HOUSE AND GARDEN 
March, 1912 
say that the country offers opportunity to the man who wants to 
work and work hard; who wants to get up in the morning with 
the birds and go to bed long after they are at rest; who is ready 
to fill every minute of the many hours with work and thought 
and plans. This life is for the man who doesn’t like the city 
because it thwarts him in his wish to work, because it does not 
give him the chance to develop, to use his energy. If you think 
that the modern farmer can hang over the fence and talk politics 
with his neighbor, can drive to town and use half a day gossiping 
with the loiterers at 
the store, you want to ^ 
stay right where you v 
are, and hold down 
your present job just 
as tight as you know \ 
how. The country is 
no place for you. 
Hiram West was a 
product of the time 
when they made men 
in those hills. His 
was the strength that 
looked every man 
squarely in the eye, 
on equal terms, yet 
was not ashamed to 
admit sentiment of 
the kind that a less 
sturdy man would 
hide. For fifty years 
Mrs. West had 
fought the fight by 
his side and only ad¬ 
vancing age made 
them willing to give 
over to younger 
hands the battlefield 
that they had held for 
half a century. A 
family of sons and 
daughters had gone 
forth from that hill¬ 
top, an orchard of 
fruit trees had grown 
up around them, 
fields had been re¬ 
claimed from the for¬ 
est, a dairy had been 
built up from cows 
whose grandparents 
to the fifth generation 
had been owned by 
Hiram West. A 
comfortable house 
was theirs, and the 
big barns were filled 
to the ridge poles 
with hay cut from the 
fields. But best of all was the life which they had made in the 
home. Every Sunday there was a gathering of every relative 
within reach; neighbors dropped in and visitors from far and 
near stopped at the Wests’. 
Our first common interest was the spraying of the fruit trees. 
At the time of the first spraying, just before the buds opened, 
Hiram had been away fishing. For forty years he had wanted 
to play hookey at this season, but a New England conscience 
had held him back. This year he' had broken away. So it was 
Farms were for sale for less than the value o 
less than the worth of the 
after the petals had dropped, the usual time for the second dose, 
that my “book” ideas had re-awakened his principles and, to¬ 
gether, we began the job. There is much pleasanter work than 
coating a fruit tree with poison. The mist gets in your face, 
wanders up your nose, irritates your eyes, is breathed into your 
lungs and coats you from head to foot. If you take the nozzle 
end of the game, your sleeves get .soaked and your neck acquires 
an apparently permanent crook, while a pretty solid ache develops 
in your back if you are on the handle of the pump. The mixing 
of the solutions is a 
messy job. The lime 
has to be slaked, the 
sulphur boiled with it, 
the arsenate added and 
the whole mixture 
strained into the bar¬ 
rel. Then there comes 
the occasional stoppage 
of the pump, when the 
strainer on the intake 
has to be reached and 
cleaned. This happens 
just when you are in a 
hurry and there is a 
chance given for the 
stuff to settle and 
cause more trouble. I 
know these things 
shouldn’t be, but they 
are, and I wasn’t con¬ 
tinuing my course of 
theory just then. I 
had spoken of a fine 
spray and Mr. West 
had bought a new noz¬ 
zle. It was his first ex¬ 
perience with the misty 
variety. Hitherto he 
had used a coarse 
stream and worked 
alone. One hand had 
operated the pump and 
the other held the hose 
which squirted a stream 
of poison over the tops 
of the tallest trees. Of 
course there had been 
some wormy apples, 
but he had thought 
them a necessity and 
it was only when he 
saw the fine mist set¬ 
tling over every bit of 
blossom, leaf and trunk 
that he began to see a 
f the buildings. Houses could be bought for 
land on which they stood 
light. 
“Eve been working 
on the wrong princi¬ 
ples.” said he. “1 have been trimming my trees up in the air, 
for I could always squirt over them and the boys could reach 
the apples with the tall ladders. Now I see why they are always 
saying ‘Keep your trees low.’ ” 
And right here I got my first lesson in trimming trees. I 
learned the necessity for keeping them a manageable height. Not 
because I had read it, not because I was convinced by sound 
arguments, l)ut because I had tried to throw the spray over tall 
trees. Here, too, came my first dawn of hope that I could handle 
