THE LUTHER BURBANK SOCIETY 



his message might be sure of producing the great- 

 est measure of good for the greatest number. 



It is not a simple task to put experience on 

 paper; to seek and find in a thousand experiments, 

 dismissed as failures, the three or the five import- 

 ant truths they concealed; to glean from the ex- 

 periments which proved successful the vital dis- 

 coveries which they have yielded, and to appraise 

 them in order of their real importance; to arrange 

 the facts in orderly piles and to squeeze from the 

 mass of theory, which has gone hand in hand with 

 the practice, those globules of probability neces- 

 sary to cement together a useful structure. 



If we are to benefit by the experience of any 

 man, we must have before us not only the things 

 which he knows, but the things which he believes, 

 arrayed with an eye to relative importance, with 

 facts, figures, formulae, beliefs, theories, purposes 

 and hopes brought together into a state of unified 

 reconciliation. 



It would be no small task to put on paper even 

 the simple experience of a shoemaker, a typeset- 

 ter, or a blacksmith in such a way that his children 

 might benefit by his successes, discoveries and ob- 

 servations. How much less easy, then, to put on 

 paper the experiences of a man who, for forty 

 years, has worked fourteen hours a day in a field, 

 which is all new, unmapped, unknown, almost — 



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