The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 321 



now living were bom on the land they now own. 

 Land tends to become more and more an article of 

 commerce, a utensil, a bale of silk, a yard of calico, 

 and so changes hands easily. So frequent is the 

 change, the land has slight chance of being a birth- 

 place. It takes time to be born as well as to die 

 and land must be in the family long enough for 

 the event to happen. The pioneers in the Valley 

 took time for life; the Valley was their home 

 and they looked for no other; they had gone 

 West, and the Valley was West. Their dreams 

 were of New York and New England, but these 

 hills and this lake were before their eyes. A man 

 lives in his visions, though they hover over a 

 distant sky line and imder strange stars. 



" His heart *s in the Highlands, 

 His heart is not here; 

 His heart 's in the Highlands, 

 A-chasing the deer." 



How-busy-soever he may seem to be in the Low- 

 lands, he lives in the Highlands. Within this 

 round which encircles orchards and vineyards, 

 hills and lake, gleaming streams, field and forest, 

 the pioneers lived and saw visions and here they 

 are buried. 



I remember, years ago, the burial of one of these 

 pioneers who for more than half a century had 

 lived in an old-fashioned house amidst orchard 

 boughs. The logs had been covered more than 

 seventy years since with thin, wide clapboards 



