328 An American Fruit-Farm 



''As a man eats so is he.'* One must be careful 

 in his translations. The habits of ancestors 

 become arteries on the fruit-farm. It might seem 

 that a man might know as much as a bird and 

 eat what will agree with him; or, like a plant, 

 assimilate only food and fiotirish. Animals feed 

 as they live, by instinct. If the fruit-grower's 

 instincts are normal, will his arteries keep yoimg? 

 This too depends upon the man. If he enjoys life 

 on the fruit-farm; if he lives in his trees and his 

 vines, wise, serene, amidst troops of friends, sum- 

 mer, winter, spring, and autumn, storm and sun- 

 shine, he will find his arteries in the fruit-farm, as 

 young as he makes them. Where his vision rises 

 there it rests. The Valley is his country; its hills 

 bar away the world; its lake divides him from a 

 foreign land. He sits beneath his own vine and 

 cherry tree, hears of wars and rumors of wars, 

 but the Valley is peace. He has his anxieties, 

 supreme at the moment, trifling when past. He 

 feels himself anchored to safety — ^his fertile acres. 

 The fear of want he never knows. Nor indeed if 

 he is a thinking man, does he sigh for impossible 

 riches, for he can never obtain wealth beyond the 

 limits of the business he is in. Wealth is the profit 

 on labor; the more the laborers, the greater the 

 wealth. Oil kings profit by everybody's labor; 

 so too the steel-kings, the cotton-kings, the beef- 

 kings, and all other kings who monopolize the 

 activities of countless thousands of workers. The 

 seamstress, working by the midnight lamp, en- 



