260 PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



there was a period when of all the brilliant array of pictures furnished 

 by a fervid and fertile imagination the most entrancing were those 

 which related to my plans for becoming a horticulturist. 



Ah! what magnificent grapes, what luscious peaches, unrivaled pears, 

 apricots unsurpassed by man, and record-breaking prunes! All these 

 grew in the fields of my youthful pictures, as I lay stretched on a bed 

 of verdure beneath the umbrageous spread of my own fig tree, breath- 

 ing the perfume of millions of blossoms, and soothed by the low rustle 

 of leaves that gently spread themselves to protect me from the sun. 



It was all so beautiful and entrancing; and as I remember it now, so 

 restful; in fact in my picture it was all rest; there was absolutely 

 nothing doing except among the bees. They were always busy. In 

 fact, on the fruit ranch of my dreams the only things which were busy 

 were the bees; and my heart used to go out to them in pity whenever 

 I dwelt upon their life of untiring industry with its insistent demands 

 for activity, and I used to think, "Poor little bees, you have to work so 

 hard I pity you. It is too bad you can not have an orchard, because 

 then you would not be obliged to work." 



Ah, ruthless irony of fate ! Grim realization, the destroyer of 

 ideals; I have since had a real orchard; and contact and time stripped 

 it of romance and lay bare its wayward and contrary disposition and 

 its predilection for all the diseases in the horticultural category; 

 revealing the bugs and things hidden within its inmost recesses, not to 

 mention the vagaries of the market, eccentricities of the commission 

 merchant, and the peculiarities of a railway tariff. One after another, 

 in a solemn and insistent procession, these evil things presented them- 

 selves to me to be dealt with by my inexperienced mind. But I 

 grappled with them with all the optimism of youth, making mistake 

 after mistake, until that train of strange and unintelligible conditions 

 overwhelmed me and I saw with tears my beautiful air castle in ruins. 



I think that about the last straw which broke my back was the dis- 

 covery that some trees which the nurseryman had labeled early apri- 

 cots and sold to me as such, turned out to be very late seedling 

 peaches, and sour at that. 



All this happened many years ago, and I was thereby forced to try 

 some means of obtaining a livelihood not connected with the chosen 

 vocation of my youthful dreams. 



Those early memories, however, are very dear to me and are fresh in 

 my mind, even at this late day, and I have recently acquired an 

 interest in some orchards near Chico. Profiting, however, by my early 

 experience, I decided to hedge on that investment by having an interest 

 in some one of the various things which seemed to me in my early 

 experience to have me so much at their mercy, and so I started the 

 Northern Electric Railway. 



