806 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 



AN APOLOGUE OR APPLE-LOGUE. 



Two men planted out each one hundred apple-trees. In 

 six or seven years they began to bear. One had spared no 

 pains to bring his orchard into the highest condition. He 

 had constantly cultivated the soil about them, scraped off 

 the rough bark, washed them with urinated soap, picked 

 off every worm and nursed them as if they had been child- 

 ren. The other, pursuing a cheaper plan, simply let his 

 trees alone ; but the moss, and canker-worms took his place 

 and attended to them every year. When the orchards 

 began to bear, the careful man had the best fruit, and the 

 careless man covered his folly by cursing the nursery-man 

 for selling him poor trees. In a year or two the careful 

 man had two bushels to the other's one from each tree. 

 Not to be outdone, the latter determined to have as many 

 apples as the former, and set out another hundred trees. 

 By and by, when they bore, the other orchard had so im- 

 proved that it produced twice as many yet ; another hun- 

 dred trees were therefore planted. In process of time the 

 first orchard of one hundred trees still sent more fruit to 

 market than the three hundred trees of the careless man, 

 who now gave up and declared that he never did have luck, 

 and it was of no use to try on his soil to raise good fruit. 



1 . When a man is too shiftless to take good care of two 

 horses, he buys two more, and gets from the four what he 

 might get from two. 



2. A farmer who picks up a cow simply because it is not 

 an ox, and is, nominally, lactiferous, and then lets the crea- 

 ture work for a living, very soon buys a second, and a third, 

 and a fourth, and gets from them all, what he should have 

 had from one good one. 



3. A farmer had one hundred acres. Instead of getting 

 seventy-five bushels of corn to the acre, he gets forty and 

 makes it up by cultivating twice as many acres ; instead of 

 thirty bushes of wheat he gets twelve, and puts in acres 



