CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY PARLEY


In the ages that were somewhat shadowed, to say the least, when Nature
indulged her own wild moods in man and the world he trampled on rather
than cultivated, there was a class who in their dreams and futile
efforts became the unconscious prophets of our own time--the
Alchemists. For centuries they believed they could transmute base
metals into gold and silver. Modern knowledge enables us to work
changes more beneficial than the alchemist ever dreamed of; and it
shall be my aim to make one of these secrets as open as the sunlight
in the fields and gardens wherein the beautiful mutations occur. To
turn iron into gold would be a prosaic, barren process that might
result in trouble to all concerned, but to transform heavy black earth
and insipid rain-water into edible rubies, with celestial perfume and
ambrosial flavor, is indeed an art that appeals to the entire race,
and enlists that imperious nether organ which has never lost its power
over heart or brain. As long, therefore, as humanity's mouth waters at
the thought of morsels more delicious even than "sin under the
tongue," I am sure of an audience when I discourse of strawberries and
their kindred fruits. If apples led to the loss of Paradise, the
reader will find described hereafter a list of fruits that will enable
him to reconstruct a bit of Eden, even if the "Fall and all our woe"
have left him possessed of merely a city yard. But land in the
country, breezy hillsides, moist, sheltered valleys, sunny plains--
what opportunities for the divinest form of alchemy are here afforded