520 
THE KUKAt NEW-YORKER 
April 3, 1915. 
Notes of All Sorts 
Disgruntled Back-to-the-Lander. 
Y OU have printed quite a number of 
items about the “back-to-the-landers.” 
I was raised in a city, but for more 
than 35 years I have lived on a farm, 
and I love the country. We have had 
some experience with “back-to-the- 
landers” in our neighborhood and my 
advice to any city man is, don’t move 
into the country unless your wife is 
perfectly sure she wants to go. We have 
no sidewalks, no street lights, and when 
it is dark nights, it is very dark; no 
moving picture shows, and when we go 
anywhere we have to hitch up and ride 
a few miles to get there. Very few houses 
have the convenient faucet for hot and 
cold water, bath rooms and so forth. We 
cannot run into the corner grocery and 
get what we want for a meal, but gen¬ 
erally have to prepare it from the ground 
to the table. These are a few of the 
“grouches’* the neighbor “back-to-the- 
landers’ ” wives had to quarrel about. 
Both families spent a miserable year or 
two in our vicinity, and hiked “back to 
the city. 
They just wouldn’t like any¬ 
thing, # and I hope, we have no more of 
their kind for neighbors. I hope some 
may take warning by their trials and 
stay in the city. 
farmer’s wife. 
An Indoor Arbor. 
T I110 sun of late May glared across the 
room. Some one remarked,: “Better 
keep the door shut, it lets in more heat 
than breeze.” It was always the same, 
pleasantly cool in Spring and Autumn, 
but with the first warm day almost unen¬ 
durable. Just then I caught sight of a 
green tip and curling tendrils of the near¬ 
by grapevine. The tendrils were seeking 
a foothold on the wire screen door. 
“Why not?” I said. “The screen is 
old, in fact, has already been mended, and 
we will see if the grapevine can outwit 
this sunshine.” 
The vine was coming from the back, 
and I coaxed two more branches to seek 
the same support. In two weeks’ time 
they were fully leaved out, had grown 
across the door, and side branches were 
climbing up and down. Then I clipped 
the ends and have kept them clipped all 
Summer. The door opens and shuts as 
easily as ever, the vines bending with 
the hinges. The sun filters through be¬ 
tween the leaves, and I can sit close to 
the door to shell peas, pare apples, read 
or write, with the delightful feeling that 
this is a Summer arbor, a real out-of- 
doors cozy corner, and at the same time 
know what is going on in the kitchen 
when the meals are cooking. In the 
warm evenings I can draw the lampstand 
close to the leafy screen, and work in 
peace, while the grey and white moths 
flutter up and down the wire outside, 
seeking the light of the lamp, without 
the torture of seeing them singe their 
wings. There is more than one way of 
having a Summer cottage. 
COEA A. MATSON DOLSON. 
T 
The New Jersey Compensation Law. 
IIE article on page 127, “Apples in 
New Jersey,” is a true exposition of 
the possibilities of the State, but 
there is a “fly in the ointment” that 
every Jersey land owner should know, 
and every prospective purchaser, of a New 
Jersey farm should be aware of. The 
State of New Jersey’s employer’s liabil¬ 
ity act does not exempt (as all other 
States do) house and farm laborers. It 
is a question whether there is justice in 
an act that makes an employer liable for 
an accident that occurs from no negligence 
of his. An accident may occur on a 
Jersey farm; the proprietor may be as 
innocent as the man in the moon, yet he 
is liable under this act, and if it is fatal 
it may take the value of a small Jersey 
farm to pay it. Neither can a small 
farmer afford to pay 60 to 70 cents per 
acre per year with an additional charge 
of $10 for each team. This is about the 
rate asked by the insurance companies. 
A farmer cannot or will not add this 
additional expense to the cost of business 
and collect from consumer as the manu¬ 
facturer and railroads do. Farm and 
household help should be exempt from 
this act, or else the State should give 
insurance at cost and make it compul¬ 
sory. Owners of New Jersey farms 
should get a copy and read this act, and 
then see their representatives about it. 
New Jersey. D. w. 
It is a fact that New Jersey does not 
exempt farm and household help as New 
York does, and this fact is a handicap to 
Jersey farming. The law should be 
amended so as to exempt these two classes. 
Efforts have been made to do this, but 
the manufacturing and transportation in¬ 
terests have prevented it. As “D. W.” 
states these interests can take the cost 
out of the public. If the farmers could 
cooperate they could obtain cheaper in¬ 
surance. 
I 
was very sim- 
and time of 
Seedless Apples; a Freak. 
HAVE read with much interest the 
letters from various parts of the coun¬ 
try appearing in your columns, and hope 
I may be able to give some one else the 
same pleasure, and also clear up a mys¬ 
tery, at least a mystery to me. 
On the farm where I was born and 
raised stood an old apple tree which my 
father told me was a nice husky young 
tree when he came to the farm in 1356, 
and this tree was as peculiar as Bret 
llarte’s “Heathen Chinee.” The blos¬ 
soms had no corolla and no stamens, but 
the ovary and ovules with the pistils 
were perfect, as was the calyx—the only 
imperfect apple blossom which I ever 
saw. These apples, unless the blossoms 
were pollinated from some) other tree, 
had no seeds, and the whold core was a 
very poor imitation of what an apple 
core should be. The apples were rather 
poor shape, being unsymmetrical and 
somewhat gnarly. This tree showed 
plainly where it had at one time been 
grafted at about eight feet above the 
ground, and during my stay on the farm 
a sucker started from the bole, very close 
to the ground, grew and blossomed (hav¬ 
ing perfect blossoms) and fruited. Now 
the fruit from this sucker 
ilar in size, color, flavor 
ripening (early Fall) to 
the’ fruit of the grafted 
tree. The general shape 
was also very similar, 
but the fruit from the 
sucker was symmetrical 
and smooth, and I was 
never able to determine 
to my own satisfaction 
whether or not they were 
the same. That is, it 
was difficult to decide whether the differ¬ 
ence in shape and the slight difference 
in color were wholly due to the general 
freakishness of the tree or not. 
Now for the explanation. My father 
told me that his father or uncles told him 
that this result was received by grafting 
a crotched stock on both branches with 
the same scion thereby bending the scion 
over and setting one end in each branch. 
After the scion started to grow it was 
cut in two and the end which was right 
end up was cut off, leaving the tree to 
develop from the scion which was set 
bottom up. I do not vouch for 
of this explanation. Neither 
father. This, however, is the 
planation which I have ever 
this phenomenon. I have tried 
times to repeat the experiment, but so 
far without success, never having been 
able .to get the scion to grow. I am go¬ 
ing to try again, however, for I would 
like to establish the truth or falsity of 
the story. Can any of The It. N.-Y. 
readers help me? The farm was sold 10 
years ago or more, and is now a part of 
one of the State institutions and when 
I visited the place two years ago in the 
hope of getting a cutting from the tree I 
learned that it had been cut down. So 
far as my very limited knowledge of bot¬ 
any goes the Rose family, of which the 
apple is a member, always have perfect 
blossoms. Some one did something to 
this tree in its youth to render its blos¬ 
soms imperfect. What did he do? s. 
Massachusetts. 
the truth 
did my 
only ex- 
heard of 
at divers 
Ownership of Tree on Boundary. 
/’llAT is the law in New York State 
I regarding the ownership of fruit 
growing upon branches overhanging 
Pr’s lnr»r? nnrl mntr Hyat fill'll on of f hn 
another’s land, and may the owner of the 
land trespassed upon by such branches re¬ 
move them, at the line or elsewhere? Is 
the damage done by the shade and the 
feeding roots of trees to land adjoining 
that upon which they are planted recog¬ 
nized by law? d. 
New York. 
The best discussion 
found in Washburn on 
follows: 
“Tr.es which stand wholly 
of this matter is 
Real Property, as 
within the 
boundary line of one’s land belong to him, 
although their roots and branches may 
extend into the adjacent owner’s land. 
And such would be the case in respect to 
the ownership of the fruit of such trees, 
though grown upon the branches which 
extend beyond the line of the owner’s 
land. And trespass for assault and bat¬ 
tery would lie by the owner of the tree 
against the owner of the land over which 
its branches extended, if he prevented the 
owner of the tree, by personal violence, 
from reaching over and picking the fruit 
growing upon these branches, while stand¬ 
ing upon the fence which divided the par¬ 
cels. But the adjacent owner may lop off 
the branches or roots of such trees up to 
the line of his land. If the tree stands so 
nearly upon the dividing line between the 
lands that portions of its body extend into 
each, the same is the property in common 
of the land owners. And neither of them 
is at liberty to cut the tree without the 
consent of the other, nor to cut away the 
part that extends into his land, if he 
thereby injures the common property in 
the tree.” 
The damage done by the shade and 
roots of the tree is therefore recognized, 
but no easement by prescription is ob¬ 
tained although the boughs of the tree 
overhang the other’s land or its roots re¬ 
main imbedded therein, because the 
growth of the tree produces a constant 
change in the burden and inconvenience 
which it imposes. M. D. 
I 
Is Latin a Help ? 
N reply to the Hope Farm Man, on 
page 180, may I state a bit of personal 
experience as to the value of the study 
of Latin? I took it four years in high 
school. I enjoyed it and stood rather 
high in my class. Today I could read 
some of Virgil and most of Caesar at 
sight. I could, but I don’t In fact I 
don’t believe I have opened a Latin book 
for 10 years until just now, in order 
to see whether it stayed in my memory. 
To my mind that four year course was 
wasted time. I would gladly “swap” it 
for one year of a modern language, that 
I could use. 
I do not see that it has helped my un¬ 
derstanding of English in the least. I 
and my nearest friends, when in search 
of an exact word-meaning, alwyas refer 
to the only man in our set who has never 
studied Latin, and he is never at a loss. 
We have purposely hunted up “stickers” 
to test him, and he is ohcays right. He 
studied etymology, which seems to me 
a much more direct way of getting at it. 
You seem to feel that the choice must 
lie between the “live mental drill” af¬ 
forded by the study of a dead language, 
and “memorizing a lot of facts” in some 
other study. Of course you know that 
any language study is largely memory 
work, but I presume you refer to the 
practice in “associating ideas” which one 
undoubtedly does get in picking out the 
sense of a curious idiom or grasping the 
logic of an unfamiliar construction. All 
the same, even if we waive entirely the 
question as to whether the natural 
sciences do not offer a still better oppor¬ 
tunity for this sort of drill, wouldn’t a 
modern language do at least as well, be¬ 
sides being of some possible use after you 
had learned it? 
I wish some, one would test out a little 
scheme of mine which I have found to 
give pretty consistent results. Next time 
you are talking with a man long enough 
out of school t<* have a little perspective, 
ask him what he thinks of the value of 
Latin. If he believes in it T think you 
can say, “Then you yourself have never 
studied it,” and be right eight times out 
of ten. It would do no harm to try, and 
if I am right, wouldn’t the fact be rather 
suggestive? Caesar in his day was con¬ 
sidered a great man, but if lie’ were alive 
now he would be called a great rascal, 
and the glory of Caesar’s language has 
gone with prestige of Caesar’s Rome. I 
think, therefore, that it is better to leave 
him and his language in the era to which 
both belong. W. H. STAELVER. 
Connecticut. 
The Hope Farm Man has nothing 
further to add—not knowing enough 
about the subject to discuss it. We 
should have to leave that to the Latin 
scholars. We have seen “natural” spel¬ 
lers or grammarians who excelled in these 
branches even with a quite limited edu¬ 
cation. 
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