52 FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 



boy Charlie (I have no other children), aU worked with me at 

 the bees. Those were delightful days. I think (Jharlie would 

 have made a \-ery bright beekeeper, but somehow he did not take 

 kindly to the business, and has spent his hitei' years in the army 

 and government service. My wife is one of the sort who is never 

 happy unless she is doing something for some one else, so for 

 years she Jias been confined to the house so as to help make a 

 pleasant home for others, sometimes of my relatives, sometimes 

 of hers. Ever since the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and 

 ninety-eight there has dwelt with us my wife's mother, llrs. 

 j\Iargaret Wilson, a blessed old Scotch saint, whose presence in 

 the home I feel to be much like the presence of the ark in the 

 house of Obed-Edom, when " it was told king David, saying, 

 The Lord hath blessed the house of <)l)ed-Edom, and all that 

 pertaineth unto him, because of the ark of (ind." She is a great 

 consumer of honey, and her temper is conespondingly sweet. 



ASSISTANT BEEKEEPER. 



So for a number of years Miss Emma M. Wilson has given 

 me the only assistance I have had in the apiary. Hired help 

 does some such work as carrying out and hauling bees, putting 

 together hives, etc., unloading honey brought from the out- 

 apiaiy, taking sections out of supers, etc. Sometimes it has 

 been a convenience that I could call ou the hired help in the 

 employ of my good brother-in-law, Ghordis Stull. Ghordis has 

 the place jirctty well filled with raspberries and strawberries, 

 and he is 'way up in such matters. Previous to his occupancy 

 of the place, it was chiefly in grass, for I could give no attention 

 to cultivated eiojis. The only thing I pretend to oversee of the 

 farm work is the cultivation of the rose-beds. I could hardly 

 live without roses, and my wife is an exjiert in chrysanthemums. 

 With the fruit crop I have nothing whatever to do except with 

 the finished product, and only so much of that as we can finish 

 in the house — by no means a small ciuantity. 



Miss Wilson was a school-teacher with health run down, 

 and in 1882 she stopped a year for the out-door life of bee- 

 keeping. She is still stopping. Although never rugged in health, 

 I think she has never missed a day's work in tiie apiary during 

 all the years since, when there was work to be done. Small of 



