The Fruit-Farm and Old Age 337 



age, even when rich, is a burden on the family, and 

 penniless old age is a nuisance which the public 

 must abate. The children fly out into the world; 

 father and mother are sent to the poorhouse; they 

 committed the unpardonable offense of being poor 

 and growing old. 



In the Valley, if men are yoimg at sixty, they 

 are also old at thirty. Boys and girls at eighteen 

 have lost the bloom of youth. Commercialism 

 drives the schoolgirl into an office to pound away 

 her life on a typewriter, and to the end of her days 

 the atmosphere of that office hangs about her. 

 There is the inestimable loss of femininity which 

 she can never make up. The boy plunges into 

 the world at eighteen and is gray, wrinkled, and 

 sordid at thirty. He is older than his grandfather, 

 and has learned lessons which the orchard and 

 the vine never teach. Between the young people 

 and the old there is a great gtilf fixed and neither 

 can — even would he — pass over to the other. 

 The boys and girls are like peaches trigged out in 

 market with fancy paper covers in natty baskets, 

 but we know that the bloom has been rubbed off 

 and that the fruit is stale. And we decline further 

 disappointment by not searching to the bottom of 

 the basket. But somebody buys the peaches, — 

 possibly on a bargain counter. As we wander 

 through the stalls, we are thinking of the days when 

 we picked real peaches from real trees, each after 

 its kind. 



Nature always has her winnings at the end of the 



