Preliminary Parley. 15 



again and tender. Before they drop from their places the bees come back 

 for honey, and find it. 



In brief, I propose to take the reader on quite an extended ramble 

 among the small fruits. It is much the same as if I said, " Let us go a 

 strawberry ing together," and we talked as we went over hill and through 

 dale in a style somewhat in harmony with our wanderings. Very many, 

 no doubt, will glance at these introductory words, and decline to go with 

 me, correctly feeling that they can find better company. Other busy, 

 practical souls will prefer a more compact, straightforward treatise that is 

 like a lesson in a class-room rather than a stroll in the fields, or a tour 

 among the fruit farms, and while sorry to lose their company, I have no 

 occasion to find fault. 



I assure those, however, who, after this preliminary parley, decide to 

 go further, that I will do my best to make our excursion pleasant, and to 

 cause as little weariness as is possible, if we are to return with full baskets. 

 I shall not follow the example of some thrifty people who invite one to go 

 " a-berrying," but lead away from fruitful nooks, proposing to visit them 

 alone by stealth. All the secrets I know shall become open ones. I shall 

 conduct the reader to all the " good places," and name the good things I 

 have discovered in half a lifetime of research. I would, therefore, mod- 

 estly hint to the practical reader to whom "time is money," who has an 

 eye to the fruit only, and with whom the question of outlay and return is 

 ever uppermost that he may, after all, find it to his advantage to go with 

 us. While we stop to gather a flower, listen to a brook or bird, or go out 

 of our way occasionally to get a view, he can jog on, meeting us at every 

 point where we " mean business." These points shall occur so often that 

 he will not lose as much time as he imagines, and I think he will find my 

 business talks business like quite as practical as he desires. 



To come down to the plainest of plain prose, I am not a theorist on 

 these subjects, nor do I dabble in small fruits as a rich and fanciful amateur, 

 to whom it is a matter of indifference whether his strawberries cost five 

 cents or a dollar a quart. As a farmer, milk must be less expensive than 

 champagne. I could not afford a fruit farm at all if it did not more than 

 pay its way, and in order to win the confidence of the " solid men," who 

 want no " gush " or side sentiment, even though nature suggests some 

 warrant for it, I will give a bit of personal experience. Five years since, I 

 bought a farm of twenty-three acres that for several years had been rented, 

 depleted, and suffered to run wild. Thickets of brush-wood extended from 

 the fences well into the fields, and in a notable instance across the entire place. 

 One portion was so stony that it could not be plowed ; another so wet and 



