274 
February 15, 1919 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
ggiikcrnmnDU PONT AMERICAN INDUSTRIES^3xmE3CDa:m[ l3|| 
Better Roads ! 
Good roads mean good markets to the farmer. 
They mean increased pay between the farm 
and the city home. They mean higher profit 
to the farmer; they mean farm to home sales 
for eggs, poultry, pork products,vegetables and 
all farm produce. 
The war is over. The millions of dollars that we have 
been spending on engines of destruction ean nowbe expended 
on civic improvements, and if there is any one thing above 
all others the war has taught us the need of, it is good roads. 
Now is the time! Thousands of returning soldiers and 
thousands of ex-munition workers are now available to 
furnish the necessary labor. 
Back The Better Roads Movement! 
You know what it means to you. You know who 
has the power to make good roads appropriations in your 
locality. See that this body acts ! 
The day of the heavy motor truck is at hand. Its eco¬ 
nomical use spells good roads. Good roads in turn spell 
prosperity for the farmer, lower cost of living for the city 
dweller. Everybody benefits. The laborer is employed; 
the farmers comes in direct contact with his market; the con¬ 
sumer deals direct with the producer of his food. 
If interested in this idea, write us for our Road Con¬ 
struction and. Maintenance Booklet No. 30. It’s free. It 
will give you a lot of valuable information on this timely 
subject. 
E. I. DU PONT DE NEMOURS & CO. 
Wilmington, Delaware 
Plants. Warehouses and Sales Offices in all principal business centers. 
The Principal Du Pont Products Are 
Explosives; Chemicals; Leather Substitutes; Pyroxylin Plastics; 
Paints and Varnishes; Pigments and Colors in Oil; Stains, Fillers; 
Lacquers and Enamels; Dyestuffs. , 
For full information address; Advertising Division 
E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Wilmington, Del. 
, 
mnm 
mm *iiiii i* Mill i ★ini 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
No snow in Northern New Jersey yet, 
but a high, cold wind struck us February 
1. It roared over our hills and bit 
through thick clothing. Last Winter it 
would have passed as a gentle breeze, for 
then we were enduring frozen pipes and 
frosted fingers, and had been hardened to 
it. This open Winter finds us soft and 
unprepared. We have all the manure 
bauloo out and spread, and the year’s 
wood all cut and packed away. There 
must be 20 cords of stove wood, while the 
trimmings from the orchard would make 
nearly as much more, for the fireplace and 
furnace. Several of the older orchards 
have not been pruned properly for several 
years, and some dead wood has accumu¬ 
lated. This is being cut out, and the old 
trees as well as the new ones, are having 
a full overhauling. Some of you may 
have read the story of the old farmer who 
was a little careless about his appear¬ 
ance. He let his hair and beard grow as 
it wanted to. When he went to town-peo¬ 
ple called him a “hayseed.” _ So one day 
he had a barber trim his hair and beard 
in military style, and bought a new over¬ 
coat. Then everyone began calling him 
“general.” I thought of that as I saw our 
old Greeniug orchard come out of the 
hands of the primers. These old trees 
stood up erect and trim, instead of slouch¬ 
ing with their dead wood and drooping 
lower limbs. I find them alive with fruit 
buds. Now we will soak them with scale- 
cide and give them a mouthful of manure 
and phosphate. A famous prize fighter 
once said all the training he needed was 
“a shampoo and a shave.” This old or¬ 
chard once gave me 500 bushels of apples. 
If it were a group of men talking together 
I should say they had agreed to make it 
600 this year. 
***** 
Pruning the younger frees presents a 
hard problem this year. We shall have a 
big visitation from the 17-year locust. 
There are two broods to come this season, 
and we shall be alive with them. In for¬ 
mer years they have cut and slit the 
young trees and new wood somewhat, and 
we must allow for that. Then this will 
be the bearing year on many of the trees, 
and we must not cut out too much wood. 
Some of them are too thick and poorly 
shaped. So it will require judgment and 
a good eye to fix them properly. I tell 
the bovs to get down under the trees and 
look up through them, observe the limbs 
that cross and grow to the center, and try 
to leave the tree with an open or hollow 
top. I find it impossible to tell a man 
just how to do it, for in order to do it 
right one must be something of an artist 
and capable of imagining what that tree 
will look like when the foliage is all out. 
Unless a man can do that he would better 
let a tree alone. The thing to have in 
mind here is the hollow top. Now, of 
course. I know a dozen people will start 
up and say "Wrong! It should have a 
central stem and a solid top.” You can¬ 
not quarrel with me about that. You may 
cut your trees as you like. but. on our hills 
we want a hollow, open top into which we 
can drive the spray or dust, and where 
the sun and air can enter. 
***** 
I do not know of any other place where 
the hollow head evidences brains or 
thought, but in the tree I think it does. 
It is true, though, that most, of the 
troubles and disappointments of life come 
to us when we build our faith on some 
character or enterprise which we believe 
to be solid as a rock, only to find i. hollow 
as a gourd at the touch. I have ' o think 
about that tonight as I build up the open 
fire. The little children have brought in a 
great pile of dry apple chunks—the fiuest 
of all fireplace wood. I have noticed sev¬ 
eral big pieces three feet long and nearly 
a foot in diameter at the bottom of the 
pile. How did those little ones ever get 
those great chunks in? It was certainly a 
fine performance, for they know how I 
enjoy a glowing backlog. They have gone 
to bed now, so I cannot praise them 
px-operly. When I got hold of the biggest 
log I found it suspiciously light. The en¬ 
tire inside had been rotted away, leaving 
only a bare inch of wood “around a hole.” 
My children are not as industrious as I 
thought. They picked out those light, 
hollow sticks because they were easy to 
carry! Well, let’s put one on anyway. 
It won’t last. It is no more satisfactory 
than the authors and orators who feed us 
on “hot air,” for that is about all this 
hollow stuff is. 
***** 
What there is of this wood blazes well 
while it lasts. It ought, to, for it has been 
dried inside and out. What a story that 
big hollow limb could tell. Years ago 
some pruner started the trouble. Ten 
to one he hated a tree. Very likely he 
worked on a cold day with a thought only 
for his dinner. He cut off a limb with a 
wrong slant, so that instead of running 
the rainwater away it made a basin where 
the water was caught. Then of course 
decay started, and it ate down toward the 
heart of the tree, deeper and deeper with 
the years. Then, very likely, a squirrel 
or some other wild thing found this hole 
and dug it out for a home. The worms 
and the scale made life for the old tree a 
long nightmare, and the thick, hard sod 
bound up the roots and robbed the tree of 
its food and water. Deeper and deeper and 
wider and wider grew the hole in the limb 
until there was only a little rim of wood 
around it. Have I not seen fine old peo¬ 
ple going on through life putting up a fine 
front, while just beneath the surface 
hope and ambition and the best of life has 
been hollowed out of them? You have to 
think of such things as the fire roars 
through that hollow center and eats up 
the thin rim of wood. It is the ending of 
a brave life, of a hard struggle against 
fate—a life made hollow by blunders, 
when it should be solid and strong. 
***** 
No use talkiug, when you get down to 
the real elements of it, life seems to be 
pretty much like that hollow tree. It is 
what you do with the inside things that 
makes the difference between solid or hol¬ 
low character. This world is pretty well 
filled up with bluffers. They are like a 
shell with the inside puffed up with wind, 
or hollowed out by the decay of real cour¬ 
age or self-respect. It's what you do with 
the hollow part. Years ago I knew a man 
who in his younger days went to Aus¬ 
tralia to make his fortune. He was no 
gold digger, but he was after the gold 
which others dug. He took a shipload of 
stoves, as he had _ learned the miners 
Wanted a certain kind. When he came 
to pack these stoves in the ship, this 
man’s economical soul was troubled be¬ 
cause he was obliged to pay “freight on 
air,” or the space inside those empty 
stoves. After some thought he bought a 
great quantity of oats and filled every 
stove in his outfit with that grain! He 
refused to pay freight on air, and the 
oats carried in that way more than paid 
the entire expenses of the shipload of 
stoves! 
***** 
I have often thought of that man’s re¬ 
fusal to pay freight on air. What a 
world this would be if everyone in his 
daily life could cut out or fill up the hol¬ 
low shells of his career and fill them with 
something useful. I am not so sure that 
some of us would find such a world a 
great improvement, yet there is no doubt 
that many a man tonight knows only too 
well what his trouble is. He paid the full 
price for the voyage of life, and then filled 
his ship with too many hollow goods. The 
freight money which ought now to be 
making him happy (if money ever can do 
that) was spent for carrying air! I have 
an idea that some of us are started wrong 
as children, very much as <that hollow 
limb was developed. Someone tried to cut 
a habit or tendency out of us. No use 
talking, we all have them ; they are just 
spiritual or mental legacies from some 
old ancestors. They grew in us as nat¬ 
urally as the branches grow on a tree. In 
fact, the organizing and directing of a 
child’s life is about like pruning the tree. 
You can, if you like, do it in a brutal, 
bungling, blunderbuss way, so that, like 
the water on the limb, evil and injustice 
will accumulate, start decay and hollow 
out the child’s life. 
***** 
Those hollow sticks have melted away, 
and if I am to do any work tonight I 
must wander out into the dark and fiud a 
new supply. But a fruit farmer comes to 
understand that life is pretty much a 
matter of shapiug and heading the young 
tree. Here is a case where the road to 
solid character must run through a hol¬ 
low head. But it’s all in what the hollow 
contains. It carries sunshine, fresh air, 
room for the spray and the clean wash of 
the rain. And so I would if I could give 
the child the same sort of an open, “hol¬ 
low-” head, and I would fill it with love 
and hope and childish vision and play and 
poetry, or at least give them all a chance 
to enter. Then later, as in the tree, the 
fruit of the year will hang solid and beau¬ 
tiful and true. No matter how solid the 
head may be, I feel sorry for the owner if 
it contains no memory of sunshine and 
blue sky and birds and snowy clouds, 
sighing winds and gentle rains. H. w. c. 
Tanning Small Skins 
When skins are dried they must be hy¬ 
drated by sprinkling sawdust with water 
sufficient to bring to an even moisture, 
like that from green logs, or a trifle 
moister. Pack the skins flat on the floor 
and put on tw-o inches or more sawdust, 
pressing down firmly. In 24 hours the 
skins should be about right to remove 
fiber aud flesh. The skins are still too 
hard for tanning. Put them into water 
containing a small amount of borax, a 
large tablespoonful to six or eight quarts 
of water, which should be about 100 de¬ 
grees. Move the skins about and squeeze 
in any way to get them soft. When soft 
rinse in cold water and work out the 
water from the flesh side or hang up to 
drain. When drained spread on a table 
or clean floor and you are ready for tan¬ 
ning. 
Take three pounds of alum, finely 
ground, one and one-half pounds fine salt 
and mix thoroughly. Rub or sift this 
mixture over the skins so that every part 
is covered. After one or tk-o hours this 
mixture will be pretty well dissolved, 
forming little pools of liquid. With a 
feather spread it all over the skin and let 
it lie for a day, when it should be ready 
to hang up to dry. After skins have been 
dried place them in warm water to get 
out the surplus tannate. If that is not 
done, the skins will get wet in damp 
weather. After washing and working out 
hang up to dry again. When washing 
Sheep skins use soap until all traces of 
alum are removed from the wool. 
“For the Land’s Sake, use Bowker’s 
Fertilizers; they enrich the earth and 
those who till it.”— Adv. 
DON’T BUY A FARM 
until yon see this 53-»cre general, hog, poultry farm 
bordering Skippaek Creek, 22 miles Central Phila¬ 
delphia. 10-room brick dwelling. 66-foot bank barn. 
Complete set outbuildings. Spring water. Fruits. 
Snperior soil. Owner here 53 years. #3,750. 
Illustrated catalogue describing 200 snaps, three 
comities surrounding Philadelphia through 
INTERESTING GARDEN BOOKS 
A Woman's Hardy Garden —By Mrs. 
H. R. Ely .$1.75 
Old Time Gardens —By A. M. Earle 2.50 
Flowers and Ferns in Their Haunts—■ 
By M. O. IVrig hi .... 2.00 
Plant Physiology —By Duggan . . 1.60 
For sale by Rural New-Yorker, 333 W. 30th St., N.Y. 
Frank T. Jtcese, 6 F,«it Airy Street, NOKKISTOWK, PA. 
SPRAYING 
Means Prevention 
of Food Famine 
^SPRAYING MATERIALS'y%M^ 
means “cumulative insurance” 
.—because each year’s spraying 
makes the work of the succeed¬ 
ing one more effective. Our ma¬ 
terials are dependable because 
they are scientifically compounded. 
1 Ye Manufacture—Consequently Our Guarantee Stands for Something. 
Bordeaux Mixture 
(Paste and Powder) 
Fish Oil Soap 
Paris Green 
Arsenate of Lead 
(Paste and Powder) 
Vitrio 
(Bordo-Lcad of highest analysis) 
Blue Vitriol 
Calcium Arsenate 
(A most efficient poison for the 
Least Expense) 
Egg Preserver 
(Water Glass) 
Write for literature . Ask for our Dealer proposition to Dept. R. N. Y. 
Also Nitrate ol Soda, Fertilizer Materials, Stock and Poultry Feeds 
Ask lor quotations, information, advice or 'phone 
Nitrate A gencies 
Home Office : 
85 Water Street 
New York City 
Branches. 
Savannah - 
Columbus 
Norfolk - - 
Jacksonville - 
