224 An American Fruit-Farm 



to his boy: ''You were not born with a silver spoon 

 in your mouth but to get silver spoons." The 

 orchards and vineyards teem with prosperity; 

 many a fruit-farm grows a fine quality of grapes 

 and a poor quality of boys. In laying out the 

 farm, in making the soil, the farmer should plant 

 boys as carefully as he plants grapes or peaches. 

 Each after its kind. One of the contradictions in 

 country life, real country life, not city-country life, 

 is the splendid cherry trees, the strong horses, the 

 multiple-laying hens, the tons of grapes, and the 

 ordinary, not to say extraordinary, boys who turn 

 out less than a ton to the acre, which itself turns 

 out five. ''The fathers have eaten sour grapes 

 and the children's teeth are set on edge." "No 

 grapes for me, thank you! " says the grape-grower's 

 boy; "ril take (accept!) a clerkship in a grocery." 

 "What!" you exclaim, "and grapes at fifty dollars 

 a ton and live at home, and the grocery business so 

 overdone!" You think that you would take the 

 purple vineyard and let somebody else keep store. 

 But your father had a store — not a vineyard. 



The fruit-farm produced fruit, not boys; they 

 were a mere bye-product; handy, if workers, but 

 often much in the way. Expensive as they get 

 older. Good as anybody's boys, but they will 

 never make farmers. And so the years pass; the 

 old folks become more economical, saving the 

 more eagerly that the children may have some- 

 thing to begin life with. When the children think 

 themselves ready to begin life for themselves, or 



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