Part 1

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PLEASANT TALK ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING.

BY HENRY WARD BEECHER.

NEW EDITION, WITH ADDITIONAL MATTER FROM RECENT WRITINGS, PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED.

NEW YORK: J. B. FORD AND COMPANY. 1874.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, BY J. B. FORD AND COMPANY, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & CO., CAMBRIDGE.

PREFATORY.

The Preface to the first edition of this volume, which follows these few words, will give some idea of the book’s origin. Much of the material is of only passing importance, and is retained now rather from retrospective interest. A considerable addition has been made, however, consisting of articles contributed to Mr. Bonner’s New York Ledger, bearing upon rural affairs, and also an unpublished address upon The Apple. This was delivered at Iona Island, on a fair summer day, when ladies and gentlemen, several score,—editors, pomologists, singers, preachers, poets, and inventors,—gathered under Dr. C. W. Grant’s hospitable trees,—for the house was too small to hold them,—to eat apples and pears, to discuss grapes solid and liquid, and to listen to the venerable poet, Mr. Bryant, to Horace Greeley, to Charles Downing, and to notable songsters, whose warbles put the birds to envious silence,—at any rate, so the compliments ran at the time.

The address had better luck at Iona than its great subject did in Paradise; though it will never give rise to such a literature of results.

H. W. BEECHER.

BROOKLYN, February, 1874.

PREFACE

TO THE FIRST EDITION.

No one of our readers will be half so curious to know what this book contains as the author himself. For it is more than twelve years since these pieces were begun, and it is more than ten years since we have looked at them. The publishers have taken the trouble to dig them out from what we supposed to be their lasting burial-place, in the columns of the Western Farmer and Gardener, and they have gone through the press without our own revision.

It is now twenty years since we settled at Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana, a place then of four, and now of twenty-five thousand inhabitants. At that time, and for years afterward, there was not, within our knowledge, any other than political newspapers in the State—no educational journals, no agricultural or family papers. The Indiana Journal at length proposed to introduce an agricultural department, the matter of which should every month be printed, in magazine form, under the title, Indiana Farmer and Gardener, which was afterward changed to the more comprehensive title, Western Farmer and Gardener.

It may be of some service to the young, as showing how valuable the fragments of time may become, if mention is made of the way in which we became prepared to edit this journal.

The continued taxation of daily preaching, extending through months, and once through eighteen consecutive months, without the exception of a single day, began to wear upon the nerves, and made it necessary for us to seek some relaxation. Accordingly we used, after each weeknight’s preaching, to drive the sermon out of our heads by some alterative reading.

In the State Library were Loudon’s works—his encyclopedias of Horticulture, of Agriculture, and of Architecture. We fell upon them, and, for years, almost monopolized them.

In our little one-story cottage, after the day’s work was done, we pored over these monuments of an almost incredible industry, and read, we suppose, not only every line, but much of it many times over; until, at length, we had a topographical knowledge of many of the fine English estates quite as intimate, we dare say, as was possessed by many of their truant owners. There was something exceedingly pleasant, and is yet, in the studying over mere catalogues of flowers, trees, fruits, etc.

A seedsman’s list, a nurseryman’s catalogue, are more fascinating to us than any story. In this way, through several years, we gradually accumulated materials and became familiar with facts and principles, which paved the way for our editorial labors. Lindley’s Horticulture and Gray’s Structural Botany came in as constant companions. And when, at length, through a friend’s liberality, we became the recipients of the London Gardener’s Chronicle, edited by Prof. Lindley, our treasures were inestimable. Many hundred times have we lain awake for hours, unable to throw off the excitement of preaching, and beguiling the time with imaginary visits to the Chiswick Garden, to the more than oriental magnificence of the Duke of Devonshire’s grounds at Chatsworth. We have had long discussions, in that little bedroom at Indianapolis, with Van Mons about pears, with Vibert about roses, with Thompson and Knight of fruits and theories of vegetable life, and with Loudon about everything under the heavens in the horticultural world.

This employment of waste hours not only answered a purpose of soothing excited nerves then, but brought us into such relations to the material world, that, we speak with entire moderation, when we say that all the estates of the richest duke in England could not have given us half the pleasure which we have derived from pastures, waysides, and unoccupied prairies.

If, when the readers of this book shall have finished it, they shall say, that these papers, well enough for the circumstances in which they originally appeared, have no such merit as to justify their republication in a book form, we beg leave to tell them that their judgment is not original. It is just what we thought ourselves! But Publishers are willful and must be obeyed!