lose in order to collect. 

 Meanwhile life has its pleasures in the fruit 

 valley. 



It would be unfair to any fruit valley to repre- 

 sent it as free from sickness and disease ; it too has 

 doctors, and patients by the thousand. Indeed, 

 in the fruit valley, sooner or later everybody sends 

 for the doctor. Yet I have never heard that sick- 

 ness there is due to fruit-farming. Health is the 

 rule. But this, you say, is generally true in 

 America. There are vocational diseases which 

 must be reckoned with, like phosphoric poisoning 

 in the making of parlor matches (of a certain kind) ; 

 lead-fimies in the manufacture of paint; gout 

 among heavy capitalists, and lung troubles among 

 mill hands. When appendicitis was discovered 

 by the public, some twenty-five years since, it 

 was promptly attributed to grape seeds, yet though 

 the Valley is a vast vineyard, appendicitis is not 

 epidemic in ' ' grape time. ' * And it may be asserted 

 confidently, that no case of appendicitis can be 

 attributed to the seed of any fruit. Cherries and 

 milk are fatal, yet though the Valley raises thou- 

 sands of bushels of cherries and milkmen abound, 

 no cases are reported. Some say that the milk is 

 too well watered to be fertile of cherry indigestion, 

 and, moreover, that cherries sell so well in New 



