16 FRUIT CULTURE IN GENERAL. 



is at all times supplied with delicious and refreshing fruit from its 

 own gardens, has within its reach not only a very important means 

 of economy, but of real domestic comfort. An intluence is thus 

 introduced of an exalted character ; a tendency is directly exerted 

 toward the improvement of l^ie manners of the people. Every 

 addition to the attractions of home has a salutary bearing on a 

 rising family of children. The difference between a dwelling with 

 well-planted grounds, and well furnished with every rural enjoy- 

 ment, and another where scarcely a single fruit-tree softens the face 

 of bleakness and desolation, may, in some instances, and to many a 

 young man just approaching active life, serve as the guiding influ- 

 ence between a useful life on the one hand, or a roving and unprofit- 

 able one on the other — between a life of virtue and refinement from 

 early and favorable influences, or one of dissipation and ruin from 

 the overbalancing effects of a repulsive home. Nor can any man, 

 even iu the noon or approaching evening of life, fail to enjoy a 

 higher happiness, with at least an occasional intercourse with the 

 blossoming and loaded trees which his own hand has planted and 

 pruned, than in the noise of the crowd and tumult of the busy world." 



When apples, grapes, currants, and raspberries becoiue as com 

 men on the tables o< our people as potatoes, taking the place of the 

 execrable pork and bacon — with the poor as well as the rich, iu the 

 farm-house and that of the villager — then will fruit culture have 

 attained a position in the world's economy that it deserves, and 

 become a source of profit and good second to no other industry. 



We conclude this introductory chapter, then, with the repetition 

 of this urgent advice, to all who may see these pages — to plant trees ! 

 — PLANT TREES ! without further delay, and cultivate them properly 

 and carefully, and our word for it — and not our word alone, but 

 the united testimony of thousands of those who have demonstrated 

 the fact — they will be to you at no very distant day a source of 

 pecuniary profit and rich enjoyment. 



