No. 4.] FRUITS FOR LOCAL MARKETS. 67 



Mr. Ellsworth's honorable ancestors wouldn't have thought of 

 pulling tlu-ough the winter with less than 100 barrels of cider 

 in the cellar. I know one of your colonial governors with 

 one of ours in Connecticut were comparing notes on board a 

 vessel crossing the ocean. One of them had 500 barrels of 

 cider in the cellar, and thought his family would pull through 

 till spring. As I say, the early planting was done for the 

 purpose of cider making ; and in later years the apple was 

 used for cooking, making pies, and the boys ate them, and 

 the old men, for the sake of the furi of throwing the parings 

 in the fireplace, but as a food specially they were not largely 

 consumed. 



And in recent years we growers have done all we could to 

 stop that consumption. We have grown them carelessly and 

 put them in a tumbling barrel and sent them somewhere. 

 The packages were so big the people didn't think of buying 

 them as a whole. They could hardly take a barrel home by 

 hand or on the car. When they bought any of the grocer, 

 a portion was poured out of the barrel, a peck, or more often 

 half a peck, and the apple pie was made, and the children 

 ate the rest, and no more apples were bought for a week. 

 While beautiful apples can be grown anywhere in Massachu- 

 setts, the finest apples in your town to-day were grown 3,000 

 miles away, because 30U were too pesky lazy to get the rough 

 off. They are selling here for about $3 a bushel in boxes, 

 but every apple is perfect, and native apples are bad in ap- 

 pearance. You get $2 a barrel, because you do not finish 

 them up as they do on the Pacific slope. But when you 

 wake up and manufacture the kind of apples that your soil 

 factory is able to turn out, if you will apply the right sort 

 of skill, the right sort of treatment all the way through, and 

 put them on the market, why, these people would just as 

 soon have your apples in the boxes as those from Oregon. 



But you want to go further than that ; you want to grow 

 the beautiful summer and fall apples of the highest color and 

 quality, and offer them in your towns in small family pack- 

 ages, something after the style of grape baskets, or what you 

 will that is light and attractive, and sec the result. Look at 

 the baskets of grapes, — the grape men have made them 



