The Fruit Garden. 21 



has learned to write his name can learn to raise them successfully. The 

 ladies who know how to keep their homes neat through the labors of their 

 " intelligent help," could also learn to manage a fruit garden even though 

 employing the stupidest oaf that ever blundered through life. The 

 method is this : First learn how yourself, and then let your laborer thor- 

 oughly understand that he gets no wages unless he does as he is told. In 

 the complicated details of a plant farm there is much that needs constant 

 supervision, but the work of an ordinary fruit garden is, in the main, 

 straightforward and simple. The expenditure of a little time, money, and, 

 above all things, of seasonable labor, is so abundantly repaid that one 

 would think that bare self-interest would solve invariably the simple prob- 

 lem of supply. 



As mere articles of food, these fruits are exceedingly valuable. They 

 are capable of sustaining severe and continued labor. For months 

 together we might become almost independent of butcher and doctor if we 

 made our places produce all that nature permits. Purple grapes will hide 

 unsightly buildings ; currants, raspberries and blackberries will grow along 

 the fences and in the corners that are left to burdocks and brambles. I 

 have known invalids to improve from the first day that berries were brought 

 to the table, and thousands would exchange their sallow complexions, sick- 

 headaches, and general ennui for a breezy interest in life and its abound- 

 ing pleasures, if they would only take nature's palpable hint, and enjoy the 

 seasonable food she provides. Belles can find better cosmetics in the fruit 

 garden than on their toilet tables, and she who paints her cheeks with the 

 pure, healthful blood that is made from nature's choicest gifts, and the 

 exercise of gathering them, can give her lover a kiss that will make him 

 wish for another. 



The famous Dr. Hosack, of New York city, who attended Alexander 

 Hamilton after he received his fatal wound from Burr, was an enthusiast on 

 the subject of fruits. It was his custom to terminate his spring course of 

 lectures with a strawberry festival. " I must let the class see," he said, 

 " that we are practical as well as theoretical. Linnaeus cured his gout and 

 protracted his life by eating strawberries." 



" They are a dear article," a friend remarked, " to gratify the appetites 

 of so many." 



" Yes, indeed," replied the doctor, " but from our present mode of 

 culture they will become cheap." 



It is hard to realize how scarce this fruit was sixty or seventy years- 

 ago, but the prediction of the sagacious physician has been verified even 

 beyond his imagination. Strawberries are raised almost as abundantly 



