212 An American Fruit-Farm 



fruit-farm. What will become of it? What of 

 the children? Of the parents? *'Each after his 

 kind." 



There is no fniit-farm poor or good but thinking 

 makes it so. To be a fruit-farmer, one must think 

 fruit-farming, for as a man thinks so is he. Few 

 children think as their parents; few parents, as 

 their children. In America there are many fniit- 

 farms, but few fruit-farms occupied by the third 

 generation. In these days when statistics and 

 diagrams are devised to make knowledge plain and 

 conclusive, the diagram of the vocation of a family 

 in successive generations resembles a tornado 

 record, the line of movement marking leaps and 

 bounds, changes and variations and startling 

 extremes. Even in Europe, that imaginary land 

 of fixed, if not of steady habits, continuity of 

 calling in successive generations of the family is 

 rare. There is a famous Zurich family of mathe- 

 maticians, and a famous Geneva family of botan- 

 ists: son, grandson, and great-grandson, each 

 eminent, who have been working, generation after 

 generation, in the same field of science. Rare 

 as are such families in the old world, and quite 

 unknown in the new, they embody and represent 

 the true use of leisure, — the activity of accumulated 

 experience. I know few fruit-farms owned and 

 conducted by descendants of the original settler. 

 Shall I venture to compare generations of farmers 

 in America with generations of great mathe- 

 maticians or botanists in Europe? Fruit-farming 



