Tenth Annual Meeting 53 



plenty of cherries, grapes, plums, and blackberries, and our 

 butcher's bill is smaller on account of it, and our health 

 much better. 



Some, yes, many, are afraid of grapes since the appendi- 

 citis scare in the papers. The late Dr. Storrs told me that 

 he hardly ever found grape seeds in the appendix. That 

 reminds me of the influence of one of those squibs in the 

 newspapers. When located in Hartford twenty-five years ago, 

 he would see about every year a little notice telling the 

 benefit of nettleroot for neuralgia, and it would not be three 

 hours before we would have a call for nettleroot. I think it 

 will be some time before people get over the scare those 

 notices gave and go to eating grapes again as before. We 

 used to buy grapes by the dozen baskets before ours began 

 to bear. 



But I must hasten on to two kinds of fruit that people 

 do not eat enough of; viz., peaches and apples. Why? We 

 usually buy peaches by the number of baskets at a time, 

 select the perfectly ripe ones to eat each day, and when they 

 ripen faster than we can eat them we can them, and a peach 

 is not fit to can unless it is just ripe enough to eat, and if 

 we have a number of baskets we can always have enough for 

 four to six cans at a time. If late in the season, and we 

 know we will not get any more, we fill all the available space 

 in the refrigerator with peaches, and for weeks we have all 

 the peaches we want to eat, and hardly ever have to can any 

 of them. I would rather pay a dollar or more for a basket 

 of peaches than the same amount for beef bones, even if 

 there is a little touch of meat on them. I am not so much 

 afraid of uric acid poisoning from eating peaches as flesh, and 

 you all know that rheumatism is not a pleasant disease to 

 have, especially when you want to sleep, and cannot because 

 of the terrible pain. Eat more peaches and less meat if you 

 want to have less rheumatism. I would be willing now to 

 stop and eat some nice ripe peaches. Perhaps you think they 

 would be better than my talk, and I would agree with you. 

 Next to strawberries I place peaches, and only wish the 

 season for them was longer. 



The apple wnll be the last fruit that I will mention. It 



