Ten Thousand a Year 245 



sold to the highest bidder. His fruit was precisely 

 as marked — never second quality with first, and 

 no third. He used the most attractive packages in 

 the market and some were made exclusively for his 

 fruit. Gradually all the fruit in the Valley was 

 good or poor, as it compared with his. His orders 

 for fruit exceeded the production of his own farm 

 but he would never fill in with that of another farm. 

 All he sold came from his own. Some thought that 

 he stood in his own light in thus refusing to act the 

 middle-man, but he always declared that he raised 

 fniit and did not handle any on commission. 



His fruit-farm, which was known as *'The 

 Neville Fruit-farm,'* was ideal in plan, location, and 

 equipment. It comprised sixty-three acres, and he 

 would never increase it though he might have 

 bought a score of farms had he pleased. *T don't 

 believe in walking too far for a cherry, "he would 

 say; by which he meant that an acre of cherry 

 trees, bearing to their limit, was preferable to a 

 greater nimiber either less productive, or to a 

 greater acreage no more productive. He insisted 

 that there is a practical limit to highly profitable 

 fruit-farming; for example, that thirty-five acres 

 of grapes are enough for one man to care for — 

 that is, one owner. So not another acre would he 

 have in vines, but he raised eight tons of grapes 

 to the acre, which was equivalent, as the Valley 



I averaged, to a vineyard of one hundred and fifty 

 acres. He intensified the grape industry, and 

 produced as much on one acre as his neighbors did 

 t 



