The Fruit- Farm and the Young Folks 221 



the apples ! Would the ladder seem so heavy or the 

 apples so high, or the rungs so hard, or the wind 

 so piercing? Or had the father invested a few 

 bunches of grapes in the boy, would the rows seem 

 so long or the vines so many, or February fingers so 

 numb and cold? The father trims grapes all day 

 long and never a word about cold fingers. The 

 prospective profit in grapes keeps him warm. 

 Hopelessness is always cold. Age nor sex is 

 exempt. Here is the mystery of association. 



The father must needs make possible the right 

 sort of associations. Every man pursues as best 

 he can his own substantial happiness; the boy 

 among the apple boughs sees his happiness in the 

 apples, if they are his apples. Otherwise they may 

 as well belong to the neighbors. It is a nice 

 question on every fruit-farm, — as to the young 

 folks, — whether the farm is really theirs or the 

 neighbor's. If the boy picks apples for a neighbor 

 he is really picking his own dollars from the apple 

 tree ; on his father's farm he picks his father's apples 

 for his father. At least this is the boy's version of 

 the facts in fruit-farming. 



Shall the father then hire his own boy to pick 

 his own apples? It is not hiring, when the boy is 

 interested in picking apples. The family is the 

 ideal community and the boy has his part in its 

 communal work. But nowadays even the children 

 "strike." Few seem willing to work for another, 

 children for parents, or parents for children. Yet, 

 in the Fruit Valley all the children have not 



