April, 1912 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
21 
a basket into the shipping barrel. And right then / knew that 
I was safe. The city man had won out. Mr. West had spent 
the best years of his life in caring for his apple trees, and now, 
at the last moment, he was throwing away a large proportion of 
their return. 
In justice to Mr. West I wish to say that his ideals had been 
formed from conditions existing within his limited horizon. 
The apple buyers who came to buy his crop, the neighbors who 
never trimmed or sprayed their trees and shook the fruit to the 
ground, these were the people with whom he talked and from 
whom he formed his ideals. His life had been too hard to make 
real the world of books, a world in which I had so largely lived. 
From his inner consciousness he had evolved and on his own 
initiative put into practice many improvements that kept him head 
and shoulders above anyone else in the neighborhood. But my 
ideals had been picked up from reading about the most advanced 
growers in the 
country. 
A couple of 
rainy days inter¬ 
vened and gave 
me a chance to 
make two 
changes. I pad¬ 
ded that sorting 
bench with hay— 
padded it until it 
was soft as a 
mattress and cov¬ 
ered it with a 
new strip of car¬ 
pet. Then I got 
hold of the pick¬ 
ing baskets and 
took them into 
the house. I 
asked the girls 
how to cut gunny 
sacks on the bias 
and how to sew 
them together so 
as to make them 
hang right, for 
those baskets 
must be lined. 
They took pity on 
my masculine 
helplessness and showed me how by doing it. In return there 
were many trips between the woodpile and the woodbox, so many 
that I can think with equanimity of my wiles. 
Mr. West had begun the season by playing hookey, and he had 
enjoyed it. When his daughters suggested that he take them to 
the State Fair, he refused, re-considered, and accepted. It was 
a great day for me, for I was left in charge of the picking gang. 
“Boys, we will leave every apple that falls to the ground right 
where it is, and you will hand your baskets to me. No pouring 
of apples to-day.” 
Every apple that was gathered that day I placed in the barrels 
by hand. When night came I had a feeling of extreme virtue, 
but, oh, what a backache! It was weeks later, in the packing 
house, that I learned the value of that day's work. One of those 
barrels of pound sweets (a green apple that shows every bruise) 
came to me at the end of a day when I had been wading through 
a discouraging lot of mangled apples. Hard, winter varieties 
had been so roughly handled that every other apple showed a 
bad bruise. I had been throwing away, throwing away, all day 
long, when the barrels of sweets came to the table. I didn’t even 
dare to let them roll from barrel to bench, so perfect and free 
from bruise were they. Weeks afterward I saw some of them in 
a distant city and still they retained their unmarred condition. 
The man that pours a basket of apples in my orchard next year 
has got to be able to lick me. 
But right here I want to put in another warning. It isn’t the 
whole game to pick and pack apples with care. I put up some 
barrels of Emperor ^Alexander—packed them right in the 
orchard myself, and knew that not a single specimen was bruised, 
knew that the middle of the barrel was as good as the top, knew 
that it was an “honest’’ pack. When these barrels were sent to 
the commission man I wrote and told him of the fact. And 
we received the lowest price of the season for those barrels! 
True, the head of the house wrote to tell of the condition of the 
market and to promise to find a sale for apples packed as those 
had been, but Hiram chuckled. Honesty is the foundation of 
this business, 
without which the 
whole edifice will 
collapse, but the 
foundation isn’t 
the completed ed¬ 
ifice. 
My box pack¬ 
er had come, the 
young Univer¬ 
sity man whom I 
had met at Hope 
College was with 
me and we began 
the work which I 
so fondly hope 
is to take my 
apples to all parts 
of the world. 
Does this sound 
chimerical ? This 
first year I had 
orders to ship 
them to England 
and to the West 
Indies. I had 
orders from Flor¬ 
ida and fro m 
Canada, from 
Dakota and from 
Maine. I think 
it is a dream that will come true and be fully realized. 
We decided to pack in two grades, fancy and number one. 
The first named was to contain apples uniformly colored, regular 
in shape and without blemish; the last named was to contain 
apples that fell just below this in some one requirement. Apples 
for neither grade must be below a certain size. Andrews selected 
specimens that met these requirements to show Mann and me. 
Then we began the sorting for the boxes. It was a test of firm¬ 
ness of purpose, a test that continued day after day, that held 
despite the comments of men who had grown gray in the business. 
It was the most discouraging work that I have ever done, and at 
the same time the most inspiring. Discouraging because so few 
apples could be admitted to the higher grade, inspiring because 
of the standard which we lived up to and because of its reaction 
on everyone about the place. At first it was impossible to get the 
pickers to use care in their work. If I spent my time in the 
orchard and stood over them they would use some care, but I 
had to be in the packing house—had to be there every minute 
of the day. Andrews and Mann were working with me, heart 
and soul, but Mr. West could overawe them. I never knew at 
An orchard of fruit trees had grown up around the house, and this was the scene of long hours of 
serious toil when the apples began to ripen 
