Ill 



steal and destroy. Every man who enters 

 your enclosure without your consent, and 

 takes away, from off or from under a tree, an 

 article of fruit, is a thief. Deal with him as 

 such. Keep him out with a picket fence, or 

 a watch-dog. Apply the scourge and the 

 disgrace of legal prosecution. Perhaps the 

 experiment of thorn hedges may be found to 

 answer a good purpose. But if these dissua- 

 sives fail, like the turf of the old man in the 

 fable, you must " try what virtue there is in 

 9 tones;" for while so many of our American 

 citizens continue to steal our fruits, and thus 

 evince a wicked meanness which would 

 disgrace a savage in uncivilized countries, 

 certainly a man can hardly be censured for 

 defending his fruits, cultivated or wild, from 

 the poacher, in the same manner that Uncle 

 Sam himself is wont to repel an invading 

 enemy from his own large and growing plan- 

 tation. As the penalty for the theft ought to 

 be in proportion to the difficulty of identifying 

 the thief, he who pilfers from an orchard 

 deserves to be far more severely punished, 

 than the easily-caught purloiner from a fruit- 

 stand in the market. And further, whenever 

 the law of the land fails to protect a spirited 



