HO OF US, viewing the fine scenic panorama spreading across the bottom of these pages, would conceive, at 

 the first glance, that the picture represented only a single year's work — that it was just one year from absolute 

 wilderness to the charming scene here reproduced by the photographer's and 'graver's art? Yet, this wonderful— 

 shall we say kaleidoscopic? — transformation was wrought in a twelvemonth through the mlehigence and energy of 

 a young man twenty-seven years of age, who has studied well the lessons of horticulture and has started out on a 

 career for himself in a productive home of rare 

 beauty, created from the wilds largely by his own toil. It is a 

 lesson and an example of suggestive power and helpfulness, and 

 to the young man or woman who contemplates the future with 

 doubt, should lend encouragement and confidence. 



Palmer S. Van Doren of Easton, Pa., an enthusiastic reader of 

 The Strawberry and a practical worker in the strawberry field, is 

 the young man who has achieved this almost phenomenal trans- 

 formation and turned what was deemed a worthless piece of land 

 into a productive strawberry and poultry farm worth, with its 

 improvements, fully $20,000. This land was regarded by the 

 public ' J all but valueless, but the eyes of the young man saw 

 beyonc the scrub trees, the sumac, the poison ivy and the 

 brambles with which it was covered, and as the architect sees in 

 clear outline the building he has been commissioned to plan and 

 construct before ever he puts pencil to paper, so Palmer Van 



Doren saw in that three acres of primal wilderness the splendid vista which now exists in actual and beautiful reality. In Sep- 

 tember of 1905 Mr. Van Doren had to cut his way through a veritable jungle of wild growths; in September, 1906, behold a 

 lovely field of strawberries, a flower and vegetable garden, a poultry house and yards fairly alive with extraordinary specimens of 



high-bred white Wyandottes and brown Leghorns, a large and handsome residence 

 such as the most ambitious of us might be proud to own, and outbuildings and 

 lawn to match. Aladdin himself with his wonderful lamp, never pioduced such 

 marvelous changes — certainly none half so practical and serviceable. 



"I made up my mind," says Mr. Van Doren in a note to The Strawberry, 'that 

 to succeed in this beautiful world of ours one must win success, and the winning of success depends on one's self-determination to 

 accomplish." Had he thought, as all too many of our young folk do, that the "world owed him a living," and tha'; all he had 

 to do was to present the bill and collect the debt, that wilderness would be a wilderness still, and we should be deprived of the 

 privilege of telling our readers of his work, and by actual illustrations showing how well, indeed, he is started on <'ie highway 



Strawberries, Chickens 

 and Success 



