WALL TRAINING APPLES AND PEARS. 65 



and I cannot but wish, for the sake of certain 

 brothers, that they would contract the above predi- 

 lection with its consequent art, were it only to 

 keep them from the liking of that for which they 

 have really no turn. What boon to set them to 

 the inscription of rich and beautiful lines of fruit 

 upon their garden walls, instead of lines of fruitless 

 trash upon waste paper to take them from the 

 smoky midnight lamp, by which they vainly court 

 Apollo, and place them in the literal light of the 

 sun to give them free movement of every limb, 

 and a happy face, open and joyous amidst the 

 blossoming tree, and the bees singing at their own 

 work beside them; instead of the knit brow and 

 hard sitting at the loom, weaving a bad web for 

 which there is no market, and grinning over broken 

 threads, and ends of threads which will not meet ! 

 Dare rather to be successfully wise. You are satis- 

 fied that there needs no mechanical turn to fasten 

 a branch as it was; and as to all other directions 

 for the training of trees you shall quickly see them 

 comprised in a very narrow compass. 



For apples and pears set one shoot in the centre 

 of the tree straight up; and on each side lay one 

 horizontal, nine inches from the ground, or the same 

 distance from the branches underneath, cutting off 

 all the rest. ' This is nearly the whole work for the 

 year, as far as these kinds of fruit are concerned. 

 To have wood where you want it, for the like 

 operation of the following year, cut over the ver- 

 tical shoot in spring, at the height of eight or nine 



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