324 An American Fruit-Farm 



eighty, nor does every city banker die at fifty- 

 three. The problem is to keep your arteries young. 

 Some say. ''Eat cheese*'; others, ''Drink sour 

 milk"; others, "Buttermilk''; "Don't worry"; 

 "Sleep on the roof"; "Two meals a day"; 

 ' ' Avoid extremes ' ' ; and yet others, ' ' Farm. ' ' Old 

 age and crafty death, as Whitman tells us, pur- 

 sue, overtake, overcome all, — so why seek to es- 

 cape! Let us be patient, and, like Seneca, receive 

 the messenger calmly. For be it bank or farm, 

 factory or the high seas that we affect, we yield at 

 last to the enemy. It is the living, then, not the 

 dying, that concerns us. 



What has the fruit-farm to offer for daily living? 

 Nothing, unless your heart is in the fruit-farm. 

 Orchards and vines may mean life to me, but daily 

 death to you. You pine for city ways and scenes, 

 for these are life to you. Length of years is found 

 not exclusively in city or country; old age may be 

 found in either. But length of years is not living. 

 Lincoln at fifty-six had done more than old Parr at 

 one hundred and fifty-two, or, so far as we know, 

 more than Methuselah at nine hundred and sixty- 

 nine. Caesar, Napoleon, dying at Lincoln's age, 

 accomplished more than all the centenarians of 

 their time. Alexander at thirty undoubtedly had 

 done more than any other youth of man and woman 

 bom. Life cannot be measured by the calendar. 



At Tivoli we are shown vestiges of the summer- 

 homes of Horace, of Caesar, of Brutus, of Cassius, 

 but the world finds these men in Rome. We must 



