course there is naught to do but go to the market and pick up what
they can; and yet Dr. Thurber says, with a vast deal of force, that
"the unfortunate people who buy their fruit do not know what a
strawberry is."

In all truth and soberness it is a marvel and a shame that so many
sane people who profess to have passed beyond the habits of the
wilderness will not give the attention required by these unexacting
fruits. The man who has learned to write his name can learn to raise
them successfully. The ladies who know how to keep their homes neat
through the labors of their "intelligent help," could also learn to
manage a fruit garden even though employing the stupidest oaf that
ever blundered through life. The method is this: First learn how
yourself, and then let your laborer thoroughly understand that he gets
no wages unless he does as he is told. In the complicated details of a
plant farm there is much that needs constant supervision, but the work
of an ordinary fruit garden is, in the main, straightforward and
simple. The expenditure of a little time, money, and, above all
things, of seasonable labor, is so abundantly repaid that one would
think that bare self-interest would solve invariably the simple
problem of supply.

As mere articles of food, these fruits are exceedingly valuable. They
are capable of sustaining severe and continued labor. For months
together we might become almost independent of butcher and doctor if
we made our places produce all that nature permits. Purple grapes will
hide unsightly buildings; currants, raspberries, and blackberries will
grow along the fences and in the corners that are left to burdocks and
brambles. I have known invalids to improve from the first day that
berries were brought to the table, and thousands would exchange their