CROPS AND PROFITS 



have its share of air and sunshine; care in the 

 winter pruning, to cut away all needless wood ; 

 care in the summer pruning, to pinch down its 

 affluence— to drive the juices into the fruit, 

 and to restrain the vital forces from wasting 

 themselves in a riotous life of leaves and ten- 

 drils. 



But the care required is not engrossing or 

 fatiguing. Any country-liver may bestow it 

 upon the score of vines which will abundantly 

 supply his wants, without feeling the task. 

 Nay, more ; this coy guidance of the luxuriant 

 tendrils, — this delicate fettering of its abound- 

 ing green life, — this opening of the clusters to 

 the gladness of the sunshine, will make a man 

 feel tenderly to the vine, and breed a fellow- 

 ship that shall make all his restraints, and the 

 plucking away of the waste shoots, seem to be 

 mere offices of friendship. 



There is not, anywhere, a country house 

 about which positions do not abound, where a 

 vine may clamber, and feed upon resources 

 that are worse than lost. The southern or 

 eastern front of an old out-building; a star- 

 ing, naked wall (on which grapes ripen ad- 

 mirably) ; a great unseemly boulder, from 

 under which the rootlets will pluck out the ele- 

 ments of the fairest fruit ; a back-court, where 



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