122 An American Fruit-Farm 



wears out its votaries, and human nature revolts 

 against too much — or too Httle — evening dress. 

 The strain and stifle of big business, filtering down 

 upon clerks and employees, leaves an insatiable 

 yearning for the poise of the country. Nature 

 will have her own. Yet there is qtiite as much 

 sanity in city as in country life; the lines of least 

 resistance lead to the country rather than to the 

 city ; to the fruit-farm rather than to the clerkship 

 in a down-town office. Salaries are low; the cost 

 of living, high; promotion, slow; the prizes few 

 and mostly bespoken by favorites of fortime rather 

 than by the Girards, the Stewarts who to-day are 

 keeping books or handling the yard-stick. The 

 freedom of the country has greater charm than the 

 freedom of the city. 



Then, too, there is profit in fruit-farming, — not 

 the sudden profit of the oil-regions in the old days; 

 or of the mines; or of the Stock-Exchange, but the 

 steady, reliable profit of a sound business eminently 

 respectable. Thus the fruit-farm seems along the 

 line of least resistance to the young man of energy 

 and specially to him of uncertain health. Wealth 

 accumulates and men decay, and the delicate sons 

 of fortune now seek health in orchard and vineyard. 

 America is now old enough and rich enough to turn 

 to fruit-farming. The Old World has been trying 

 it for centuries. Cato, who wrote on farming 

 nearly two centuries before the Christian era, 

 reads like a modem horticultural writer; and this 

 because farming, real farming, never grows old. 



