8 
THE RU RAI. NEVY-YORKER 
January 1, 
Hope Farm Notes 
On December 6 I received the follow¬ 
ing note: 
I write you this letter to prove to you 
what injustice you have been doing to Mr. 
Burbank. Mr. Childs and to the Wonder- 
berrv. This berry is really a wonder. But 
I suggest the name “Inkberry" for it. 
Everybody can easily raise his own ink. and 
all be wants. I have tilled my fountain 
pen with the clear, pure juice of the 
Wonderberry, and am writing this letter 
with it. It flows a little freely, as you 
may observe, and may need some addition 
for use in fountain pens; but it works 
well with ordinary pen-points. Maybe 
boiling it down a little might help. I will 
experiment with it. After all. therefore, 
(here may be some use for this weed. 
T. GRKIXER. 
“At this festive season of the year” 
it is certainly desirable to cut all the 
“ins” out of injustice. The letter from 
Mr. Greiner looks as if it were written 
in a purple-black ink which shows little 
sign of fading. The letter blurs a little 
in places, but this juice would pass mus¬ 
ter. In looking up the chemistry of ink 
I find that one characteristic principle is 
an extract from nut galls. I do not 
think we shall do any injustice to Mr. 
Childs in saying that the introduction of 
the Wonderberry contained a sufficient 
quantity of “gall” to fully qualify the 
juice to serve as ink. On the principle 
that "like cures like,” I shall not he sur¬ 
prised if some one lauds it as a “nerve 
tonic.” 
Hope Farm has no use for the Won¬ 
derberry, either as ink or fruit or orna¬ 
ment (?). Six people have told The 
R. N.-Y. that when stewed with lemon 
or rhubarb this fruit makes good pie and 
sauce. I have eaten a piece of the pie. 
Only two persons that I know of have 
claimed that the berry has any commer¬ 
cial value—one of these being a 14-year- 
old girl. On the other hand, at least 
1,000 persons have written or said to us 
that they consider the berry a worthless 
fake. 
In the face of all this if this berry 
should be “boomed” again this year I 
should consider its juice fit for an in¬ 
delible ink, for the proportion of “gall” 
in it would be doubled! 
But what about the people who say 
such a berry has real value? I have no 
doubt many of them are honest. Some 
live in places where our common fruits 
cannot be grown. With some others it 
might be polite to say that they have 
peculiar tastes! So far as getting “tes¬ 
timonials” is concerned I believe a man 
could send out vines of poison ivy under 
some high sounding name and actually 
get people to say it was a fine thing. 
For this vine might be grown so as to be 
ornamental, and I know there are people 
who can handle it, or even rub the juice 
over their hands without evil effect. I 
can just about do this, and if all had 
the same power of resistance I would 
not object to saying that poison ivy 
is a suitable ornamental plant. We 
know, however, that it is a danger¬ 
ous poison to most people, and 
therefore we brand it an outcast and 
criminal among plants. Any man who 
would scatter poison ivy among the peo¬ 
ple is safest behind the bars—though he 
would not hurt me in the least by his 
distribution. 
Now, to a less degree, this same thing 
holds true of the Wonderberry. There 
no question but that the poisonous prin¬ 
ciple of the black nightshade (solanin) 
has been found in the berry. This state¬ 
ment is made on the highest authority, 
and neither Mr. Childs nor Mr. Burbank 
can deny it. Dr. Greshoff of Holland, 
who made the analysis, said it will always 
be dangerous to eat them, and especially 
so for feeble children. 
In reply to this I have no doubt Mr. 
Burbank would say that he and his 
family have eaten Wondcrberries in 
large quantities, and never suffered any 
injury. I have no doubt of it, but that 
is no more proof that the berries are 
harmless than is the fact that I can 
handle poison, ivy without being hurt. 
Our $10,000 experience with Mr. Bur- 
hank leads us to conclude that he is 
rather a tough subject so far as “catch¬ 
ing on” to some of the influences which 
quickly inoculate most people. _ Mr. 
Childs has written me that he is willing 
to eat fruit, leaf or vine to prove that 
{he plant is harmless. I do not know 
of any law, either of State or nature, 
that could interfere with his doing so, 
for judging from statements in his cata¬ 
logues and letters it is evident that Mr. 
Childs is a remarkably free agent. The 
fact that men like Burbank and Childs 
might gain strength and vigor from the 
Wonderberry is no proof against Dr. 
GrcshOff’s advice against giving it to 
children and weak people. 
I know people *who say that they have 
eaten food containing borax, salicylic 
acid and other chemicals for years with¬ 
out ill effects. This may be true, of some, 
hut the results from these slow poisons 
may not be manifested for a long time, 
and same of those very people are suf¬ 
fering from the long use of these chemi¬ 
cals. With others the results are much 
faster, and I believe the Government is 
entirely justified in prohibiting the use 
of these poisons in food, even though 
only a small proportion of the people 
were injured by them. In the same way 
this Wonderberry, when grown under 
certain conditions, will contain the night¬ 
shade poison, and when it does the ber¬ 
ries are dangerous for certain classes of 
people. Now if this berry were so 
superior to all other fruits that it was 
a necessity, I can see how some people 
would be ready to risk all danger and 
grow it. In fact the berry is inferior to 
currants, berries, apples, peaches, plums, 
grapes or any of our common fruits. 
There is no reason why it should be 
grown as food, and its habit of growth 
condemns it for commercial production. 
Add to this the possible danger from 
its poisonous principle and there remains 
no earthly reason why any seedsman 
should try to “boom” it. 
And now that we are talking of this 
I want to go on and refer to another 
matter. The opening of the year is a 
good time to consider things. People 
sometimes ask why we hammer away at 
what they are pleased to call “small 
things," when there are so many large 
ones to he considered. The chances are 
that you have seen men and women who 
laid down the most beautiful “large” 
theories about education and child rear¬ 
ing. Yet while these people were up in 
the clouds chasing “large” things their 
own children possessed you with an un¬ 
controllable desire to collar them and 
drag them out behind the barn for a 
good shingling! The world seems to be 
full of those who discuss the great things 
and do it well. I think we kick an equal¬ 
ly strong discussion of the smaller com¬ 
mon -thh.gs which, after all, represent 
the foundation of society. Take this 
very “Wonderberry” discussion. It may 
seem at first thought a very small mat¬ 
ter, and yet consider how it runs up into 
large matters of business integrity, per¬ 
sonal character and betrayal of public 
confidence. Do you think a man who will 
brush aside the smaller principle con¬ 
tained in the sale of this “novelty” can 
bring great moral force to bear upon 
larger things? Do you think a man can 
go through this squarely and understand 
it thoroughly without being better quali¬ 
fied to fight for the “larger” things? I 
think most of us need training in the 
primary class of fighting fakes and 
frauds. In that way we can get our 
moral muscle up to tackle the big evils. 
Farm and Home. —We had a flood of 
rain at last, but little benefit came from 
it. The soil was frozen hard, and the 
water simply slid down the hills and 
swept away through the brooks. The 
wells are not filling, and springs are still 
dry. This flood did a had job with some 
of my open ditches by washing the soil 
down into them. Tt will have to be 
scooped out again in the Spring, yet I 
still think the soil will be better for it. 
. . . Merrill has been cutting out the 
tops of some of our old apple trees 
until it looks as if a brush pile had been 
made around them, .Some of these old 
trees had grown into a tangle of 
branches, and the instructions were to 
cut them so that the sun, air and spray 
can all get in. They will he the better 
for it. . . . While the ground is frozen 
we can haul out manure, get wood and 
haul apple pomace and muck. I get 
year-old pomace when possible. There 
is less water in it and less acid. I am 
experimenting with some of this between 
the rows of hill strawberries. I do not 
care to put such material over the 
plants, hut it will cover the space be¬ 
tween. I do not think the acid in it vvill 
hurt the crop. ... I have been figuring 
with my neighbor for a piece of land. In 
order to learn how much there was of 
it I paced it off as evenly as I could, and 
multiplied length by breath. Merrill did 
the same and we compared figures. We 
each measured a pace accurately and 
tried to step evenly. We were an acre 
apart in our figures, and the surveyor 
made it half an acre different from 
either. After all we got it closer than 
some of those people who estimate a 
crop, or how much a cow gives,, or how 
fast a horse can trot. Hold the watch 
on the horse or put the crop or milk on 
the scales and you discount such stories 
at once. There is only one way and that 
is to be sure. . . . The end of Decem¬ 
ber brought the usual hustle and rush 
to Hope Farm. The children were busy 
over their gifts. They are not able to 
make any costly presents, for our chil¬ 
dren have been brought up to be content 
with . 10 cents if that is all they have. 
They' have no money except what they 
earn and give some equivalent for. Their 
little gifts are usually something they 
have made with their own hands. We 
are fortunate in still having two.children 
who believe in Santa Claus. I wish 
every home in the country had at least 
one inmate who held this belief—for 
what it stands for is the foundation of 
human life and hope. Every year a lot 
of wise men severely reprove me for 
letting the children believe that old 
Santa Claus really jingles the bells, and 
that his reindeer really eat the hay which 
they leave out by the gate. I have no 
quarrel with these gentlemen—or anyone 
else at Christmas. I feel sorry for them, 
because they have somehow lost the 
best of life. The baby’s desperate effort 
to hold out and be “good” until Christ¬ 
mas appeals to me. I cannot remember 
a Christmas at Hope Farm without 
some one who believed in the old story— 
I hope there never will be such a cele¬ 
bration. H. W. C. 
The best way to keep an engine cool is 
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If the water in the Novo froze solid, it 
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Most stationary engines are so heavy it’s 
very hard to move them. The working parts 
of no engine are stronger than the Novo, but 
by leaving out the useless iron in the 
base, it is made less cumbersome and easy 
to change from place to place. 
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