TA RR YTO I VN L E TTERS. 



15 



bless him !) — "we could not get a Ribston Pippin on 

 its own roots anywhere, and everyone we spoke to 

 about it was ready to laugh at the wish as ri- 

 diculous." Now, it would appear, the English 

 public is served by better naturalists, though so- 

 phisticated trade is still moved much thereby. 



Mrs. Tarryer is always solid with her authori- 

 ties. She refers me to a scrap in Vol. Ill, p. 437 

 of Downing's Horticitltitrist, showing that engrafting 

 at best, is but a temporary gardener's expedient — 

 not fit for the base of wholesome business. In 

 1843, or afterwards, Signer Calderini, of Milan, 

 budded Paniciun crus-galli (farm grass) with rice. 

 He saved seed from the onion and soived it, and 

 thought he got a larger kernel and more vigorous 

 growth from the progeny among the fungi of Lom- 

 bard marshes. The experiment helps prove that 

 even engrafted things may bear seed of their kinds. 



The way she treats case-hardened and roguish 

 tree-agents makes me almost pity them. They 

 never get inside of the house. She meets them at 

 the door with a broom, and if a cool manner does 

 not send them off the premises, she warms it for 

 them. One flagrant case must be related. If the 

 nursery trade only knew what is said of it, how its 

 ears would burn ! 



Parson Camperdown, long since retired from 

 pulpit business, used to be our beloved minister, 

 and many a theological confab Mrs. Tarryer has 

 had with him. She never could abide his use of 

 "grafting," in illustrating the change of heart a 

 Christian experiences in turning from wrong to 

 right courses. She deemed the crafty simile un- 

 worthy of the serious subject. But the parson 

 persisted, and when he quit preaching and came 

 back to his farm, he grafted everything he had, al- 

 most — raised hob with his mossy old orchard — (long 

 since dead and uprooted), and they say Mrs. 

 Tarryer asked him if he didn't mean to "graft" a 

 new switch in place of the rather bald and mulish 

 tail his Dobbin carried. He was continually bring- 

 ing over samples of his "improved" fruit, which 

 Mrs. Tarryer never could see any special merit in, 

 and finally the old gentleman (partly to please the 

 lady, no doubt), setup for an amateur strawberry- 

 grower, ' ' without a particle of taste, or the least 

 eye for color or form," as Mrs. Tarryer remarked 

 at the time. 



Not long after she had turned from the door a 

 particularly smooth villain of a tree-agent (whom 

 she declared she had seen at some Peter Funk 

 auction near the steamboat dock), the parson pre- 

 sented himself at our door smiling all over, saj'ing 

 500 plants of "Dr. Nicaise " strawberries he had 



ordered had come that day, and would Mrs. Tarryei 

 accept a hundred of them ? 



This was too much. " O Mr. Camperdown !" — 

 she cried — " You are a bigger fool in pomology than 

 you ever were in theology ! You have paid twenty- 

 five dollars of good money to that rascally tree- 

 agent who was hefe the other day ! I wouldn't 

 have trusted his face for a minute — a born thief if 

 ever there was one ! All the strawberry plants he 

 sold around here he dug from Widow Aleshine's old 

 bed of Prolifics ! Why didn't you ask me about 

 'Dr. Nicaise' It won't grow. It died out of my 

 garden more than two years ago. I don't believe 

 there are 500 plants in the world !" 



By this time she had Mr. Camperdown inside in 

 an arm-chair and was telling him she must make 

 an example of him for that piece of business. And 

 she did. The old gentleman's money never baited 

 any more tree-rogues in our neighborhood. But 

 she maintained more positively than ever that mis- 

 takes in theology were not as harmless as some 

 people think, because they all seem to crop out in 

 all the details of common life. 



The decrepit young orchards scattered about the 

 country embitter Mrs. Tarryer against the ravages 

 of wholesale nurserymen. "Those djdng trees 

 wouldn't be there breeding vermin, if people with 

 more money than sense hadn't been tempted and 

 badgered into buying short-lived trees they didn't 

 want or know how to care for. And the worst of 

 it is that every bit of good native fruit we have is 

 whisked off by resident simpletons to go the road 

 of the Baldwin and Greening. By these means 

 local pride and ambition is destroyed — made im- 

 possible without a rebellion — instead of being nour- 

 ished at home, everywhere, as it should be. The 

 very people on whose farms and in whose gardens 

 new seedling fruits of great public value originate, 

 — having no taste or standards of their own — never 

 know what they have got till trees come back to 

 them with the mark of the grafting ' beast ' upon 

 them." 



These sayings of Mrs. Tarryer's will mislead 

 concerning a very mild and sweet tempered woman, 

 unless it is understood that they are condensed 

 from an ordinary life-time. She feels that the cul- 

 ture and propagation of the apple by right methods 

 is a matter of the very first national importance, 

 intimately connected with the welfare and charac- 

 ter of our people. 



" Now," said she, when five tall sons and a 

 daughter — besides a table-full of relatives and 

 friends had sampled that delicious wild-apple sauce 

 — "do you take your tools and go to that tree and 



