2O Success with Small Fruits. 



would grow almost as readily ? They can plead no perverted sense of 

 duty. 



It is a question hard to answer. Some, perhaps, have the delusion that 

 fine small fruits are as difficult to raise as orchids. They class them with 

 hot-house grapes. Others think they need so little attention that they can 

 stick a few plants in hard, poor ground and leave them to their fate. One 

 might as well try to raise canary-birds and kittens together as strawberries 

 and weeds. There is a large class who believe in small fruits, and know 

 their value. They enjoy them amazingly at a friend's table, and even buy 

 some when they are cheap. A little greater outlay and a little intelligent 

 effort would give them an abundant supply from their own grounds. In a 

 vague way they are aware of this, and reproach themselves for their negli- 

 gence, but time passes and there is no change for the better. Why ? I 

 don't know. There are men who rarely kiss their wives and children. For 

 them the birds sing unheeded and even unheard ; flowers become mere 

 objects, and sunsets suggest only "quitting time." In theory they believe 

 in all these things. What can be said of them save that they simply jog 

 on to-day as they did yesterday, ever dimly hoping at some time or other 

 " to live up to their privileges." But they usually go on from bad to worse, 

 until, like their neglected strawberry-beds, they are " turned under." 



In cities not a hundred miles from my farm there are abodes of wealth 

 with spacious grounds, where, in many instances, scarcely any place is 

 found for small fruits. " It is cheaper and easier to buy them," it is said. 

 This is a sorry proof of civilization. There is no economy in the barbaric 

 splendor of brass buttons and livery, but merely a little trouble (I doubt about 

 money) is saved on the choicest luxuries of the year. The idea of going 

 out of their rural paradises to buy half-stale fruit! But this class is largely 

 at the mercy of the " hired man," or his more disagreeable development, 

 the pretentious smatterer, who, so far from possessing the knowledge that 

 the English, Scotch or German gardeners acquire in their long thorough 

 training, is a compound of ignorance and prejudice. To hide his barrenness 

 of mind he gives his soul to rare plants, clipped lawns, but stints the family 

 in all things save his impudence. If he tells his obsequious employers that 

 it is easier and cheaper to buy their fruit than to raise it, of course there is 

 naught to do but go to the market and pick up what they can ; and yet 

 Dr. Thurber says, with a vast deal of force, that " the unfortunate people 

 who buy their fruit do not know what a strawberry is." 



In all truth and soberness, it is a marvel and a shame that so many sane 

 people who profess to have passed beyond the habits of the wilderness will 

 not give the attention required by these unexacting fruits. The man who 



