PLANT-ING WALL-FRUIT TREES. 77 



trees are the most likely to promote that end; and 

 if that end be once gained, all the rest will follow 

 of course; for there is something so attractive in 

 horticultural occupations, that we never find them 

 abandoned by those who have once engaged in them; 

 and to effect that first engagement, we can figure 

 nothing that will present so strong a motive as an 

 obvious and quick and certain process of establish- 

 ing beauty and fruitfulness in the room of confusion 

 and sterility. Nor is it to be expected that you shall 

 have the satisfaction of beholding such a process, 

 if your dependence be not on your own resources, 

 but on the common routine methods of your pro- 

 fessional man; it being far more probable, in these 

 circumstances, that you will first endure, for some 

 seasons, the ugliness of ill grown, useless trees, and 

 then, after sustaining as much disgust as serves 

 to fix the resolution, root them out to place more 

 hope on the young of your own planting; from 

 which, however, you will gather very little bulk of 

 fruit for ten yearsv 



But we now proceed on the supposition that you 

 have new ground, and a new wall to furnish; and 

 here it is almost certain, unless you have bestowed 

 more attention than is usually given to the works 

 of others in which you have no personal interest, 

 that, on proceeding to plant, you will find yourself 

 in doubt as to many things; and that, long after 

 the work is done, you will either suffer regret on 

 account of the place chosen for certain fruits, or, in 

 order to get rid of your vexation, you will shift the 



