HOME FRUITS AS EDUCATORS 205 



they ignored these plantations and went to sources which for them held 

 more vivid and desirable ideals the fruit plantations of their boyhood. 



Those fruit plantations were neither set out by specialists nor 

 primarily for profit. Their main reasons for existence were that 

 the family enjoyed good fruit and wanted a continuous succession 

 and an abundant supply throughout the year. Though doubtless 

 many of these plantations were larger than necessary to supply even 

 the largest families of those days, the surplus was just so much to 

 give away to less fortunate relatives and to neighbors or to sell in the 

 local market. 



One of the most pleasing customs of those good old days, one that 

 deserves to be revived today, owed its charm to the choice fruit grown 

 in the family plantation. When visitors dropped in for the afternoon 

 or the evening the au fait thing was to have the company enjoy some 

 home-grown fruit before departing. This was not served in the 

 modern sense now too frequently employed to indicate that the social 

 session is at an end, but in the whole-souled spirit of hospitality in 

 the extending of which both host and hostess could take a keener 

 pleasure in serving a home-grown product and feeling that the favor- 

 able comments upon it were more genuine than is possible when 

 purchased provender is provided. What would have happened if Ben 

 Davis Apple, Kieffer Pear, Elberta Peach or Lombard Plum had 

 been used instead of the choice varieties ? Might not the guests have 

 felt that as direct a hint was being given them as when in baronial 

 times the cold shoulder of mutton was trotted out to apprise the guests 

 that they had outlasted their welcome ? But who would have planted 

 or grown such inferior fruits with bore-bouncing intent? Would it 

 not have wasted valuable land and time and also indicated a lack 

 of resourcefulness on the part of host and hostess ? 



Upon no members of the family or of the district in those days 

 was the influence of choice fruit so profound as upon the boys. Setting 

 aside mothers' testimonies as biased we may perhaps accept the 

 popular view, that boys are voracious animals, but it is slanderous to 

 accuse them of having undiscriminating taste, accepting all as grist 

 that comes to their mills. If the confession of one of them, now grown 

 up, be insisted upon he would be forced to admit that he could always 

 find the choicest specimens of the choicest varieties not merely in his 

 father's and his near, and more or less dear, relatives' plantations, 

 where he normally would be expected to be welcome by day, but in a 

 very considerable range of territory and at hours when his elders had 

 usually relegated their vigilance to less somnolent watchers, dogs, 

 to be explicit, with which, however, he made it a point for obvious 

 business reasons to be on terms of intimate friendliness. 



