66 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 1.- 



knoweth save him that receiveth it.'' Well, in 

 that same chapter, about tlie middle, we read: 

 " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give 

 thee a crown of life." You see this crown is 

 promised to those wlio ai-e faithful. It is Jiot 

 enough that we he faithful a little while; we 

 want to be faitliful unto death, and then have 

 we the promise of a crown of life. Did our 

 friend Bunyan put it too strongly ? Let us turn 

 to First Peter, tifth chapter: ""And when the 

 chief Shepherd shall ai)pear. ye shall receive a 

 crown of glorv that fadeth not away." By 

 reading the hrst part of the chapter we find this 

 wonderful promise is to those who " feed the 

 flock of (Jod, not by constraint, but willingly; 

 not for tilthy lucre, but of a ready mind." The 

 promise of a crown of glory is to those who are 

 trying to make the world better; who " rejoice 

 not in iniquity;" who "think no evil." Fur- 

 ther along we read. "Be sober; be vigilant; for 

 your adversary the Devil as a roaring lion 

 walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." 

 The " adversary" will most surely entrap you 

 into wasting the" precious moments in fussing 

 with straws, leaves, and the dust of the earth, 

 if he can do so. He will leave no stone un- 

 turned in his schemes to get you to look doivn 

 and notrup, if it can be done. If your face, like 

 that of the man in the fable, looks constantly 

 downward toward the earth, you will never see 

 the shining crown nor hear the angel voices. 



Now, my friends, during this coming new 

 year let us see to it that we look out for him 

 who comes "as a roaring lion." Did you ever 

 feel yourself in a bright, cheerful mood, ready 

 to work for the good of humanity, ready to lis- 

 ten for the angel voices, when all of a sudden 

 something drove out the good spirit and pulled 

 you down to earth? Perhai)S it was some little 

 trouble with a neighbor. May be he borrowed 

 something and did not return it. May be he 

 showed a greedy, overbearing, and unfeeling 

 spirit. Away go thoughts of union meetings, 

 good resolutions to keep bright and hopeful, 

 and, before you know it, you are led away, 

 down amid the I'ubbish once more. I know 

 what it is, dear friends. I have wondered 

 whether there were anybody else who felt the 

 truth of two lines in one of good old Dr. Watts' 

 hymns as I have felt them— 



Prone to wander— Lord, I feel it; 

 Prone to leave the Lord 1 love. 

 At such a time it does me good to repeat men- 

 tally, " Wherefore do you spend money for that 

 which is not bread, and your labor for that 

 which satisHeth not?" I say to myself, " Well, 

 how is it, old fellow? Is this thing that is just 

 now stirring you up, and that seems to demand 

 your immediate attention, whether any thing 

 else is attended to or not— is thdt the 'bread' 

 that the prophet Isaiah speaks of? and is it the 

 kind of labor that •.s((t(.s'/!Ct7(,"f" Sometimes I 

 think for a while it is; but after a few hours 

 have passed by, when the turbulent sea of my 

 turbulent nature has calmed down, then I 

 think, with oh so much remorse and regret ! 

 " No, no; it does not satisfy." There is only 

 one thing in this whole wide universe that does 

 satisfy, and that is told in our opening text. 

 '• Mary hath chosen that good part which shall 

 not be taken away from her." 



Now, to wind up my short Home, talk to-day 

 I want to turn to PauTs second letter to Timo- 

 thy. The veteran saint says, when near his 

 end, " I have fought a good fight. I have finish- 

 ed my course; I have kept the faith." Has any 

 one lived since the time of Paul who could con- 

 sistently take such words upon his lips? And then 

 he adds: " Henceforth then; is laid ui) for me a 

 croivn of rinlttomsitcss, which the Lord the 

 righteous judge shall give me at that day; and' 

 not to me only, tnit unto (tU tliern oIko tlutt hrve 

 /lis appearing." 



SPECIAL DEPARTMENT FOR A. I. ROOT, AND HIS 

 FRIENDS WHO LOVE TO RAISE CROPS. 



STAKTING ONIONS IN THE GREENHOUSE. 



We first commenced this in 1886. Landreth's 

 people had an onion called the Bloomsdalc 

 Pearl, which they said was specially adapted 

 to the South. I was so anxious to see some of 

 them that we sowed them in the greenhouse 

 some time in January. We had beautiful 

 pearly-white onions long before any were seen 

 in the markets. They sold so readily we let 

 them all go when they were about the size of 

 hens' eggs. Next year we planted more, and 

 some of them got so large that we sold them by 

 the pound for 10 cts. apiece. Finally our Ex- 

 periment Station at Columbus took hold of it, 

 and last season they tested almost all the new 

 large foreign onions offered in the catalogues. 

 Like myself, they decided it was a wonderful 

 success. The point is something lik(^ this : 

 With ground very mellow, enriched, and 

 brought up to its highest state of fertility, it is 

 exceedingly inii)Oi'tant*that we have a full even 

 stand of any kind of crop. Now, it is very hard 

 to manage this where we depend on sowing the 

 seed and thinning out. By transplanting you 

 can have exactly as many onions as you need 

 on the ground, and no more; and it can be done 

 cheaper than to sow the seed. Secoitilln, where 

 you sow the seed and weed by hand (for weeds 

 will grow as fast or a little faster than onions), 

 there is an immense amount of labor involved. 

 If there were no little onions mixed in with the 

 weeds, we could with the rake, or by horse 

 l)Ower. destroy as many weeds in an hour as we 

 can pull out from between the onions in a whole 

 day. or may be several days. By the trans- 

 planting i)rocess this may be done as follows; 

 Work the ground up nicely, and let it stand 

 until the weeds germinate. Just before you set 

 out youi- plants, rake the whole surface thor- 

 oughly, so as to kill every weed. Now plant 

 your big onions — that is, onions that have pass- 

 ed the weedy stage. They may have bulbs the 

 size of beans', and be perhaps from 3 to 5 inches 

 high. Stretch a string over your fine mellow- 

 ground — or, better still, a clothes-line. Run a 

 roller over the line, so it will make the cord 

 leave its print in the soft soil. Now make holes 

 two or three inches apart along this line, and 

 put in your onions. For making the holes, we 

 take a hoe that has been broken from the han- 

 dle, or. rather, we take the handle part with 

 the shank attached. We grind this shank to a 

 sharp point, and then we have a dibble that can 

 be used standing up. A man can make holes 

 with it on the mark almost as fast as he can 

 walk. A boy goes over with a basket of onions, 

 and puts an onion in each hole. 



Onions are so easy to transplant that they 

 will grow almost any way. They should be 

 taken up from the greenhouse or seed-bed, as 

 we do cabbage, celery, and tomato plants. 

 Saturate the ground with water, and dig out 

 the onions with a fork so as to get every one of 

 the fine fibrous roots. We have done trans- 

 planting with only smrdf boys, and had every 

 onion grow. In fact, the boys get along so 

 fast that thev have the ground all covered 

 before I know it. You can plant t,hese onions 

 even quicker than you can plant sets. Of 

 course, you want nice onion gi'ound- sott, mel- 

 low, and rich. I do not know how many onions 

 can be grown on an acre. Our ExiJeriment 

 Station suggests that, with these large varieties, 

 you may get over 1000 bushels. Our friend 

 'Joseph,'* who writes for many of the agricul- 

 tural papers, has been working in the same line. 

 Be careful about planting mayiy of the large 



