516 



THE WILSON STRAWBERRy. 



neath those fertile spots heaps of men and horses 

 lay buried, indiscriminately enriching the ground." 



It is not an unpleasant thought that this tene- 

 ment of the soul may be made to yield good whole- 

 some corn for the nourishment of other men after 

 we have done with it. Hawthorne has carried the 

 thought farther, and used the poet's license to give 

 it sentiment. In "Septimus Felton," the strange 

 flower SiDigiiinnia sanguinissiiua, growing from a 

 grave, contains a vital essence that rightly distilled 

 and compounded becomes an Elixir Mta to the 

 seeker after immortality. 



It would be difficult to find a literary worker, 

 especially one who has made his personality felt in 

 any degree, who has not testified his love for, or 

 obligation to nature, if not directly, then at least by 

 inference. If he has not gone to the woods and 

 the fields, the mountains and the streams for in- 

 spiration, he has at least asked them for the 

 machinery with which to carry it along, and with- 

 out which it would have trailed in the dust. 



Among the small minority who have not glorified 

 the great god Pan, the gentle Elia must be classed. 

 Lamb loved men and city streets. He hated the 

 country almost as much as he did his desk at the 

 India House. To him a garden was "the primi- 

 tive prison, till man, with Promethean boldness and 

 felicity, luckily sinned himself out of it." 



It is unnecessary to point out the prominence 

 now given by certain writers to verbose descrip- 

 tions of natural scenery. Half a century ago 

 Carlyle noted the coming wave, and flung his gibe 

 at it. " Sometime before small-pox was extir- 



pated," he says in ' ' Sartor Resartus, " ' ' there came 

 a new malady over Europe — I mean the epidemic 

 of view-hunting. Poets of old date, being priv- 

 ileged with senses, had also enjoyed external 

 nature, but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal cup 

 which holds good or bad liquor for us. * * * * 

 Never, as I compute, till after the ' Sorrows of 

 Werther ' was there man found who would say, 

 ' Come, let us make a description ; having drunk 

 the liquor, come, let us eat the glass.' " Yet, after 

 all, this scoffer yielded to the inevitable, as witness 

 the beautiful description of the house-garden where 

 Blumine, the flower-goddess, presided. 



In a description of an aspect of nature, the 

 superlative is often given undue prominence by 

 many of our modern story-tellers. They seem 

 trying to emulate the Spaniard that Southey tells 

 about, who always put on his spectacles when 

 about to eat cherries, that they might look bigger 

 and more tempting. 



All literature acknowledges the beneficent influ- 

 ences of nature upon the formative character of 

 youth, when the elements are plastic, easily 

 molded. In his " Winter Garden" Kingsley shows 

 the restraining influence that it may have over 

 the developed man. He, too, "had once felt that 

 strange lust after the Biirra shikar- — the thirst for 

 excitement and venture. But on a little patch of 

 English moor, into which he had struck his roots as 

 firm as the wild fir trees, he had learned the lesson 

 of the old collect to ' love the thing which is com- 

 manded and desire that which is promised.'" 



James K. Reeve. 



THE WILSON STRAWBERRY. 



AN EXPERIENCE MEETING TO DISCUSS 

 AMERICAN STR 



P TRAWBERRIES are always interest- 

 - ing, from whatever direction we re- 

 ) gard them. We love the white blos- 

 soms in the sweet new spring days, 

 we admire the long, straight, cozy 

 rows, and who does not dote upon the great, plump, 

 sweet berries ? We distrust the man, or woman 

 either, for that matter, who does not love straw- 

 berries. So we look with a species of veneration 

 upon the old Wilson's Albany, which divides 

 with the Hovey the honors of making Ameri- 

 can strawberry-growing the magnificent industry 

 which it has now become. The Hovey has almost 

 passed from sight, although it has held its fifty 

 years nobly against the horde of modern striplings. 



ONCE MORE THE MOST FAMOUS OF 

 AWBERRIES. 



But the Wilson disputes every inch of ground which 

 these younger generations are usurping, and it 

 even sometimes asserts itself as still the reigning 

 king of the strawberry world. So we have asked 

 our friends to tell us what they know about it 

 to-day — if it is still profitable, if it is running out. 



From J. M. Smith, Green Bay, Wis. — "\n 1861 I ob- 

 tained my first Wilson plants. Since that time I have, 

 with the greatest care, kept them pure. I have repeat- 

 edly obtained new plants from others whom 1 con- 

 sidered good growers, and set them upon my grounds, 

 but entirely separate from my own. They failed in 

 every case to do as well as my own, and after a fair trial 

 were all destroyed. During all these years I have 

 studied the habits of the plant very carefully, and think 

 that I have learned many things about it that have aided 



