Ten Thousand a Year 243 



farm any more. Russell White knew how. That's 

 all there is to it." This is speech of the Valley. 

 The world knows a fruit-farmer when it sees one. 

 They are not numerous. And the new owner of 

 White's farm is a clever man, too, in his way. A 



nice" man, an obliging man, even a pleasanter 

 'man, so the Valley says, than was old Jones; but 

 ^he cannot run a fruit-farm as White did. True, 

 he can run it so that the sheriff wants it so badly 

 [as to take it. But that is not considered just the 

 best kind of fruit-farming in the Valley. No it 

 was White himself that made the White fruit- 

 farm. When he died it ceased being a fruit-farm. 

 It became mere trees and vines and took a gallop 

 toward the wild. White transformed it from the 

 wild into a garden. The pendulum always swings 

 to one side or the other, or stops dead at the center. 

 The Valley has many acres which thus swing from 

 wild to garden; from garden to wild. Thus time 

 passes by the horticultural clock. But White was 

 a ten-thousand-dollar man. 



There was another man — Neville also bom a 

 fruit-grower. He inherited his acres and trans- 

 formed them from mediocrity into capacity, — he 

 really educated his land till had any Agricultural 

 College in the coimtry been fully awake to its 

 opportimity it would have conferred on him the 

 honorary degree of Master of Fruit-farming. In 

 these days when colleges give degrees for stenog- 

 raphy, bookkeeping, and economics, it seems strange 

 that Neville missed recognition, for his genius 



